The Never Game

After a half hour of playing the role of naïve attendee, asking seemingly pointless yet probing questions, he’d assumed the Knight Time employees would realize he surely had to be here for some purpose other than buying children video games that were utterly inappropriate.

And so he would head outside the convention center to see if Knight’s minders would take the bait: Shaw himself. As soon as he was in the parking lot, headed for the deserted corner where he’d left the Malibu, he would hit Mack’s phone number and open a line. His PI would hear who and how many, if any, of Knight’s men had come after him. If that happened and it sounded like he was endangered, the PI would call the JMCTF and the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. Shaw had also slipped his Glock into the glove compartment of the Malibu, just in case.

A good plan on paper, flushing Knight or his people as potential suspects.

But a plan based on the assumption that they wouldn’t dare move on him at the convention center itself.

Got that one wrong.

He was now quick-marched a good thirty feet into the black heart of the Knight Time booth, through more shrouds of soundproof cloth. He’d heard the distant bass of the Conundrum VI ad. Then, once it had served its distractive purpose, the speaker volume dropped.

Shaw didn’t bother to say anything. His bald minders wouldn’t have answered anyway. He knew they were pros. Was the shorter one Person X? Sophie had said her kidnapper was not tall.

Size nine and a half shoes...

When they arrived at a proper door — not a fabric flap — they halted, then put everything Shaw had in his pockets into a plastic box, including, of course, the phone on which Mack’s number was front and center but as yet undialed.

The box was handed off to someone else and the two men holding his arms escorted Shaw through the door and dropped him into a comfortable black chair, one of eight surrounding an ebony table. The walls had been constructed with baffles, the ceiling acoustical tile. All these surfaces were painted black or made from matte-black substances. The space was deathly silent. The only illumination came from a tiny dot at the bottom of one wall, like a night-light. Just enough to make out a few details: the chamber — the word came to mind automatically — was about twenty feet square, the ceiling about eight feet high. No telephones, no screens, no laptops. Just a room and furniture. Private, and secure from the outside world.

His father would have appreciated it.

The shorter guard left, the other remaining at the door. Shaw could see some features of his captor. No jewelry. The earpiece of the Secret Service and TV commentators. Dark suit, white shirt, striped tie that seemed to be clip-on — an old trick — so that it couldn’t be used as a garrote in a fight. His face in the shadows so Shaw couldn’t see any expressions. He guessed there’d be none. He knew men like this.

Shaw debated next steps.

Ninety percent odds that he’d come to no harm here because of the inconvenience of dealing with the aftermath — smuggling his damaged or dead body out of the convention center. He supposed that logic didn’t mean much to abusive and temperamental Tony Knight, who, if he was behind the kidnappings, was risking everything over a vindictive whim to destroy a competitor who’d wronged him.

Suddenly a ceiling light came on, a downward-pointing spot. Cold. The door opened. Shaw squinted against the flare of illumination.

Tony Knight entered. The CEO was leaner and shorter than he’d appeared in the pictures Shaw had found online, though he was still a substantial man. And it occurred to Shaw: Why assume he’d farmed out the kidnapping job, if he was in fact behind it? With his temper and vengeful nature, he might very well have enjoyed snatching Sophie Mulliner and Henry Thompson himself.

The man’s dark eyes were fixed and didn’t waver as they met Shaw’s blue. The shadows from the light above made his gaze all the more sinister. The executive wore expensive-looking black slacks and a white dress shirt, two buttons undone at the top revealing thick chest hair, which added to his animal intensity. His hands were large and kept flexing in and out of fists. Shaw was gauging where to roll to minimize the damage from the first blow.

Knight sat at the head of the table. Shaw, at the opposite end, noted that the chair he himself had been deposited in, and six of the others, were about two inches shorter than the eighth, Knight’s. This room would be used for sensitive negotiations and the short CEO would want to be at eye level with, not looking up at, the others.

Knight withdrew his phone, plugged a bud into his ear and stared at the screen.

Survival, Ashton Shaw taught Russell, Colter and Dorion, is about planning.

Never be caught off guard.