The Never Game

On the silent tape—older security systems generally didn’t waste storage space or transmission bandwidth with audio—the young woman took a mug of coffee and one of the chrome number-card holders. Shaw could see her long face was unsmiling, grim.

“Pause, please.”

Tiffany did.

“Did you serve her?”

“No, it would have been Aaron working then.”

“Is he here?”

“No, he’s off today.”

Shaw asked Tiffany to take a shot of Sophie on her phone, send it to Aaron and see if he recalled anything about her, what she said, who she talked to.

She sent the shot to the employee, with the whooshing sound of an outgoing text.

Shaw was about to ask her to call him, when her phone chimed. She looked at the screen.

“No, he doesn’t remember her.” On the video Sophie vanished from sight again.

Shaw then noticed somebody come into view outside. He, or she, was of medium build and wearing baggy dark sweats, running shoes, a windbreaker and a gray stocking cap, pulled low. Sunglasses. Always damn sunglasses.

This person looked up and down the street and stepped closer to Sophie’s bike and crouched quickly, maybe to tie a shoelace.

Or not.

The behavior earned Shaw’s assessment that it was possibly the kidnapper. Male, female, he couldn’t tell. So Shaw bestowed the gender-neutral nickname, Person X.

“What’s he doing?” Tiffany asked in a whisper.

Sabotage? Putting a tracking device on it?

Shaw thought: Come in, order something.

He knew that wouldn’t happen.

X straightened, turned back in the direction he had come and walked quickly away.

“Should I fast-forward?” Tiffany asked.

“No. Let it run. Regular speed.”

Patrons came and went. Servers delivered and bused dishes.

As they watched the people and drivers stream past, Tiffany asked, “You live here?”

“Florida, some of the time.”

“Disney?”

“Not all that close. And I’m not there very often.”

Florida, he meant. As for Disney, not at all.

She might have said something else but his attention was on the video. At 6:16:33, Sophie left the Quick Byte. She walked to her bike. Then remained standing, perfectly still, looking out across the street, toward a place where there was nothing to look at: a storefront with a sun-bleached FOR LEASE sign in the window. Shaw noted one hand absently tightening into a fist, then relaxing, then tightening again. Her helmet slipped from the other and bounced on the ground. She bent fast to collect and pull it over her head—angrily, it seemed.

Sophie freed her bike and, unlike the elegant dismount, now leapt into the seat and pedaled hard, to the right, out of sight.

Staring at the screen, Shaw was looking at passing cars, his eyes swiveling left to right—in the direction Sophie’d headed. It was, however, almost impossible to see inside the vehicles. If stocking-capped, sunglasses-wearing Person X was driving one, he couldn’t see.

Shaw asked Tiffany to send this portion of the tape, depicting X, to his email. She did.

Together they walked from the office into the restaurant proper and made their way back to the table. Madge, the daughter with the mother name, told him that no one she’d showed the picture to had seen the girl. She added, “And nobody looked weird when I asked.”

“Appreciate it.”

His phone sang quietly and he glanced at the screen. Mack’s research into Kyle Butler, Sophie’s ex-boyfriend, revealed two misdemeanor drug convictions. No history of violence. No warrants. He acknowledged the info, then signed off.

Shaw finished his coffee.

“Refill? Get you anything else? On the house.”

“I’m good.”

“Sorry we couldn’t help you more.”

Shaw thanked her. And didn’t add that the trip to the Quick Byte had told him exactly where he needed to go now.

9. (#ulink_5507dee1-f172-5d78-ad4e-630ba127c419)

Colter Shaw, fifteen, is making a lean-to in the northwest quadrant of the Compound, beside a dry creek bed, at the foot of a sheer cliff face, a hundred feet high.

The lean-to is in the style of a Finnish laavu. The Scandinavians are fond of these temporary structures, which are found commonly on hunting and fishing grounds. Colter knows this only because his father told him. The boy has never been outside California or Oregon or Washington State.

He’s arranged pine boughs on the sloping roof and is now collecting moss to provide insulation. The campfire must remain outside.

A gunshot startles him. It’s from a rifle, the sound being chestier than the crack of a pistol.

The weapon was fired on Shaw property because it could not have been fired anywhere else; Ashton and Mary Dove Shaw own nearly a thousand acres, and from here it’s more than a mile’s hike to the property line.

Colter pulls an orange hunting vest from his backpack, dons the garment and walks in the direction of the shot.

About a hundred yards along, he’s startled when a buck, a small one, sprints past, blood on its rear leg. Colter’s eyes follow it as it gallops north. Then the boy continues in the direction the animal came from. He soon finds the hunter, alone, hiking deeper into the Shaw property. He doesn’t see or hear Colter approach. The boy studies him.

The broad man, of pale complexion, is wearing camouflage overalls and a brimmed cap, also camo, over what seems to be a crew-cut scalp. The outfit seems new and the boots are not scuffed. The man is not protected with an orange vest, which is a hugely bad idea in thick woods, where hunters themselves can be mistaken for game or, more likely, bush. The vests don’t alert deer to your presence; the animals are sensitive to the color blue, not orange.

The man wears a small backpack and, on his canvas belt, a water bottle and extra magazines for his rifle. The gun is a curious choice for hunting: one of those black, stubby weapons considered assault rifles. They’re illegal in California, with a few exceptions. His is a Bushmaster, chambered for a .223 bullet—a smaller round than is usually chosen for deer hunting and never used for bigger game. The shorter barrel also means it is less accurate at a distance. These guns are semiautomatics, firing each time the trigger is pulled; that aspect is perfectly legal for hunting, but Colter’s mother, the marksman in the family, has taught the children to hunt only with bolt-action rifles. Mary Dove’s thinking is that if you can’t drop your target fast with a single shot you (a) haven’t worked hard enough to get closer or (b) have no business hunting in the first place.