The Never Game

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 thinking 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?