The Never Game

by Jeffery Deaver

  The minder was heavy yet he went down hard, flat on his back, gasping, his face contorted. The wind had been knocked from his lungs. Shaw drew his own pistol and kept it pointed toward, but not at, the man.

  He wasn’t stupid. He nodded quickly. Shaw pocketed the pistol, also a Glock, and patted him down for other weapons. There were none. He powered off the man’s phone and took a set of keys. Shaw moved his finger in a circle. The minder nodded again and rolled onto his belly.

  Shaw zip-tied his wrists and ankles and turned back to the house.

  Key in the lock. He turned it—silent—and, drawing his gun, he opened the door and stepped into the hallway, aromatic with the smells of cooking: onions and grease. A glance around the dim place. The bedrooms, to the left, were dark. He’d have to take a chance on the kitchen. To look inside would expose him—because of a pass-through bar—to the men in the living room. The odds that there were five men here?

  Small.

  So, with a two-handed grip on his gun, Shaw stepped fast into the room, where the trio was sitting and pacing.

  Knight dropped his phone and the “Jesus Christ!” he uttered was nearly a shout. The minders spun around, starting to stand.

  “No. Down.”

  They complied slowly.

  Shaw had noted how each held his phone or tablet. “You.” Nodding to one. “Left hand, thumb and forefinger. Weapon out. Pitch it toward me.” The other was told to do the same with his right hand.

  There was no opportunity here for heroics or clever tactics, only foolishness, and they did as instructed.

  Shaw tossed zip ties to them.

  “How do we . . .” one began.

  Shaw offered a wry glance. “Just figure it out.”

  Using their teeth to hold and tighten the plastic ties, they bound their own wrists.

  Shaw spotted a light panel against the far wall and walked to it, then flipped the switches. The grounds were brilliantly illuminated. Then he stepped to a spot near the kitchen, where he could stand and have complete cover of the room and a view out to the yard.

  “Is anyone else here, other than the one tied up outside?”

  “Listen, Shaw—”

  “Because if there is and he makes a move, he’s going to get shot. And that means there might be other shots.”

  Knight said, “There sure is somebody. And you better . . .”

  Shaw looked at one of the minders—the one who’d been enjoying his comedy on the tablet until the interruption. The man shook his head.

  Knight growled, “The fuck’re you doing?” Odd how anger negates handsome.

  “Lift up your jacket and shirt and turn around, then empty your pockets.”

  After a defiant moment the CEO did. No weapons.

  Shaw picked up the man’s phone and disconnected the call.

  “How’d you find me? Was it Foyle? That fucker. Well, so what? You can call all the cops you want but nobody’s going to touch me. I’m out of the country in an hour. I’ve got a get-out-of-jail card.”

  “Sit down, Knight.”

  “I’m sorry that kid got killed. Kyle Butler. That wasn’t supposed to happen.” The man’s eyes were widening with fear as he looked from Shaw’s weapon to his cold eyes.

  “I don’t care. He did get killed. And so did Henry Thompson. And Elizabeth Chabelle and her baby almost died too.”

  “Foyle was an idiot to kidnap a pregnant woman.” The legendary temper flared and Shaw believed he actually shivered with rage. “So, what is this? You can’t turn me in to the cops. You going to shoot me? Just like that? Vengeance is mine—that kind of bullshit? They’ll figure out it was you. You won’t get away with it.”

  “Shh,” Shaw said, tired of the sputtering. He withdrew his cell phone, unlocked it, opened an email and set the cell on the coffee table. He stepped back, keeping his aim near Knight. “Read that.”

  Knight picked up the unit—his hands were none too steady—and read. He looked up. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  73.

  As Shaw steered the dusty, streaked Yamaha into the entrance of the Westwinds RV Center in Los Altos Hills, Colter Shaw noticed a sign he hadn’t been aware of earlier. It was some distance from the park, maybe two football fields’ worth, but the stark black letters on a white billboard were easily read: MAKE YOUR NEW HOME SILICONVILLE . . . VISIT OUR WEBSITE NOW!

  To think he’d suspected the toy aficionado of being the Whispering Man . . .

  He drove along Apple Road. Anywhere else in the world, the name would refer to the fruit. Here, of course, in SV, it meant only one thing and that bordered on the religious. It would be like Vatican Drive or Mecca Avenue. He turned right, on Google Way, toward his Winnebago and, arriving there, braked more harshly than he’d intended. He killed the engine. After a pause he removed his helmet and gloves.

  He joined Maddie Poole, who was leaning against her car’s front fender, drinking a Corona. Without a word, she reached into the car and picked up another bottle. She opened it with a church key and handed the beer to him.

  They nodded bottlenecks each other’s way and sipped.

  “Damn. You saved somebody else, Colt. Heard the news.”

  He glanced toward the camper and she nodded. The night was chill. He unlocked the door and they walked inside. He hit the lights and got the heat going.

  Maddie said, “She was pregnant. She going to name the baby after you?”

  “No.”

  Maddie clicked her tongue. “Hey, was that the bullet hole from the other night? By the door?”

  Shaw tried to recall. “No, that was a while ago. In better light you can see it’s rusty.”

  “Where’d it happen?”

  You’d think someone takes a shot at you, you’d recall instantly where it was, along with the weather, the minute and hour and what you were wearing.

  Probably that job in Arizona.

  “Arizona.”

  “Hmm.”

  Maybe New Mexico. Shaw wasn’t sure so he let the neighboring state stand.

  She smoothed her dark purple T-shirt, on which only the letters AMA and, below, ALI were visible beneath a thin leather jacket. She wore pale blue sandals, shabby, and he noticed a ring on her right middle toe, a red-and-gold band. Had it been there the other night? That’s right, he couldn’t tell. The lights had been out.

  She looked around the camper. With her attention on a map mounted to a wall near the bedroom—a portion of the Lewis and Clark Expedition—Shaw quickly slipped his Glock back into the spice cabinet resting place.

  “I never asked, Colt. What’s with the reward thing? Funny way to make a living.” She turned back.

  “Suits my nature.”

  “The restless man. In body and mind. So, I got your message.” She took a long sip of her beer. There was silence, if you didn’t count the whoosh of traffic, audible even here, inside. In Silicon Valley, always, always traffic. Shaw recalled the Compound on windless days. A thousand acres filled with a clinging silence, which could be every bit as unsettling as a mountain lion’s growl. He noticed the fingers of Maddie’s left hand—her free hand—were twitching. Then he realized, no, they were air-keyboarding. She didn’t seem aware of it.

  Shaw said, “I drove by the house. You were gone.”

  “Conference is over. All us gaming nomads, packing up our tents. I’m getting a head start on the drive south.” The hour was late, 11 p.m., but for grinders like Maddie Poole it was midafternoon. “I’m not much of a phone person. Thought I’d come by in person.”

  Shaw sipped. “Wanted to apologize. That’s all. Not worth much. It never is. Still . . .”

  She was looking over another map.

  Shaw said, “I had a thought. About our organization.”

  “Organization?”

  “Renaming it,” he said. “From the Neve
r After Club to the On Rare Occasions Club. What do you think?”

  She finished her beer.

  “Trash is there,” he said, pointing.

  She dropped the bottle in. “Couple years ago a friend of mine, she told me she was breaking up with this guy. I knew him pretty well too. She told me he hit her and pushed her down a flight of stairs. She went all drama on me, sobbing. So, naturally, I drove over to his place and beat the crap out of him. I mean, what else was there to do?”

  As good an answer as any.

  “Only, it turned out, she lied to me. Can you believe it? He dumped her and she wasn’t used to that. She was spreading rumors that he was abusive so it wouldn’t look so bad for her.” A shake of her head. “And you know what? If I’d thought about it, I’d’ve known in my heart that boy’d never do any such thing. I jumped too fast. After, I tried to patch it up but, uh-uh, didn’t work.”

  Shaw said, “No reset button.”

  “No reset.”

  “Anyway, Colt, even if you hadn’t called I was going to come by. I’ve got this rule. Life’s short. Never miss a chance to say hello to somebody, never miss a chance to say good-bye . . . Hey, look at that. I finally got a smile out of you. Okay, better hit the road.”

  They embraced, briefly, and then she walked out the door. He watched her through the window as she slid into her car. A moment later she left two black, wavy tread marks, accompanied by ghosts of blue smoke, as she fishtailed onto Google Way and vanished.

  Shaw let the curtain fall back, thinking: Never did find out what the tattoo meant.

  74.

  The story was already on the air.

  Shaw had turned on the TV to a local station.

  Tony Knight, the cofounder of Knight Time Gaming, has turned himself in to the Joint Major Crimes Task Force headquarters in Santa Clara. Knight was wanted for questioning in connection with the kidnappings and murders that terrorized Silicon Valley this past weekend. James Foyle, the other cofounder of the company and its chief game designer, was arrested earlier tonight . . .

  Shaw shut down the feed. That was all he needed to know. He wondered what conversations were going on in the offices of law enforcers around the state and in Washington at the moment. He suspected heated words, high blood pressures and very worried hearts.

  He could still hear Knight’s voice in the cabin off the clearing as he stared at the screen of Shaw’s phone.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Shaw had nodded at the mobile. “Tomorrow morning at six a.m. that gets uploaded to the web and sent to fifty newspapers and feeds around the world.”

  $1 MILLION REWARD

  FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THE WHEREABOUTS OF ANTHONY (“TONY”) ALFRED KNIGHT, WANTED FOR MURDER, KIDNAPPING, ASSAULT AND CONSPIRACY IN CALIFORNIA.

  Below were a number of pictures of Knight—some Photoshopped to represent him with a changed appearance—and other information about him that might lead a reward seeker to him. There were details too on how to claim the money.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t understand. Who’s offering this? Not the police? They agreed . . .” He fell silent, probably deciding it best not to shine a light on the deal he’d arranged.

  “I’m offering it,” Shaw told him.

  “You?”

  He was personally funding the reward through one of his LLCs. When he said he made his living by seeking rewards, a more accurate way to phrase it was that he made some of his living with rewards. Colter Shaw had resources beyond that.

  “Let me explain something to you, Knight. As soon as that hits the news, hundreds of people’re going to be making plans to track you down. All over the world. Wherever you think you might want to go. No extradition laws? That doesn’t mean a thing. A mercenary’ll find you, smuggle you back to the States and claim the money.

  “I’ve crossed paths with a lot of these folks and they aren’t the nicest kids on the block. For that kind of money, some’ll be thinking: bounty. And even if the announcement doesn’t say dead or alive, that’s what they’re reading. You’ll spend every minute of every day for the rest of your life looking over your shoulder.”

  The man glanced at his helpless minders in disgust.

  Shaw said, “Only I can stop that from being uploaded. If anything happens to me, six o’clock, off it goes to the world.”

  “Fuck.”

  “You’ve got your friends in high places, Tony. Your clients. If they can put a hiatus on the investigation, they can put in a recommendation for a sentence. Something less than life. Now, put the phone down.”

  He read the announcement once more and set the iPhone on the table.

  “Back up.”

  When he had, Shaw retrieved and pocketed the unit.

  “Six a.m., Knight. Your move.”

  Shaw had backed out of the house, crouched to make sure the minder on the ground was all right—he was—and jogged back to the far side of the clearing to retrieve his bike.

  He now stepped outside and secured the Yamaha to the rack on the rear of the camper, locked it in place and returned. Just as he walked inside his phone hummed and he glanced at the screen.

  He’d been expecting a call from this number, though the caller was a surprise.

  “Colter? Dan Wiley.”

  “Dan.”

  “Say, people ever call you Colt?”

  “Some do.”

  “You know Colt’s a brand of gun.”

  “So I’ve heard,” he said. Like the one sitting under his bed at the moment.

  Shaw glanced out the window at the charcoal tread marks Maddie’s feisty car had left on Google Way. Had an image of meeting her in the Quick Byte. He filed it away in the same room where he kept the images of Margot Keller. He closed the door.

  “So. Have some news. It’s about Tony Knight. Ron Cummings—you remember him?”

  “I do.”

  “He asked me to give you a call and tell you.”

  “Go on.”

  “Just thought you’d want to hear this. Well, we—at the Task Force—were kind of wrangling with the feds about an op to find Knight?”

  “Were you?”

  “Yes, we were. And nobody was getting anywhere. Then all of a sudden, who walks into our office and surrenders?”

  “Knight?”

  “That’s right. We booked him in on homicide, kidnapping and, everybody’s favorite, conspiracy. Nobody knows why the hell he gave it up.”

  “Good news, then.” He wasn’t surprised that Cummings had delegated to Wiley the task of calling Shaw. Joint Task Force Senior Supervisor Cummings would want to distance himself from all things Knight. He wondered if the meeting at the Quick Byte had been a way of suggesting that Shaw might want to take matters into his own hands while decidedly warning him not to. This one clocked in at fifty-fifty.

  Wiley said, “Oh, a whole n’other thing. We’re getting Crime Scene stuff in. And I was looking over ballistics. The slugs that killed Kyle and that hit LaDonna were from the same gun, that Glock we found on Foyle. But the bullets the metro CS team dug out of the wall and tree near your camper yesterday came from a Beretta, probably. A forty-cal. You find any other weapon Foyle might’ve had?”

  The beer bottle stopped halfway to Shaw’s mouth. “No, Dan. Never did . . . I’ve got to go. I’ll be in touch.”

  He disconnected without hearing Wiley’s farewell.

  Because Shaw doubted very much that Foyle had another gun—and even if he did, why would he switch from one to the other and back again?

  No, somebody else broke into the Winnebago last night.

  Three steps across the camper and he was pulling open the spice cabinet door, thrusting his hand through the jars of sage, oregano and rosemary for his Glock.

  Which was no longer there. It had been removed while he was outside affixing the
Yamaha to the camper.

  Shaw heard the door to his bedroom open. He turned, expecting to see exactly what he saw: the intruder stepping forward, holding the Beretta pistol in his hand.

  What he hadn’t been expecting to see, though, was that his visitor was the man from Oakland—Rodent, the one who’d been carting around a Molotov cocktail, apparently hell-bent on committing a hate crime, burning down the graffitied homage to early political resistance. Shaw now understood that his mission was a very different one.

  75.

  Sit, Shaw. Make yourself comfy.”

  The same voice. High. Amused. Confident. Clearly Minnesota or Dakota.

  Shaw tried to make sense, then just gave up.

  He sat.

  Rodent pointed to the table. “Unlock that phone of yours and set it down. Thank’ee much.”

  Shaw did.

  The man picked it up, his hand encased in black cloth gloves, with light-colored finger pads, which he used to swipe his way through the iPhone. His eyes flicked from the screen to Shaw—up, down, fast.

  Yes, Jimmy Foyle was the one following Shaw at San Miguel Park and who delivered the eerie stencil drawings of the Whispering Man. That didn’t mean, of course, that someone else wasn’t conducting surveillance too.

  Never focus too narrowly.

  Rodent asked, “This last call, incoming. Who was it from?”

  Easily discovered. “Joint Major Crimes Task Force. Silicon Valley.”

  “Well, some kettle of fish that is, don’tcha know.”

  “Doesn’t concern you. It was about the kidnapping case I was involved in.”

  Rodent nodded. He flipped through the log, surely noting the time stamp, which indicated that Shaw disconnected before Rodent had shown up with his fine Italian gun. Rodent set the phone down.