The Never Game

Outside the café Sophie’s bike approached from the left. The rider had to be the young woman: the color of the bike, helmet, clothes and backpack were as Mulliner had described. Sophie did something Shaw had never seen a cyclist do. While still in motion she swung her left leg over the frame, leaving her right foot on the pedal. She glided forward, standing on that foot, perfectly balanced. Just before stopping, she hopped off. A choreographed dismount.

Sophie went through the ritual of affixing the bike to a lamppost with an impressive lock and a thick black wire. She pulled off her red almond-shell helmet and entered the Quick Byte and looked around. Shaw had hoped she might wave to somebody whom a staff member or patron could identify. She didn’t. She stepped out of sight, to the left. She returned a moment later and ordered.

On the silent tape — older security systems generally didn’t waste storage space or transmission bandwidth with audio — the young woman took a mug of coffee and one of the chrome number-card holders. Shaw could see her long face was unsmiling, grim.

“Pause, please.”

Tiffany did.

“Did you serve her?”

“No, it would have been Aaron working then.”

“Is he here?”

“No, he’s off today.”

Shaw asked Tiffany to take a shot of Sophie on her phone, send it to Aaron and see if he recalled anything about her, what she said, who she talked to.

She sent the shot to the employee, with the whooshing sound of an outgoing text.

Shaw was about to ask her to call him, when her phone chimed. She looked at the screen. “No, he doesn’t remember her.”

On the video Sophie vanished from sight again.

Shaw then noticed somebody come into view outside. He, or she, was of medium build and wearing baggy dark sweats, running shoes, a windbreaker and a gray stocking cap, pulled low. Sunglasses. Always damn sunglasses.

This person looked up and down the street and stepped closer to Sophie’s bike and crouched quickly, maybe to tie a shoelace.

Or not.

The behavior earned Shaw’s assessment that it was possibly the kidnapper. Male, female, he couldn’t tell. So Shaw bestowed the gender-neutral nickname, Person X.

“What’s he doing?” Tiffany asked in a whisper.

Sabotage? Putting a tracking device on it?

Shaw thought: Come in, order something.

He knew that wouldn’t happen.

X straightened, turned back in the direction he had come and walked quickly away.

“Should I fast-forward?” Tiffany asked.

“No. Let it run. Regular speed.”

Patrons came and went. Servers delivered and bused dishes.

As they watched the people and drivers stream past, Tiffany asked, “You live here?”

“Florida, some of the time.”

“Disney?”

“Not all that close. And I’m not there very often.”

Florida, he meant. As for Disney, not at all.

She might have said something else but his attention was on the video. At 6:16:33, Sophie left the Quick Byte. She walked to her bike. Then remained standing, perfectly still, looking out across the street, toward a place where there was nothing to look at: a storefront with a sun-bleached FOR LEASE sign in the window. Shaw noted one hand absently tightening into a fist, then relaxing, then tightening again. Her helmet slipped from the other and bounced on the ground. She bent fast to collect and pull it over her head — angrily, it seemed.

Sophie freed her bike and, unlike the elegant dismount, now leapt into the seat and pedaled hard, to the right, out of sight.

Staring at the screen, Shaw was looking at passing cars, his eyes swiveling left to right — in the direction Sophie’d headed. It was, however, almost impossible to see inside the vehicles. If stocking-capped, sunglasses-wearing Person X was driving one, he couldn’t see.

Shaw asked Tiffany to send this portion of the tape, depicting X, to his email. She did.

Together they walked from the office into the restaurant proper and made their way back to the table. Madge, the daughter with the mother name, told him that no one she’d showed the picture to had seen the girl. She added, “And nobody looked weird when I asked.”

“Appreciate it.”

His phone sang quietly and he glanced at the screen. Mack’s research into Kyle Butler, Sophie’s ex-boyfriend, revealed two misdemeanor drug convictions. No history of violence. No warrants. He acknowledged the info, then signed off.

Shaw finished his coffee.

“Refill? Get you anything else? On the house.”

“I’m good.”

“Sorry we couldn’t help you more.”

Shaw thanked her. And didn’t add that the trip to the Quick Byte had told him exactly where he needed to go now.

9

Colter Shaw, fifteen, is making a lean-to in the northwest quadrant of the Compound, beside a dry creek bed, at the foot of a sheer cliff face, a hundred feet high.

The lean-to is in the style of a Finnish laavu. The Scandinavians are fond of these temporary structures, which are found commonly on hunting and fishing grounds. Colter knows this only because his father told him. The boy has never been outside California or Oregon or Washington State.