The Never Game

A gamble of his, paying off. With Sophie, the Gamer had left one door open. The rules of The Whispering Man stated there was always a way to escape if you could figure it out.

Here, the only way out was the cabin door. It wasn’t sealed with screws; it was held fast by the unequal pressure: water outside, air within. Shaw had speculated that as soon as the water was the same height on the inside as on the outside, it could be wrestled open. And it could.

The transit of the door seemed to take forever. Finally there was enough of a gap for him to kick inside, grab the nearly unconscious Chabelle and pull her out. Together they floated free of the Seas the Day, which disappeared beneath them, rolling to the starboard as it sank. The suction following the ship pulled them after it, but only momentarily. Soon they broke again to the surface, both gasping hard.

Shaw, kicking, looked around, orienting himself.

They were still thirty feet from the shore. The pier was five feet above them yet featured no ladder. The pylons, slick and green, couldn’t be climbed.

“You with me?” Shaw shouted.

Chabelle spat out water. A cough. A nod. She was very pale.

Kicking to keep them on the surface, Shaw used one hand to fend off the pylons as the indifferent waves shouldered them toward the pier.

The only way out was the shore... What he saw wasn’t encouraging. The sharp-edged stone — fossil gray — was also covered in the green moss-like growth. There were places where he could get a grip, it seemed, but to get close meant being at the mercy of the ocean, which surged against the rocks. It would fling them against the rocks too, breaking them the way the water itself broke.

“Muh... my baby, baby...”

“Buh... Belinda’s going to be just fine. Guh... got you out of the Tuh... Titanic, didn’t I?”

“Baby...”

Okay. It had to be the rocks. No time left.

As he turned them both toward the shore, Elizabeth Chabelle screamed. “He’s back! He’s come back!”

Shaw looked up and saw the silhouette of a figure running toward the pier.

However fast the 911 responders were, they couldn’t possibly be here by now, unless via helicopter, and no helicopter was near. It would be Jimmy Foyle. He’d returned to take out witnesses.

Shaw kicked hard, fighting to turn toward the pier. They’d hide under it and risk the rise and fall of the water, trying to avoid the spikes and nails and sharp barnacles on the pylons.

Once more the cold arms of the ocean didn’t cooperate. They kept Shaw and Chabelle nice and centered, six feet away from the pier. A bull’s-eye for Jimmy Foyle, who was, Shaw knew very well, a fine shot.

Shaw blinked water from his eyes and looked up... to see the figure dropping to his belly on the rotting pier and extending a hand.

Which held not a pistol but something... Yes, something cloth, a rope of bulky cloth...

“Come on, Shaw, grab it!” The figure was Detective Dan Wiley.

So their backup had made it after all. He was the one Standish had texted for assistance. Since they weren’t on the case, they needed someone unofficially, and the only person Standish could think of was the Liaison officer.

After two tries, Shaw managed to grip what Wiley’d lowered.

Ah, clever. Wiley had bound Shaw’s jacket and his own together. He’d tied his belt onto the end, like a rescue harness.

“Under her arms!” Wiley shouted. “The belt.”

While the cop held his end firmly, Shaw worked the belt over Elizabeth Chabelle’s head.

The big man pulled her upward. She disappeared onto the top of the dock. The improvised device was lowered again and Wiley tugged while Shaw’s feet found some purchase on the pilings. A moment later he too scrabbled onto the pier.

66

Never hesitate to improvise...

Which was, of course, one of the rules in Ashton Shaw’s voluminous Book of Never.

At the moment, his son Colter was thinking of a more specific variation:

Never hesitate to use the efficient heater of a dinged-up gray sedan to warm the core temperature of a hypothermia victim.

Shaw was reflecting that this was a pretty good rule as he sat in LaDonna Standish’s Nissan Altima. Parked nearby were eight or nine police cars, representing various agencies, and the ambulance where Elizabeth Chabelle was being examined.

Shaw’s shivering had lessened and he turned the heat down some. He was in a change of clothing provided by the Santa Clara Fire Department, a dark blue jumpsuit.

Shaw’s bloodstained phone hummed with an email. It was from Mack, his private eye, and was in response to the call he’d made in Brad Hendricks’s den just before he’d begun collecting drives and other tidbits from the desk with a tissue.

He read the email carefully.

Hypothesis became theory.