The Never Game

An exaggerated frown. “Oh-oh. That way I’ll have captured you on incoming calls and stuck you in my address book. You willing to make that commitment?”

He lifted his phone. She gave him the number and he dialed. Her ringtone was some rock guitar riff Shaw didn’t recognize. She frowned broadly and lifted the mobile to her ear. “Hello? … Hello? …” Then disconnected. “Was a telemarketer, I guess.” Her laugh danced like her eyes.

Another hit of the coffee. Another tug of her hair. “See you around, Colter. Good luck with what you’re up to. Oh, and what’s my name?”

“Maddie. You never told me your last.”

“One commitment at a time.” She slipped the headphones on and returned to the laptop, on whose screen a psychedelic screen saver paid tribute to the 1960s.

13. (#ulink_24b52b4c-3a51-51a1-8ba4-b9d2b5715cc6)

Shaw couldn’t believe it.

Ten minutes after leaving the café he was pulling onto the shoulder of Tamyen Road, overlooking San Miguel Park. Not a single cop.

Alrightyroo. We’ll look into it, Chief …

Guess not.

Shaw approached the only folks nearby—an elderly couple in identical baby-blue jogging outfits—and displayed the printout of Sophie. As he’d expected, they’d never seen her.

Well, if the police weren’t going to search, he was. She’d—possibly—flung the phone, as a signal to alert passersby when someone called her.

Maybe she’d also scrawled something in the dirt, a name, part of a license plate number, before X got her. Or perhaps they’d grappled and she’d grabbed a tissue or pen or bit of cloth, rich with DNA or decorated with his fingerprints, tossing that too into the grass.

Shaw descended into the ravine. He walked on grass so he wouldn’t disturb any tracks left by the kidnapper in sand and soil.

Using the brown-smeared stone as a hub, Shaw walked in an ever-widening spiral, staring at the ground ahead of him. No footprints, no bits of cloth or tissue, no litter from pockets.

But then a glint of light caught his eye.

It came from above him—a service road on the crest of the hill. The flash now repeated. He thought: a car door opening and closing. If it was a door, it closed in compete silence.

Crouching, he moved closer. Through the breeze-waving trees, he could make out what might indeed have been a vehicle. With the glare it was impossible to tell. The light wavered—which might have been due to branches bending in the wind. Or because someone who’d exited the car had walked to the edge of the ridge and was looking down.

Was this a jogger stretching before a run, or someone pausing on a long drive home to pee?

Or was it X, spying on the man with a troubling interest in Sophie Mulliner’s disappearance?

Shaw started through the brush, keeping low, moving toward the base of the ravine, above which the car sat—if it was a car. The hill was quite steep. This was nothing to Shaw, who regularly ascended vertical rock faces, but the terrain was such that a climb would be noisy.

Tricky. Without being seen, he’d have to get almost to the top to be able to push aside the flora and snap a cell phone picture of the tag number of the jogger. Or pee-er. Or kidnapper.

Shaw got about twenty feet toward the base of the hill before he lost sight of the ridge, due to the angle. And it was then, hearing a snap of branch behind him, that he realized his mistake. He’d been concentrating so much on finding the quietest path ahead of him that he’d been ignoring his flank and rear.

Never forget there are three hundred and sixty degrees of threat around you …

Just as he turned, he saw the gun lifting toward the center of his chest and he heard a guttural growl from the hoodie-clad young man. “Don’t fucking move. Or you’re dead.”

14. (#ulink_3464df7d-360b-5b11-9299-24f5e8d8e124)

Colter Shaw glanced at the attacker with irritation and muttered, “Quiet.”

His eyes returned to the access road above them.

“I’ll shoot,” called the young man. “I will!”

Shaw stepped forward fast and yanked the weapon away and tossed it into the grass.

“Ow, shit!”

Shaw whispered sternly, “I told you: Quiet! I mean it.” He pushed through a knotty growth of forsythia, trying to get a view of the road. From above came the sound of a car door slamming, an engine starting and a gravel-scattering getaway.

Shaw scrabbled up the incline as fast as he could. At the top, breathing hard, he scanned the road. Nothing but dust. He climbed back down to the ravine, where the young man was on his knees, patting the grass for the weapon.

“Leave it, Kyle,” Shaw muttered.

The kid froze. “You know me?”

He was Kyle Butler, Sophie’s ex-boyfriend. Shaw recognized him from his Facebook page.

Shaw had noted the pistol was a cheap pellet gun, a one-shot model whose projectiles couldn’t even break the skin. He picked up the toy and strode to a storm drain and pitched it in.

“Hey!”

“Kyle, somebody sees you with that and you get shot. Which entrance did you use to get into the park?”

The boy rose and stared, confused.

“Which entrance?” Shaw had learned that the quieter your voice, the more intimidating you were. He was very quiet now.

“Over there.” Nodding toward the sound of the motorbikes. The main entrance to the east. He swallowed. Butler’s hands rose fast, as if Shaw presently had a gun on him.

“You can lower your arms.”

He did so. Slowly.

“Did you see that car parked on the ridge?”

“What ridge?”

Shaw pointed to the access road.

“No, man. I didn’t. Really.”

Shaw looked him over, recalling: surfer dude. The boy had frothy blond hair, a navy-blue T-shirt under the black hoodie, black nylon workout pants. A handsome young man, though his eyes were a bit blank.

“Did Frank Mulliner tell you I was here?”