The Never Game

Shaw pressed forward and Maddie backed up. She tried to make a leap onto a low ledge — a platform about eighteen inches off the ground — misjudged and fell hard. Though the floor was padded with foam, her side had collided with the edge of the platform. She dropped to her knees and gripped her ribs. He heard her grunt in pain.

Standing straight, he lowered the sword and walked forward to help her up. “You all right?”

He was about three feet away when she sprang to her feet and plunged her blade into his gut.

YOU’VE JUST DIED!

It had all been a trick. She’d fallen on purpose, landing in a particular way — with her feet under her so she could leverage herself up and lunge.

The overlord in the ceiling announced that their time was up. The fantasy world became a backstage once more. He and Maddie pulled their goggles off. He started to give her a nod and say, “That was a low blow” — not a bad joke — but he didn’t. She wiped sweat from her forehead and temple with the back of her sleeve and looked about with an expression that wasn’t a lot different from that of the creatures that had killed him. Not triumph, not joy in victory. Nothing. Just ice.

He recalled what she’d said before they stepped inside the booth.

We’ll just try it out here for the fun of it...

As they walked to the exit, it was as if she grew aware suddenly that she wasn’t alone. “Hey, you’re not mad, are you?” she said.

“All’s fair.”

The awkward atmosphere leveled but didn’t exactly vanish as they walked outside. What did disappear was his intention to ask her to dinner. He would — might — later. Not tonight.

They handed their goggles to the HSE employee, who put them in a bin for sanitizing. At the desk, Maddie was given a canvas bag, which he assumed contained a new game for her to take home and review.

His phone hummed.

A local area code.

Berkeley police, to arrest him for the transgressing larceny? Dan Wiley and Supervisor Cummings deciding to arrest him anew after changing their minds about the Great Evidence Robbery?

It was from JMCTF, though just the desk officer, telling him his car was available to be picked up at the pound.

Exhausted and having died three times in ten minutes — or was it four? — Shaw thought: Give it a shot. “Can somebody deliver it to me?”

The silence — which he imagined was accompanied by a look of bewilderment on the officer’s face — lasted a good three seconds. “I’m afraid we can’t do that, sir. You’ll have to go to the pound to pick it up.”

She gave him the address, which he memorized.

He eased a glance Maddie’s way. “My car’s ready.”

“I can drive you.”

It was obvious that her preference was to stay. Which was fine with him.

“No, I’ll get an Uber.”

He hugged her and she kissed his cheek.

“It was fun—” he started.

“’Night!” Maddie called. Then she was off, tugging at her hair and striding toward another booth — with the marauding aliens, the swords and Shaw himself completely erased, like data dumped from a hard drive’s random access memory.

24

No logical reason in the world to pay one hundred and fifty dollars to retrieve a car that should never have been held hostage in the first place.

But there you have it.

Adding insult, the charge was five percent more if you used a credit card. Colter checked his cash: one hundred and eighty-seven dollars. He handed over the Amex, paid and walked to the front gate to wait.

The pound was a sprawling yard in a seedy part of the Valley, on the east side of the 101. Some of the cars had been there for months, to judge from the grime. He counted airliners on final approach to San Francisco Airport, thinking of how the sound of the planes had unsettlingly masked the noise of any attackers when he was searching for Sophie at that old factory. Now he gave up at sixteen jets. The vehicle arrived five minutes later. Shaw examined it. No scratches or dents. His computer bag was still in the trunk and had probably been searched, yet nothing had been damaged or taken.

The crisp voice of the GPS guided him back into a tamer part of Silicon Valley, quieted in the late evening. He was headed toward his RV park in Los Altos Hills. Colter Shaw had, however, chosen a circuitous route, ignoring the electronic lady’s directives — and her patient recalculating corrections.

Because someone was following him.

When he’d left the pound, he’d been aware of car lights flicking on and the vehicle to which they were attached making a U-turn and proceeding in his direction. Maybe a coincidence? When Shaw stopped abruptly at a yellow light that he could easily have rolled through without a ticket, the car or truck behind him swerved quickly to the curb. He couldn’t tell the make, model or color.

A random carjacker or mugger? Two percent. A Chevy Malibu wasn’t worth the jail time.

Detective Dan Wiley, planning to beat the crap out of him? Four percent. Satisfying but a career ender. The man was a narcissist, not a fool.