The Never Game

In ten years of seeking rewards Shaw been successful the majority of the time. Not a landslide but respectable nonetheless.

He might have given his success rate a percentage number. He never did. It seemed flippant, disrespectful.

He could remember some of the victories — the tricky ones, the dangerous ones, the ones occasioned by desperation and despair on the part of loved ones whose lives crashed when their child or spouse went missing and that Shaw pieced back together — like the final scenes in time travel movies when disaster is miraculously reversed.

Other than those, though, most jobs were just that: assignments, assignments like a plumber or an accountant might take on. They drifted down into the recesses of the brain, some lost forever, some filed away to be recalled if needed, which was rarely.

The losses? They stayed forever.

This one would. That there’d been no reward offered to find Henry Thompson was irrelevant. Because the truth was, for Colter Shaw it was never about the money. The reward was important mostly because it was a spotlight illuminating a challenge that no one else had yet been able to meet. What mattered was finding the child, the elderly parent addled by dementia, the fugitive. What mattered was saving the life.

Sophie Mulliner was safe, but that was no solace at all. Kyle Butler was dead. Henry Thompson was dead. And at times like this the restlessness grew and became a person itself, following Shaw, close behind. Like the Whispering Man.

He sipped more of the ripe, rich beer. The cold was more of a comfort than the alcohol. Neither was much of a balm.

He walked back to the counter and asked Tiffany for the remote. He wanted to change the station on the set above the bar. She handed it to him. They had a brief conversation about TV programs, to which he couldn’t contribute much. She would have liked to continue talking to him, Shaw could tell, but an order was ready. He was relieved when she went to deliver it and he sat down at his table once more. Shaw changed the channel from a sports game no one was watching — not a lot of jocks in the Quick Byte Café — to a local news channel.

A minor earthquake had troubled Santa Cruz; a labor organizer was fighting cries for removal, claiming the rumors that he’d paid money under the table for a green card were false; a whale had been saved at Half Moon Bay; a Green Party congressman in L.A., running for reelection, had withdrawn after stories surfaced he’d been allied with ecoterrorists who’d burned down a ski resort at Tahoe a few years before. He vehemently denied his involvement. “A man’s career can be ruined based on lies. That’s what it’s come to...”

His attention waned until finally: “And in local news, a Sunnyvale blogger and gay rights activist was found murdered today in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Police reported that Henry Thompson, fifty-two, was kidnapped on the way home from a lecture at Stanford last night, taken to the park and murdered. No motive has been established. A spokesperson for the Joint Major Crimes Task Force in Santa Clara said that the crime may be related to the kidnapping of a Mountain View woman on June fifth. Sophie Mulliner, nineteen, was rescued unharmed by the Task Force two days later.”

The story ended with a scroll at the bottom of the screen of the hotline to call if anyone was on the block when Thompson was kidnapped or was hiking in Big Basin today.

Behind him, in the Quick Byte, a woman’s strident voice interrupted Shaw’s thoughts.

“Well, I didn’t message you. I don’t know you.”

Shaw and other patrons looked toward the source of the shrill words. An attractive woman of about twenty was sitting in front of her Mac and holding a mug of coffee. Her long chestnut hair was tinted purple near the tips. She was dressed like a model or an actress: studied casual. The blue jeans were close-fitting and intentionally torn in places. The white T-shirt was baggy and off the shoulder, revealing purple undergarment straps. The nails were oceanic blue, the eye shadow autumnal shades.

Standing over her was a young man about her age, on the other end of the style spectrum. The baggy cargo pants were well worn, and the loose red-and-black-checked shirt too large; this made him seem smaller than his frame, which was probably five-eight or — nine, slim. He had straight hair that was none too clean and was self-cut or clipped by a mother or sister. His dark brows nudged close over his fleshy nose. A big gray laptop, twice as thick as Shaw’s, was clutched in his hands. His face was bright red with embarrassment. Anger was in his eyes too. “You’re Sherry 38.” He shook his head. “We instant-messaged in Call to Arms IV. You said you’d be here. I’m Brad H 66.”

“I’m not Sherry anybody. And I don’t know who the hell you are.”

The man lowered his voice. “You said you wanted to hook up. You said it!” He muttered. “Then here I show up and you don’t like what you see. Right?”