The Never Game

by Jeffery Deaver

  Mack said, “Now. Second question. Braxton, female. Nothing. That wasn’t much to go on. I can keep searching. I’ll need people.”

  “Do it. Take what you need from the business account.”

  “’K.”

  They disconnected.

  Colter Shaw stretched back on the banquette. Another sip of Sapporo.

  What’s this all about?

  From a stack of old bills—in which he kept his important documents—he extracted the note Professor Eugene Young had sent his father. He’d hidden it in a resealed power company envelope.

  Ash:

  I’m afraid I have to tell you Braxton is alive! Maybe headed north. Be CAREFUL. I’ve explained to everybody that inside the envelope is the key to where you’ve hidden everything.

  I put it in 22-R, 3rd Floor.

  We’ll make this work, Ash. God bless.

  —Eugene

  The two Cal professors, his father and Eugene Young, were involved in something obviously dangerous, along with “everybody,” whoever they might be. Rodent’s side wanted Ashton alive; Braxton’s people wanted him—presumably the others too—dead. But only after finding the envelope.

  The stack of pages was the key to something that his father had hidden somewhere. He went back to his notebook and skimmed through the pages he’d jotted at the Salvadoran café. Precious little. He found only a notation of the pages whose corners had been turned down.

  37, 63, 118 and 255.

  He hadn’t bothered at that time to jot their contents. He tried to recall: an article from the Times, one of his father’s incoherent essays . . . Wasn’t one a map?

  Staring at the numbers, trying to recall.

  Then it struck him. There was something familiar about the numbers. What was it?

  Colter Shaw sat upright. Was it possible?

  37, 63, 118 and 255 . . .

  He rose and found his map of the Compound, the one LaDonna Standish had been looking over, on which he’d pointed out the climb he had planned when he visited his mother.

  Spreading the unfolded chart in front of him, he ran his finger down the left side, then along the top. Longitude and latitude.

  The coordinates, 37.63N and 118.255W, were smack on the middle of the Compound.

  In fact they delineated a portion of the caves and forest on Echo Ridge.

  The man of few smiles smiled now.

  His father had hidden something there, obviously something important—worth dying for. And he’d left the envelope as a key to its whereabouts. The caves of Echo Ridge.

  Bears in the big ones, snakes in the smaller . . .

  The coordinates didn’t pinpoint a very specific place; without other degrees in the numbers, they defined an area about the size of a suburban neighborhood. Even if Rodent and his crew made the deduction as to what the numbers represented—quite unlikely—they would never find what Ashton had hidden. Shaw could. He’d know the man’s habits, his trails. His cleverness.

  On his burner, he took a picture of the coordinates, encrypted the image, sent Mack and his former FBI agent friend, Tom Pepper, a copy, telling each to keep it safe.

  Then he ripped the sheet from his notebook and soaked it in the sink until it turned to pulp.

  What did you hide, Ashton? What is this all about?

  With his Colt Python in his jacket pocket, he opened another beer and, holding it in one hand and a bag of peanuts in the other, walked outside. Not in the mood for conversation from neighbors curious about the recent O.K. Corral scene at his camper, he carried a lawn chair to the back, set it down and dropped into it.

  The chair was his favorite, upholstered in the finest of brown-and-yellow plastic strips, unreasonably comfortable. This spot in the RV camp offered a pleasant view: waving grass and what might pass for a stream meandering by on its way through never-sleeps Silicon Valley. He kicked his shoes off. The grass was spongy, the sound of the water seductive and the air rich with eucalyptus scent. If a crazy man with the face of a rat and an impressive Italian gun hadn’t just threatened life and limb, Shaw might very well have spent the night in his sleeping bag here. Clearing the senses by passing dusk to dawn this way in the forest. Or riding a dirt bike at top speed. Or roped onto a ledge five hundred feet up a cliff face. These were perhaps acts of madness. To Colter Shaw, they were an occasional necessity.

  Half a beer and thirteen peanuts later, his phone hummed.

  “Teddy,” Shaw said. “What’re you doing up at this hour?”

  “Velma couldn’t sleep. Algo spotted something you might be interested in.”

  “Hey, Colter.”

  Shaw said to the woman, “Mulliner’ll start sending the checks in the next month or so.”

  “Plural?” Velma said. “Did I hear plural checks? You didn’t do installments again?”

  “He’s good for it.”

  Teddy said, “Made the news here, even. Saving that pregnant lady. And you caught the Gamer to boot. Don’t you just love the media, coming up with names like that?”

  Shaw didn’t tell him that the moniker had been invented not by a news anchor but by a diminutive police detective whose married name was derived from a Pilgrim—and a famous one at that.

  “What’ve you got?” Shaw asked. Now that he knew his father’s documents were smoke and mirrors, there was no reason to remain in the Bay Area.

  Teddy asked, “You inclined to go to Washington State?”

  “Maybe.”

  Velma said, “Hate crime. A coupla kids went on a spree and painted swastikas on a synagogue and a coupla black churches. Set one church on fire. It wasn’t empty. A janitor and a lay preacher ran out and got themselves shot up. Preacher’ll be okay, the janitor’s in intensive care. Might not wake up. The boys took off in a truck and haven’t been seen since.”

  “Who’s the offeror?”

  “Well now, Colter, that’s what makes it interesting. You’ve got yourself a choice of two rewards. One’s for fifty thousand—that’s joint state police and the town. The other’s for nine hundred.”

  “Not nine hundred thousand, I’m assuming.”

  “You’re a card, Colt,” Velma offered.

  Shaw sipped more beer. “Nine hundred. That’s what one of the boy’s families scraped together?”

  “They’re sure he didn’t do it. The whole town thinks otherwise but Mom and Dad and Sis are sure he was kidnapped or forced to drive the getaway car. They want somebody to find him before the police or some civilian with a gun does.”

  “I’m hearing something else,” Shaw said.

  Teddy replied, “We heard Dalton Crowe’s going after it—the fifty K reward, of course.”

  Crowe was a dour, hard-edged man, in his forties. He had grown up in Missouri and, after a stint in the Army, had opened a security business on the East Coast. He found that he too was restless by nature and closed the operation. He now worked as a freelance security consultant and mercenary. And, from time to time, he too sought rewards. Shaw knew this about him because the men had had several conversations over the years. Their paths had crossed in other ways, Crowe being responsible for the scar on Shaw’s leg.

  Their philosophies about the profession differed significantly. Crowe rarely went after missing persons; he sought only wanted criminals and escapees. If you gun down a fugitive using a legal weapon and in self-defense, you still get the reward. This was Crowe’s preferred business model.

  “Where’re we talking?”

  “Little town, Gig Harbor, near Tacoma. I’ll send you the particulars, you want.”

  “Do that.” Shaw added that he’d think about it, thanked them and disconnected.

  He tucked in the earbud and called up a playlist of tunes by the acoustic guitarist Tommy Emmanuel on his music app.

  A sip of beer. A handful of peanuts.

  He was thin
king of the options: the nine-hundred-dollar reward in Tacoma, Washington, for tracking down perpetrators of a hate crime. No, he reminded himself.

  Never judge without the facts . . .

  Two suspects who’d allegedly defaced religious buildings and shot two men. Maybe supremacists, maybe a love triangle, maybe a dare, maybe an innocent boy taken hostage by a guilty one, maybe a murder for hire under the guise of a different crime.

  We’ve certainly seen that lately, haven’t we?

  The other option: Echo Ridge, searching for the secret treasure.

  So. Gig Harbor? Or Echo Ridge?

  Shaw took a quarter from his pocket, a fine disk, with its profile of greatness and its regal bird.

  He flipped it into the air and it glistened as it spun, a sphere in the blue glow of the streetlight lording over Google Way.

  In his mind Shaw called it: Heads, Echo Ridge. Tails, Gig Harbor.

  By the time the silver disk came to rest in the sandy soil beside his lawn chair, though, Colter Shaw didn’t bother to look. He picked up the coin and pocketed it. He knew where he was going. The only things to figure out were what time he would leave in the morning and what was the most efficient route to get him to his destination.

  Author’s Note

  Writing a novel is, for me at least, never a one-person operation. I’d like to thank the following for their vital assistance in shaping this book into what you have just read: Mark Tavani, Tony Davis, Danielle Dieterich, Julie Reece Deaver, Jennifer Dolan and Madelyn Warcholik; and, on the other side of the Pond, Julia Wisdom, Finn Cotton and Anne O’Brien. And my deepest gratitude, as always, to Deborah Schneider.

  For those who would like to learn more about the fascinating world of video gaming, you might want to take a look at these works: Replay: The History of Video Games, Tristan Donovan; The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design, Flint Dille and John Zuur Platten; The Video Game Debate, Rachel Kowert and Thorsten Quandt; A Brief History of Video Games, Richard Stanton; Game On!: Video Game History from Pong and Pac-Man to Mario, Minecraft, and More, Dustin Hansen; Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made, Jason Schreier; Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation, Blake J. Harris. You might also enjoy a novel by William Gibson (who coined the term cyberspace) and Bruce Sterling: The Difference Engine, which mixes fact and fiction in a tale about building a steam-powered computer in 1855.

  Oh, and while you’re at it, take a look at a thriller called Roadside Crosses, in which video games also figure prominently. One of the investigators actually analyzes the body language of an avatar in the game to get insights into a possible murderer. The author is some guy named Deaver.

  About the Author

  Jeffery Deaver is the #1 international bestselling author of more than thirty-five novels, three collections of short stories, and a nonfiction law book. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into twenty-five languages. His first novel featuring Lincoln Rhyme, The Bone Collector, was made into a major motion picture starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. He's received or been shortlisted for a number of awards around the world, including Novel of the Year by the International Thriller Writers and the Steel Dagger Award from the Crime Writers' Association in the United Kingdom. In 2014 he was the recipient of three lifetime achievement awards. A former journalist, folksinger, and attorney, he was born outside of Chicago and has a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a law degree from Fordham University.

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