His Aunt Matilda.

2

BROKEN CABINETS

Jake had left his backpack and clothes back at the dojang, along with his cell phone. He had no way to call for help, and riding to a neighbor’s house would take too long. He had to reach a phone inside.

Rather than rush headlong through the front door, he sprinted to the side of the house and pried open a window. It led into a glass-roofed conservatory, where his mother had once grown prized orchids, specimens collected from around the world. It was empty now, the orchids long gone. Jake would still sometimes come here to read, especially in winter when it was the hottest place in the house. The warmth on a cold winter’s day felt like his mother’s embrace.

Hiking his leg over the windowsill, he scrambled inside and dropped to the stone floor. The summer heat had turned the place into a sauna. Pebbles of sweat immediately formed on his brow. Staying low, he scooted to the swinging doors that led from the conservatory to a side hall. The kitchen lay only a few steps away.

He listened at the conservatory door, his ears straining for any sound. But all remained quiet—which set his heart to pounding harder in his throat. How many intruders were in the house? What had happened to Aunt Matilda and Uncle Edward?

Jake eased open the door and leaned out. A narrow hallway extended a few yards and ended at the main passageway that cut the large manor house into two halves. He found himself staring at a Greek statue across the far hall. Above the sculpture’s head was the portrait of one of Jake’s ancestors: Bartholomew Jackson Ransom, the founder of Ravensgate, the famed Egyptian explorer. He stood posed next to a camel. Other portraits hung up and down the hall, marking other generations, each following in Bartholomew’s footsteps to become explorers.

As Jake stepped out of the conservatory, he heard footsteps coming down the main passageway toward him. Jake flattened himself against the oak-paneled wall. A figure crossed the opening to the side hall and continued toward the rear of the house.

It was a skeleton of a man, toweringly tall and spider-thin. He carried a steel bat in one hand. As he disappeared out of sight, his harsh voice swelled, full of menace.

“Where is it? Tell me now, or there’ll be more trouble!”

His question was punctuated by a loud crash of splintering wood. Broken glass skittered across the limestone floor. A rough-skinned rock rolled into view. But it wasn’t a rock. Jake knew that it was a fossilized tyrannosaurus egg. For more than a century, it had rested in the Cabinet of Curiosities of his great-great-grandfather Augustus.

The skeletal thief must have used his steel bat to smash open that cabinet. The main passageway was full of other display cases, each cabinet belonging to an ancestor, preserving treasures and artifacts collected by that explorer.