Jeffery Deaver - The Never Game

These pages were the spoils of the theft Shaw had committed yesterday.

What he hoped they contained was the answer to the question that had dogged him for a decade and a half.

A sip of coffee. He began to flip through the contents.

The sheets seemed to be a random collection of musings historical, philosophical, medical and scientific, maps, photos, copies of receipts. The author’s script was the same as on the front of the envelope: precise and perfectly even, as if a ruler had been used as a guide. The words were formed in a delicate combination of cursive and block printing.

Similar to how Colter Shaw wrote.

He opened to a page at random. Began to read.

Fifteen miles northwest of Macon on Squirrel Level Road, Holy Brethren Church. Should have a talk with minister. Good man. Rev. Harley Combs. Smart and keeps quiet when he should.

Shaw read more passages, then stopped. A couple sips of coffee, thoughts of breakfast. Then: Go on, he chided himself. You started this, prepared to accept where it would lead. So keep going.

His mobile hummed. He glanced at the caller ID, shamefully pleased that the distraction took him away from the stolen documents.

“Teddy.”

“Colt. Where am I finding you?” A baritone grumble.

“Still the Bay Area.”

“Any luck?”

“Some. Maybe. Everything okay at home?” The Bruins were watching his property in Florida, which abutted theirs.

“Peachy.” Not a word you hear often from a career Marine officer. Teddy Bruin and his wife, Velma, also a veteran, wore their contradictions proudly. He could picture them clearly, most likely sitting at that moment where they often sat, on the porch facing the hundred-acre lake in northern Florida. Teddy was six-two, two hundred and fifty pounds. His reddish hair was a darker version of his freckled, ruddy skin. He’d be in khaki slacks or shorts because he owned no other shade. The shirt would have flowers on it. Velma was less than half his weight, though tall herself. She’d be in jeans and work shirt, and of the two she had the cleverer tattoos.

A dog barked in the background. That would be Chase, their Rottweiler. Shaw had spent many afternoons on hikes with the solid, good-natured animal.

“We found a job close to you. Don’t know if you’re interested. Vel’s got the details. She’s coming. Ah, here.”

“Colter.” Unlike Teddy’s, Velma’s voice was softly pouring water. Shaw had told her she should record audiobooks for kids. Her voice would be like Ambien, send them right to sleep.

“Algo found a hit. That girl sniffs like a bluetick hound. What a nose.”

Velma had decided that the computer bot she used (Algo, as in “algorithm”) searching the internet for potential jobs for Shaw was a female. And canine as well, it seemed.

“Missing girl in Silicon Valley,” she added.

“Tipline?”

Phone numbers were often set up by law enforcement or by private groups, like Crime Stoppers, so that someone, usually with inside knowledge, could call anonymously with information that might lead to a suspect. Tiplines were also called dime lines, as in “diming out the perp,” or snitch lines.

Shaw had pursued tipline jobs from time to time over the years—if the crime was particularly heinous or the victims’ families particularly upset. He generally avoided them because of the bureaucracy and formalities involved. Tiplines also tended to attract the troublesome.

“No. Offeror’s her father.” Velma added, “Ten thousand. Not much. But his notice was … heartfelt. He’s one desperate fellow.”

Teddy and Velma had been helping Shaw in his reward operation for years; they knew desperate by instinct.

“How old’s the daughter?”

“Nineteen. Student.”

The phone in Florida was on SPEAKER, and Teddy’s raspy voice said, “We checked the news. No stories about police involvement. Her name didn’t show up at all, except for the reward. So, no foul play.”

The term was right out of Sherlock Holmes yet law enforcement around the country used it frequently. The phrase was a necessary marker in deciding how police would approach a missing-person situation. With an older teen and no evidence of abduction, the cops wouldn’t jump on board as they would with an obvious kidnapping. For the time being, they’d assume she was a runaway.

Her disappearance, of course, could be both. More than a few young people had been seduced away from home willingly only to find that the seducer wasn’t exactly who they thought.

Or her fate might be purely accidental, her body floating in the cold, notoriously unpredictable waters of the Pacific Ocean or in a car at the bottom of a ravine a hundred feet below sidewinding Highway 1.

Shaw debated. His eyes were on the four hundred–odd sheets. “I’ll go meet with the father. What’s her name?”

“Sophie Mulliner. He’s Frank.”

“Mother?”

“No indication.” Velma added, “I’ll send you the particulars.”

He then asked, “Any mail?”

She said, “Bills. Which I paid. Buncha coupons. Victoria’s Secret catalog.”

Shaw had bought Margot a present two years ago; Victoria had decided his address was no secret and delivered it unto her mailing-list minions. He hadn’t thought about Margot for … Had it been a month? Maybe a couple of weeks. He said, “Pitch it.”

“Can I keep it?” Teddy asked.

A thud, and laughter. Another thud.

Shaw thanked them and disconnected.

He rebanded the sheaf of pages. One more look outside. No Rodent.

Colter Shaw lifted open his laptop and read Velma’s email. He pulled up a map to see how long it would take to get to Silicon Valley.

As it turned out, by the estimation of some, Colter Shaw was actually in Silicon Valley at that very moment.

He’d learned that a number of people considered North Oakland and Berkeley to be within the nebulous boundaries of the mythical place. To them, Silicon Valley—apparently, “SV” to those in the know—embraced a wide swath from Berkeley on the east and San Francisco on the west all the way south to San Jose.

The definition was largely, Shaw gathered, dependent on whether a company or individual wanted to be in Silicon Valley. And most everyone did.

The loyalists, it seemed, defined the place as west of the Bay only, the epicenter being Stanford University in Palo Alto. The reward offeror’s home was near the school, in Mountain View. Shaw secured the vehicle’s interior for the drive, made sure his dirt bike was affixed to its frame on the rear and disconnected the hookups.

He stopped by the cabin to break the news to Carole and a half hour later was cruising along the wide 280 freeway, with glimpses of the suburbia of Silicon Valley through the trees to his left and the lush hills of the Rancho Corral de Tierra and the placid Crystal Springs Reservoir to the west.

This area was new to him. Shaw was born in Berkeley—twenty miles away—but he retained only tatters of memories from back then. When Colter was four, Ashton had moved the family to a huge spread a hundred miles east of Fresno, in the Sierra Nevada foothills—Ashton dubbed the property the “Compound” because he thought it sounded more forbidding than “Ranch” or “Farm.”

At the GPS guide’s command, Shaw pulled off the freeway and made his way to the Westwinds RV Center, located in Los Altos Hills. He checked in. The soft-spoken manager was about sixty, trim, a former Navy man or Merchant Marine, if the tattoo of the anchor signified anything. He handed Shaw a map and, with a mechanical pencil, meticulously drew a line from the office to his hookup. Shaw’s space would be on Google Way, accessed via Yahoo Lane and PARC Road. The name of the last avenue Shaw didn’t get. He assumed it was computer-related.