The Never Game

Shaw picked up the Post-its and coins. “No risk at all, Standish. She knew exactly where I’d be.”

“She?” Then the curiosity on Standish’s face faded as she fielded his meaning.

52

Shaw walked to a drawer in the kitchenette and took out a plastic storage bag. He wrapped it around his hand as Standish looked on with curiosity. With this improvised glove, he extracted from his pocket the business card that Maddie Poole had given him.

GrindrGirl88...

“Here. In case there’s a print on the brass or slug. Or maybe she got careless. See if there’s a match.”

“Explain, Shaw.”

“Ohio. Eight years ago. The teenager attacked by her classmates playing The Whispering Man. Maddie could be that girl. Trying to close down Marty Avon and the game that ruined her life.”

“And this insight, which is a bizarre one, is based on what?”

He offered the analysis he’d hammered out just forty minutes before, including finding The Whispering Man book hidden in her house, a game she claimed she’d never played. “And she left me in her house, knowing I’d stay — exactly when the break-in happened.” He nodded around the camper. “To see what I’d found on the case.” He chose not to mention her edginess, her ruthless gaze when she’d stabbed him to death in the game. Stick with the objective.

“And here.” Shaw lifted his phone and displayed the pictures of the opioids and other drugs in Maddie’s medicine cabinet.

“Powerful stuff. Send them to me. We’ll check them against what was in Sophie Mulliner’s and Henry Thompson’s blood.”

Shaw uploaded the pictures to her phone and she in turn forwarded them onward.

“I’ll check out that Ohio case.” She Googled it, read, then tucked her phone away. “I’m going to call the sheriff in Cincinnati and the OSP. They get me the girl’s name and picture. Might take a while. Juvie records usually need a magistrate’s okay.”

He noted the time from the microwave. “I’m going back.”

“Back...?”

“To her place. I know some law. Maddie invited me in. I’ve got permission to be there. I only did a fast search before you called. There’re suitcases, a couple of gym bags.”

“You’d be pushing the line there, Shaw. Permission to be in someone’s residence... for one thing, that doesn’t mean permission for others.”

“I’m not Crime Scene, Standish. I just want to know.”

Shaw’s gut clenched again at Maddie’s possible betrayal. Seeing her come up to him at the Quick Byte, taking his arm at the C3 Conference, her body against his. The flirt. And then tonight... In bed. Was that only to give herself a chance to go through his camper?

“I need to be back now. If I don’t, she’ll suspect something and vanish.”

Standish pointed to the woman’s business card in the plastic bag. “We can find her.”

“That’s an email address and a post office box.”

Colter Shaw knew very well that if you want not to be found, you can make sure you’re not found.

Standish wasn’t pleased. She debated. “’K. But with a team outside, I don’t have time to wire you. Open up curtains, if you need to, so we can get eyes in.” She then summoned to the door of the camper the woman officer who’d accompanied him here and a male detective, plainclothes, and told them to go with Shaw and stage nearby.

To Shaw she said, “You thinking odds on this one? Maddie?”

“Probably over fifty somewhere. I’m leaning toward less than that but that’s because I want to lean toward less.”

Never rely on your heart when it comes to survival...

For good or bad, thank you, Ash.

He walked to the spice cabinet and removed the gray plastic inside-the-waistband holster for the Glock, which he mounted on his right hip. Dropping the gun’s magazine, he checked to make sure it was loaded with the full six rounds, plus one in the chamber. He slipped the gun away.

LaDonna Standish watched him. She said nothing about the Glock. Now both the out-of-harm’s-way rule and the no-weapons rule were history. As he walked to the door with a grim face she offered, “I hope it’s not her, Shaw.”

He stepped outside and climbed into the Malibu. He was thinking that if Maddie had returned while he was away she might wonder about his absence.

So he stopped and bought breakfast at an all-night deli.

This confused the cops driving behind him but it was a logical thing for a man to do when he’d awakened to find his lover no longer in bed beside him. Making breakfast would have been too domestic and would have irritated a card-carrying member of the Never After Club. Buying it was a fine balance. He got scrambled eggs and bacon on rolls, fruit cups and two coffees. And a Red Bull for her, the selecting of which troubled him, recalling their meeting at the Quick Byte.

Think I just earned my Cinnabon...

Though the king of percentages reminded himself: a hypothesis is just a hypothesis until it’s proven true.

Back in the car he sped to Maddie’s house, with dawn tempering the sky. The air was rich with dew and pine-fragrant.