Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Gunner Publications, LLC 2019

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Jeffery Deaver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008303723

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008303747

Version: 2019-04-26

Praise for The Never Game:

‘The Never Game is the very definition of a page-turner’

IAN RANKIN

‘Terrific writing, vivid and raw, Deaver grips from the very first line and never lets up. He is, hands-down, one of the finest thriller writers of our time’

PETER JAMES

‘As always, Deaver gets you in his stealthy grip on page one, and then takes you on a wild and inventive ride … this time with new star character Colter Shaw. No one in the world does this kind of thing better than Deaver’

LEE CHILD

‘Masterful storytelling – The Never Game is Deaver’s most riveting, most twisty, most unputdownable novel yet’

KARIN SLAUGHTER

‘Lightning-fast and loaded with twists, The Never Game is a thrill a minute from one of the best. Don’t miss it’

HARLAN COBEN

‘Jeffery Deaver scores yet again with a fascinating new detective, Colter Shaw, and a plot as full of thrills and twists and turns as you would expect from him. With The Never Game you know you are in the hands of a master. But be warned – don’t start this too late in the evening because sleep would be an annoying interruption once you’ve started reading!’

PETER ROBINSON

Also By Jeffery Deaver

NOVELS

The Lincoln Rhyme Series

The Cutting Edge

The Burial Hour

The Steel Kiss

The Skin Collector

The Kill Room

The Burning Wire

The Broken Window

The Cold Moon

The Twelfth Card

The Vanished Man

The Stone Monkey

The Empty Chair

The Coffin Dancer

The Bone Collector

The Kathryn Dance Series

Solitude Creek

XO

Roadside Crosses

The Sleeping Doll

The Rune Series

Hard News

Death of a Blue Movie Star

Manhattan is My Beat

The John Pellam Series

Hell’s Kitchen

Bloody River Blues

Shallow Graves

Stand-alones

The October List

No Rest for the Dead (Contributor)

Carte Blanche (A James Bond Novel)

Watchlist (Contributor)

Edge

The Bodies Left Behind

Garden of Beasts

The Blue Nowhere

Speaking in Tongues

The Devil’s Teardrop

A Maiden’s Grave

Praying For Sleep

The Lesson of Her Death

Mistress of Justice

SHORT FICTION

Collections

A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime (Editor)

Trouble in Mind

Triple Threat

Books to Die For (Contributor)

The Best American Mystery Stories 2009 (Editor)

More Twisted

Twisted

Stories

Ninth and Nowhere

Captivated

The Victims’ Club

Surprise Ending

Double Cross

The Deliveryman

A Textbook Case

Dedication

To M and P

Epigraph

Gaming disorder is defined … as a pattern of gaming behavior (“digital-gaming” or “video-gaming”) characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.

—THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

Video games are bad for you? That’s what they said about rock ’n’ roll.

—NINTENDO GAME DESIGNER SHIGERU MIYAMOTO

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for The Never Game

Also By Jeffery Deaver

Dedication

Epigraph

Level Three: The Sinking Ship

Level One: The Abandoned Factory

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Level Three: The Sinking Ship

Level Two: The Dark Forest

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Level Three: The Sinking Ship

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Author’s Note

About the Author

About the Publisher

LEVEL THREE:
THE SINKING SHIP
Sunday, June 9

Sprinting toward the sea, Colter Shaw eyed the craft closely.

The forty-foot derelict fishing vessel, decades old, was going down by the stern, already three-fourths submerged.

Shaw saw no doors into the cabin; there would be only one and it was now underwater. In the aft part of the superstructure, still above sea level, was a window facing onto the bow. The opening was large enough to climb through but it appeared sealed. He’d dive for the door.

He paused, reflecting: Did he need to?

Shaw looked for the rope mooring the boat to the pier; maybe he could take up slack and keep the ship from going under.

There was no rope; the boat was anchored, which meant it was free to descend thirty feet to the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

And, if the woman was inside, take her with it to a cold, murky grave.

As he ran onto the slippery dock, avoiding the most rotten pieces, he stripped off his bloodstained shirt, then his shoes and socks.

A powerful swell struck the ship and it shuddered and sank a few more inches into the gray, indifferent water.

He shouted, “Elizabeth?”

No response.

Shaw assessed: there was a sixty percent chance she was on board. Fifty percent chance she was alive after hours in the waterlogged cabin.

Whatever the percentages, there was no debate about what came next. He stuck an arm beneath the surface and judged the temperature to be about forty degrees. He’d have thirty minutes until he passed out from hypothermia.

Let’s start the clock, he thought.

And plunges in.

An ocean isn’t liquid. It’s flowing stone. Crushing.

Sly too.

Shaw’s intention was to wrestle open the door to the cabin, then swim out with Elizabeth Chabelle. The water had a different idea. The minute he surfaced for breath he was tossed toward one of the oak pilings, from which danced lacy flora, delicate thin green hairs. He held up a hand to brace himself as he was flung toward the wood. His palm slid off the slimy surface and his head struck the post. A burst of yellow light filled his vision.

Another wave lifted and flung him toward the pier once more. This time he was just able to avoid a rusty spike. Rather than fighting the current to return to the boat—about eight feet away—he waited for the outflow that would carry him to the vessel. An upward swell took him and this time he gigged his shoulder on the spike. It stung sharply. There’d be blood.

Sharks here?

Never borrow trouble …

The water receded. He kicked into the flow, raised his head, filled his lungs and dove, swimming hard for the door. The salty water burned his eyes but he kept them wide; the sun was low and it was dark here. He spotted what he sought, gripped the metal handle and twisted. The handle moved back and forth yet the door wouldn’t open.

To the surface, more air. Back under again, holding himself down with the latch in his left hand, and feeling for other locks or securing fixtures with his right.

The shock and pain of the initial plunge had worn off, but he was shivering hard.

Ashton Shaw had taught his children how to prepare for cold-water survival—dry suit, number one. Wet suit, second choice. Two caps—heat loss is greatest through the skull, even with hair as thick as Shaw’s blond locks. Ignore extremities; you don’t lose heat through fingers or toes. Without protective clothing, the only solution is to get the hell out as fast as you can before hypothermia confuses, numbs and kills.

Twenty-five minutes left.

Another attempt to wrench open the door to the cabin. Another failure.

He thought of the windshield overlooking the bow deck. The only way to get her out.

Shaw stroked toward the shore and dove, seizing a rock big enough to shatter glass but not so heavy it would pull him down.

Kicking hard, rhythmically, timing his efforts to the waves, he returned to the boat, whose name he noticed was Seas the Day.

Shaw managed to climb the forty-five-degree incline to the bow and perch on the upward-tilting front of the cabin, resting against the murky four-by-three-foot window.

He peered inside but spotted no sign of the thirty-two-year-old brunette. He noted that the forward part of the cabin was empty. There was a bulkhead halfway toward the stern, with a door in the middle of it and a window about head height, the glass missing. If she were here, she’d be on the other side—the one now largely filled with water.

He lifted the rock, sharp end forward, and swung it against the glass, again and again.

He learned that whoever had made the vessel had fortified the forward window against wind and wave and hail. The stone didn’t even chip the surface.

And Colter Shaw learned something else too.

Elizabeth Chabelle was in fact alive.

She’d heard the banging and her pale, pretty face, ringed with stringy brown hair, appeared in the window of the doorway between the two sections of the cabin.

Chabelle screamed “Help me!” so loudly that Shaw could hear her clearly though the thick glass separating them.

“Elizabeth!” he shouted. “There’s help coming. Stay out of the water.”

He knew the help he promised couldn’t possibly arrive until after the ship was on the bottom. He was her only hope.

It might be possible for someone else to fit through the broken window inside and climb into the forward, and drier, half of the cabin.

But not Elizabeth Chabelle.

Her kidnapper had, by design or accident, chosen to abduct a woman who was seven and a half months pregnant; she couldn’t possibly fit through the frame.

Chabelle disappeared to find a perch somewhere out of the freezing water and Colter Shaw lifted the rock to begin pounding on the windshield once more.

LEVEL ONE:

1.

He asked the woman to repeat herself.

“That thing they throw,” she said. “With the burning rag in it?”

“They throw?”

“Like at riots? A bottle. You see ’em on TV.”

Colter Shaw said, “A Molotov cocktail.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Carole was saying. “I think he had one.”

“Was it burning? The rag part?”

“No. But, you know …”

Carole’s voice was raspy, though she wasn’t presently a smoker that Shaw had seen or smelled. She was draped with a green dress of limp cloth. Her natural expression seemed to be one of concern yet this morning it was more troubled than usual. “He was over there.” She pointed.

The Oak View RV park, one of the scruffier that Shaw had stayed at, was ringed with trees, mostly scrub oak and pine, some dead, all dry. And thick. Hard to see “over there.”

“You called the police?”

A pause. “No, if it wasn’t a … What again?”

“Molotov cocktail.”

“If he didn’t have one, it’d be embarrassing. And I call the cops enough, for stuff here.”

Shaw knew dozens of RV park owners around the country. Mostly couples, as it’s a good gig for middle-aged marrieds. If there’s just a single manager, like Carole, it was usually a she, and she was usually a widow. They tend to dial 911 for camp disputes more than their late husbands, men who often went about armed.

“On the other hand,” she continued, “fire. Here. You know.”

California was a tinderbox, as anybody who watched the news knew. You think of state parks and suburbs and agricultural fields; cities, though, weren’t immune to nature’s conflagrations. Shaw believed that one of the worst brush fires in the history of the state had been in Oakland, very near where they were now standing.

“Sometimes, I kick somebody out, they say they’ll come back and get even.” She added with astonishment, “Even when I caught them stealing forty amps when they paid for twenty. Some people. Really.”

He asked, “And you want me to …?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Shaw. Just take a look. Could you take a look? Please?”

Shaw squinted through the flora and saw, maybe, motion that wasn’t from the breeze. A person walking slowly? And if so did the pace mean that he was moving tactically—that is, with some mischief in mind?

Carole’s eyes were on Shaw, regarding him in a particular way. This happened with some frequency. He was a civilian, never said he was anything else. But he had cop fiber.

Shaw circled to the front of the park and walked on the cracked and uneven sidewalk, then on the grassy shoulder of the unbusy road in this unbusy corner of the city.

Yes, there was a man, in dark jacket, blue jeans and black stocking cap, some twenty yards ahead. He wore boots that could be helpful on a hike through brush and equally helpful to stomp an opponent. And, yes, either he was armed with a gas bomb or he was holding a Corona and a napkin in the same hand. Early for a beer some places; not in this part of Oakland.

Shaw slipped off the shoulder into the foliage to his right and walked more quickly, though with care to stay silent. The needles that had pitched from branch to ground in droves over the past several seasons made stealth easy.

Whoever this might be, vengeful lodger or not, he was well past Carole’s cabin. So she wasn’t at personal risk. But Shaw wasn’t giving the guy a pass just yet.

This felt wrong.

Now the fellow was approaching the part of the RV camp where Shaw’s Winnebago was parked, among many other RVs.

Shaw had more than a passing interest in Molotov cocktails. Several years ago, he’d been searching for a fugitive on the lam for an oil scam in Oklahoma when somebody pitched a gas bomb through the windshield of his camper. The craft burned to the rims in twenty minutes, personal effects saved in the nick. Shaw still carried a distinct and unpleasant scent memory of the air surrounding the metal carcass.

The percentage likelihood that Shaw would be attacked by two Russian-inspired weapons in one lifetime, let alone within several years, had to be pretty small. Shaw put it at five percent. A figure made smaller yet by the fact that he had come to the Oakland/Berkeley area on personal business, not to ruin a fugitive’s life. And while Shaw had committed a transgression yesterday, the remedy for that offense would’ve been a verbal lashing, a confrontation with a beefy security guard or, at worst, the police. Not a firebomb.

Shaw was now only ten yards behind the man, who was scanning the area—looking into the trailer park as well as up and down the road and at several abandoned buildings across it.

The man was trim, white, with a clean-shaven face. He was about five-eight, Shaw estimated. The man’s facial skin was pocked. Under the cap, his brown hair seemed to be cut short. There was a rodent-like quality to his appearance and his movements. In the man’s posture Shaw read ex-military. Shaw himself was not, though he had friends and acquaintances who were, and he had spent a portion of his youth in quasi-military training, quizzed regularly on the updated U.S. Army Survival Manual FM 21-76.

And the man was indeed holding a Molotov cocktail. The napkin was stuffed into the neck of the bottle and Shaw could smell gasoline.

Shaw was familiar with revolver, semiautomatic pistol, semiautomatic rifle, bolt-action rifle, shotgun, bow and arrow and slingshot. And he had more than a passing interest in blades. He now withdrew from his pocket the weapon he used most frequently: his mobile, presently an iPhone. He punched some keys and, when the police and fire emergency dispatcher answered, whispered his location and what he was looking at. Then he hung up. He typed a few more commands and slipped the cell into the breast pocket of his dark plaid sport coat. He thought, with chagrin, about his transgression yesterday and wondered if the call would somehow allow the authorities to identify and collar him. This seemed unlikely.

Shaw had decided to wait for the arrival of the pros. Which is when a cigarette lighter appeared in the man’s hand with no cigarette to accompany it.

That settled the matter.

Shaw stepped from the bushes and closed the distance. “Morning.”

The man turned quickly, crouching. Shaw noted that he didn’t reach for his belt or inside pocket. This might have been because he didn’t want to drop the gas bomb—or because he wasn’t armed. Or because he was a pro and knew exactly where his gun was and how many seconds it would take to draw and aim and fire.

Narrow eyes, set in a narrow face, looked Shaw over for guns and then for less weaponly threats. He took in the black jeans, black Ecco shoes, gray-striped shirt and the jacket. Short-cut blond hair lying close to his head. Rodent would have thought “cop,” yet the moment for a badge to appear and an official voice to ask for ID or some such had come and gone. He had concluded that Shaw was civilian. And not one to be taken lightly. Shaw was about one-eighty, just shy of six feet, and broad, with strappy muscle. A small scar on cheek, a larger one on neck. He didn’t run as a hobby but he rock-climbed and had been a champion wrestler in college. He was in scrapping shape. His eyes held Rodent’s, as if tethered.

“Hey there.” A tenor voice, taut like a stretched fence wire. Midwest, maybe from Minnesota.

Shaw glanced down at the bottle.

“Could be pee, not gas, don’tcha know.” The man’s smile was as tight as the timbre of his voice. And it was a lie.

Wondering if this’d turn into a fight. Last thing Shaw wanted. He hadn’t hit anybody for a long time. Didn’t like it. Liked getting hit even less.

“What’s that about?” Shaw nodded at the bottle in the man’s hand.

“Who are you?”

“A tourist.”

“Tourist.” The man debated, eyes rising and falling. “I live up the street. There’s some rats in an abandoned lot next to me. I was going to burn them out.”

“California? The driest June in ten years?”

Shaw had made that up but who’d know?

Not that it mattered. There was no lot and there were no rats, though the fact that the man had brought it up suggested he might have burned rats alive in the past. This was where dislike joined caution.

Never let an animal suffer …

Then Shaw was looking over the man’s shoulder—toward the spot he’d been headed for. A vacant lot, true, though it was next to an old commercial building. Not the imaginary vacant lot next to the man’s imaginary home.

The man’s eyes narrowed further, reacting to the bleat of the approaching police car.

“Really?” Rodent grimaced, meaning: You had to call it in? He muttered something else too.

Shaw said, “Set it down. Now.”

The man didn’t. He calmly lit the gasoline-soaked rag, which churned with fire, and like a pitcher aiming for a strike, eyed Shaw keenly and flung the bomb his way.

2.

Molotov cocktails don’t blow up—there’s not enough oxygen inside a sealed bottle. The burning rag fuse ignites the spreading gas when the glass shatters.

Which this one did, efficiently and with modest spectacle.

A silent fireball rose about four feet in the air.

Shaw dodged the risk of singe and Carole ran, screaming, to her cabin. Shaw debated pursuit, but the crescent of grass on the shoulder was burning crisply and getting slowly closer to tall shrubs. He vaulted the chain-link, sprinted to his RV and retrieved one of the extinguishers. He returned, pulled the pin and blasted a whoosh of white chemical on the fire, taming it.

“Oh my God. Are you okay, Mr. Shaw?” Carole was plodding up, carrying an extinguisher of her own, a smaller, one-hand canister. Hers wasn’t really necessary, yet she too pulled the grenade pin and let fly, because, of course, it’s always fun. Especially when the blaze is nearly out.

After a minute or two, Shaw bent down and, with his palm, touched every square inch of the scorch, as he’d learned years ago.

Never leave a campfire without patting the ash.

A pointless glance after Rodent. He’d vanished.

A patrol car braked to a stop. Oakland PD. A large black officer, with a glistening, shaved head, climbed out, holding a fire extinguisher of his own. Of the three, his was the smallest. He surveyed the embers and the char and replaced the red tank under his front passenger seat.

Officer L. Addison, according to the name badge, turned to Shaw. The six-foot-five cop might get confessions just by walking up to a suspect and leaning down.

“You were the one called?” Addison asked.

“I did.” Shaw explained that the person who’d thrown the cocktail had just run off. “That way.” He gestured down the weedy street, handfuls of trash every few yards. “He’s probably not too far away.”

The cop asked what had happened.

Shaw told him. Carole supplemented, with the somewhat gratuitous addendum about the difficulty of being a widow running a business by herself. “People take advantage. I push back. I have to. You would. Sometimes they threaten you.” Shaw noted she’d glanced at Addison’s left hand, where no jewelry resided.

Addison cocked his head toward the Motorola mounted on his shoulder and gave Central a summary, with the description from Shaw. It had been quite detailed but he’d left out the rodent-like aspect, that being largely a matter of opinion.

Addison’s eyes turned back to Shaw. “Could I see some ID?”

There are conflicting theories about what to do when the law asks for ID and you’re not a suspect. This was a question Shaw often confronted, since he frequently found himself at crime scenes and places where investigations were under way. You generally didn’t have to show anybody anything. In that case, you’d have to be prepared to endure the consequences of your lack of cooperation. Time is one of the world’s most valuable commodities, and being pissy with cops guarantees you’re going to lose big chunks of it.

His hesitation at the moment, though, was not on principle but because he was worried that his motorbike’s license had been spotted at the site of yesterday’s transgression. His name might therefore be in the system.

Then he recalled that they’d know him already; he’d called 911 from his personal phone, not a burner. So Shaw handed over the license.

Addison took a picture of it with his phone and uploaded the details somewhere.

Shaw noted that he didn’t do the same with Carole, even though it was her trailer court that had tangentially been involved. Some minor profiling there, Shaw reflected: stranger in town versus a local. This he kept to himself.

Addison looked at the results. He eyed Shaw closely.

A reckoning for yesterday’s transgression? Shaw now chose to call it what it was: theft. There’s no escape in euphemism.

Apparently the gods of justice were not a posse after him today. Addison handed the license back. “Did you recognize him?” he asked Carole.

“No, sir, but it’s hard to keep track. We get a lot of people here. Lowest rates in the area.”

“Did he throw the bottle at you, Mr. Shaw?”

“Toward. A diversion, not assault. So he could get away.”

This gave the officer a moment’s pause.

Carole blurted: “I looked it up online. Molotov secretly worked for Putin.”

Both men looked at her quizzically. Then Shaw continued with the officer: “And to burn the evidence. Prints and DNA on the glass.”

Addison remained thoughtful. He was the sort, common among police, whose lack of body language speaks volumes. He’d be processing why Shaw had considered forensics.

The officer said, “If he wasn’t here to cause you any problem, ma’am, what was he here about, you think?”

Before Carole answered, Shaw said, “That.” He pointed across the street to the vacant lot he’d noted earlier.

The trio walked toward it.

The trailer camp was in a scruffy commercial neighborhood, off Route 24, where tourists could stage before a trip to steep Grizzly Peak or neighboring Berkeley. This trash-filled, weedy lot was separated from the property behind it by an old wooden fence about eight feet tall. Local artists had used it as a canvas for some very talented artwork: portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and two other men Shaw didn’t recognize. As the three got closer, Shaw saw the names printed below the pictures: Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, who’d been connected with the Black Panther Party. Shaw remembered cold nights in his television-free childhood home. Ashton would read to Colter and his siblings, mostly American history. Much of it about alternative forms of governance. The Black Panthers had figured in several lectures.

“So,” Carole said, her mouth twisted in distaste. “A hate crime. Terrible.” She added, with a nod to the paintings, “I called the city, told them they should preserve it somehow. They never called back.”

Addison’s radio crackled. Shaw could hear the transmission: a unit had cruised the streets nearby and seen no one fitting the description of the arsonist.

Shaw said, “I got a video.”

“You did?”

“After I called nine-one-one I put the phone in my pocket.” He touched the breast pocket, on the left side of his jacket. “It was recording the whole time.”

“Is it recording now?”

“It is.”

“Would you shut it off?” Addison asked this in a way that really meant: Shut it off. Without a question mark.

Shaw did. Then: “I’ll send you a screenshot.”

“Okay.”

Shaw clicked the shot, got Addison’s mobile number and sent the image his way. The men were four feet apart but Shaw imagined the electrons’ journey took them halfway around the world.

The officer’s phone chimed; he didn’t bother to look at the screenshot. He gave Carole his card, one to Shaw as well. Shaw had quite the collection of cops’ cards; he thought it amusing that police had business cards like advertising executives and hedge fund managers.

After Addison left, Carole said, “They’re not going to do winkety, are they?”

“No.”

“Well, thanks for looking into it, Mr. Shaw. I’d’ve felt purely horrid you’d gotten burned.”

“Not a worry.”

Carole returned to the cabin and Shaw to his Winnebago. He was reflecting on one aspect of the encounter he hadn’t shared with Officer Addison. After the exasperated “Really?” in reference to the 911 call, Rodent’s comment might have been “Why’d you do that shit?”

It was also possible—more than fifty percent—that he’d said, “Why’d you do that, Shaw?”

Which, if that had in fact happened, meant Rodent knew him or knew about him.

And that, of course, would put a whole new spin on the matter.

3.

Inside the Winnebago, Shaw hung his sport coat on a hook and walked to a small cupboard in the kitchen. He opened it and removed two things. The first was his compact Glock .380 pistol, which he kept hidden behind a row of spices, largely McCormick brand. The weapon was in a gray plastic Blackhawk holster. This he clipped inside his belt.

The second thing he removed was a thick 11-by-14-inch envelope, secreted on the shelf below where he kept the gun, behind condiment bottles. Worcestershire, teriyaki and a half dozen vinegars ranging from Heinz to the exotic.

He glanced outside.

No sign of Rodent. As he’d expected. Still, sometimes being armed never hurt.

He walked to the stove and boiled water and brewed a ceramic mug of coffee with a single-cup filter cone. He’d selected one of his favorites. Daterra, from Brazil. He shocked the beverage with a splash of milk.

Sitting at the banquette, he looked at the envelope, on which were the words Graded Exams 5/25, in perfect, scripty handwriting, smaller even than Shaw’s.

The flap was not sealed, just affixed with a flexible metal flange, which he bent open, and then he extracted from the envelope a rubber band–bound stack of sheets, close to four hundred of them.

Noting that his heart thudded from double time to triple as he stared at the pile.

These pages were the spoils of the theft Shaw had committed yesterday.

What he hoped they contained was the answer to the question that had dogged him for a decade and a half.

A sip of coffee. He began to flip through the contents.

The sheets seemed to be a random collection of musings historical, philosophical, medical and scientific, maps, photos, copies of receipts. The author’s script was the same as on the front of the envelope: precise and perfectly even, as if a ruler had been used as a guide. The words were formed in a delicate combination of cursive and block printing.

Similar to how Colter Shaw wrote.

He opened to a page at random. Began to read.

Fifteen miles northwest of Macon on Squirrel Level Road, Holy Brethren Church. Should have a talk with minister. Good man. Rev. Harley Combs. Smart and keeps quiet when he should.

Shaw read more passages, then stopped. A couple sips of coffee, thoughts of breakfast. Then: Go on, he chided himself. You started this, prepared to accept where it would lead. So keep going.

His mobile hummed. He glanced at the caller ID, shamefully pleased that the distraction took him away from the stolen documents.

“Teddy.”

“Colt. Where am I finding you?” A baritone grumble.

“Still the Bay Area.”

“Any luck?”

“Some. Maybe. Everything okay at home?” The Bruins were watching his property in Florida, which abutted theirs.

“Peachy.” Not a word you hear often from a career Marine officer. Teddy Bruin and his wife, Velma, also a veteran, wore their contradictions proudly. He could picture them clearly, most likely sitting at that moment where they often sat, on the porch facing the hundred-acre lake in northern Florida. Teddy was six-two, two hundred and fifty pounds. His reddish hair was a darker version of his freckled, ruddy skin. He’d be in khaki slacks or shorts because he owned no other shade. The shirt would have flowers on it. Velma was less than half his weight, though tall herself. She’d be in jeans and work shirt, and of the two she had the cleverer tattoos.

A dog barked in the background. That would be Chase, their Rottweiler. Shaw had spent many afternoons on hikes with the solid, good-natured animal.

“We found a job close to you. Don’t know if you’re interested. Vel’s got the details. She’s coming. Ah, here.”

“Colter.” Unlike Teddy’s, Velma’s voice was softly pouring water. Shaw had told her she should record audiobooks for kids. Her voice would be like Ambien, send them right to sleep.

“Algo found a hit. That girl sniffs like a bluetick hound. What a nose.”

Velma had decided that the computer bot she used (Algo, as in “algorithm”) searching the internet for potential jobs for Shaw was a female. And canine as well, it seemed.

“Missing girl in Silicon Valley,” she added.

“Tipline?”

Phone numbers were often set up by law enforcement or by private groups, like Crime Stoppers, so that someone, usually with inside knowledge, could call anonymously with information that might lead to a suspect. Tiplines were also called dime lines, as in “diming out the perp,” or snitch lines.

Shaw had pursued tipline jobs from time to time over the years—if the crime was particularly heinous or the victims’ families particularly upset. He generally avoided them because of the bureaucracy and formalities involved. Tiplines also tended to attract the troublesome.

“No. Offeror’s her father.” Velma added, “Ten thousand. Not much. But his notice was … heartfelt. He’s one desperate fellow.”

Teddy and Velma had been helping Shaw in his reward operation for years; they knew desperate by instinct.

“How old’s the daughter?”

“Nineteen. Student.”

The phone in Florida was on SPEAKER, and Teddy’s raspy voice said, “We checked the news. No stories about police involvement. Her name didn’t show up at all, except for the reward. So, no foul play.”

The term was right out of Sherlock Holmes yet law enforcement around the country used it frequently. The phrase was a necessary marker in deciding how police would approach a missing-person situation. With an older teen and no evidence of abduction, the cops wouldn’t jump on board as they would with an obvious kidnapping. For the time being, they’d assume she was a runaway.

Her disappearance, of course, could be both. More than a few young people had been seduced away from home willingly only to find that the seducer wasn’t exactly who they thought.

Or her fate might be purely accidental, her body floating in the cold, notoriously unpredictable waters of the Pacific Ocean or in a car at the bottom of a ravine a hundred feet below sidewinding Highway 1.

Shaw debated. His eyes were on the four hundred–odd sheets. “I’ll go meet with the father. What’s her name?”

“Sophie Mulliner. He’s Frank.”

“Mother?”

“No indication.” Velma added, “I’ll send you the particulars.”

He then asked, “Any mail?”

She said, “Bills. Which I paid. Buncha coupons. Victoria’s Secret catalog.”

Shaw had bought Margot a present two years ago; Victoria had decided his address was no secret and delivered it unto her mailing-list minions. He hadn’t thought about Margot for … Had it been a month? Maybe a couple of weeks. He said, “Pitch it.”

“Can I keep it?” Teddy asked.

A thud, and laughter. Another thud.

Shaw thanked them and disconnected.

He rebanded the sheaf of pages. One more look outside. No Rodent.

Colter Shaw lifted open his laptop and read Velma’s email. He pulled up a map to see how long it would take to get to Silicon Valley.

4.

As it turned out, by the estimation of some, Colter Shaw was actually in Silicon Valley at that very moment.

He’d learned that a number of people considered North Oakland and Berkeley to be within the nebulous boundaries of the mythical place. To them, Silicon Valley—apparently, “SV” to those in the know—embraced a wide swath from Berkeley on the east and San Francisco on the west all the way south to San Jose.

The definition was largely, Shaw gathered, dependent on whether a company or individual wanted to be in Silicon Valley. And most everyone did.

The loyalists, it seemed, defined the place as west of the Bay only, the epicenter being Stanford University in Palo Alto. The reward offeror’s home was near the school, in Mountain View. Shaw secured the vehicle’s interior for the drive, made sure his dirt bike was affixed to its frame on the rear and disconnected the hookups.

He stopped by the cabin to break the news to Carole and a half hour later was cruising along the wide 280 freeway, with glimpses of the suburbia of Silicon Valley through the trees to his left and the lush hills of the Rancho Corral de Tierra and the placid Crystal Springs Reservoir to the west.

This area was new to him. Shaw was born in Berkeley—twenty miles away—but he retained only tatters of memories from back then. When Colter was four, Ashton had moved the family to a huge spread a hundred miles east of Fresno, in the Sierra Nevada foothills—Ashton dubbed the property the “Compound” because he thought it sounded more forbidding than “Ranch” or “Farm.”

At the GPS guide’s command, Shaw pulled off the freeway and made his way to the Westwinds RV Center, located in Los Altos Hills. He checked in. The soft-spoken manager was about sixty, trim, a former Navy man or Merchant Marine, if the tattoo of the anchor signified anything. He handed Shaw a map and, with a mechanical pencil, meticulously drew a line from the office to his hookup. Shaw’s space would be on Google Way, accessed via Yahoo Lane and PARC Road. The name of the last avenue Shaw didn’t get. He assumed it was computer-related.

He found the spot, plugged in and, with his black leather computer bag over his shoulder, returned to the office, where he summoned an Uber to take him to the small Avis rental outfit in downtown Mountain View. He picked up a sedan, requesting any full-sized that was black or navy blue, his preferred shades. In his decade of seeking rewards he’d never once misrepresented himself as a police officer, but occasionally he let the impression stand. Driving a vehicle that might be taken for a detective’s undercover car occasionally loosened tongues.

On his mission over the past couple of days, Shaw had ridden his Yamaha dirt bike between Carole’s RV park and Berkeley. He would ride the bike any chance he got, though only on personal business or, of course, for the joy of it. On a job he always rented a sedan or, if the terrain required, an SUV. Driving a rattling motorbike when meeting offerors, witnesses or the police would raise concerns about how professional he was. And while a thirty-foot RV was fine for highways, it was too cumbersome for tooling about congested neighborhoods.

He set the GPS to the reward offeror’s house in Mountain View and pulled into the busy suburban traffic.

So, this was the heart of SV, the Olympus of high technology. The place didn’t glisten the way you might expect, at least along Shaw’s route. No quirky glass offices, marble mansions or herds of slinky Mercedeses, Maseratis, Beemers, Porsches. Here was a diorama of the 1970s: pleasant single-family homes, mostly ranch-style, with minuscule yards, apartment buildings that were tidy but could use a coat of paint or re-siding, mile after mile of strip malls, two- and three-story office structures. No high-rises—perhaps out of fear of earthquakes? The San Andreas Fault was directly underneath.

Silicon Valley might have been Cary, North Carolina, or Plano, Texas, or Fairfax County, Virginia—or another California valley, San Fernando, three hundred miles south and tethered to SV by the utilitarian Highway 101. This was one thing about midwifing technology, Shaw supposed: it all happens inside. Driving through Hibbing, Minnesota, you’d see the mile-deep crimson-colored iron mine. Or Gary, Indiana, the fortresses of steel mills. There were no scars of geography, no unique superstructures to define Silicon Valley.

In ten minutes he was approaching Frank Mulliner’s house on Alta Vista Drive. The ranch wasn’t designed by cookie cutter, though it had the same feel as the other houses on this lengthy block. Inexpensive, with wood or vinyl siding, three concrete steps to the front door, wrought-iron railings. The fancier homes had bay windows. They were all bordered by a parking strip, sidewalk and front yard. Some grass was green, some the color of straw. A number of homeowners had given up on lawns and hardscaped with pebbles and sand and low succulents.

Shaw pulled up to the pale green house, noting the FORECLOSURE SALE sign on the adjoining property. Mulliner’s house was also on the market.

Knocking on the door, Shaw waited only a moment before it opened, revealing a stocky, balding man of fifty or so, wearing gray slacks and an open-collar blue dress shirt. On his feet were loafers but no socks.

“Frank Mulliner?”

The man’s red-rimmed eyes glanced quickly at Shaw’s clothes, the short blond hair, the sober demeanor—he rarely smiled. The bereft father would be thinking this was a detective come to deliver bad news, so Shaw introduced himself quickly.

“Oh, you’re … You called. The reward.”

“That’s right.”

The man’s hand was chill when the two gripped palms.

With a look around the neighborhood, he nodded Shaw in.

Shaw learned a lot about offerors—and the viability, and legitimacy, of the reward—by seeing their living spaces. He met with them in their homes if possible. Offices, if not. This gave him insights about the potential business relationship and how serious were the circumstances giving rise to the reward. Here, the smell of sour food was detectable. The tables and furniture were cluttered with bills and mail folders and tools and retail flyers. In the living room were piles of clothing. This suggested that even though Sophie had been missing for only a few days, the man was very distraught.

The shabbiness of the place was also of note. The walls and molding were scuffed, in need of painting and proper repair; the coffee table had a broken leg splinted with duct tape painted to mimic the oak color. Water stains speckled the ceiling and there was a hole above one window where a curtain rod had pulled away from the Sheetrock. This meant the ten thousand cash he was offering was hard to come by.

The two men took seats on saggy furniture encased in slack gold slipcovers. The lamps were mismatched. And the big-screen TV was not so big by today’s standards.

Shaw asked, “Have you heard anything more? From the police? Sophie’s friends?”

“Nothing. And her mother hasn’t heard anything. She lives out of state.”

“Is she on her way?”

Mulliner was silent. “She’s not coming.” The man’s round jaw tightened and he wiped at what remained of his brown hair. “Not yet.” He scanned Shaw closely. “You a private eye or something?”

“No. I earn rewards that citizens or the police’ve offered.”

He seemed to digest this. “For a living.”

“Correct.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

Shaw gave him the pitch. True, he didn’t need to win Mulliner over, as a PI seeking a new client might. But if he were going to look for Sophie, he needed information. And that meant cooperation. “I’ve got years of experience doing this. I’ve helped find dozens of missing persons. I’ll investigate and try to get information that’ll lead to Sophie. As soon as I do, I tell you and the police. I don’t rescue people or talk them into coming home if they’re runaways.”

While this last sentence was not entirely accurate, Shaw felt it important to make clear exactly what he was providing. He preferred to mention rules rather than exceptions.

“If that information leads to her you pay me the reward. Right now, we’ll talk some. If you don’t like what you hear or see, you tell me and I won’t pursue it. If there’s something I don’t like, I walk away.”

“Far as I’m concerned, I’m sold.” The man’s voice choked. “You seem okay to me. You talk straight, you’re calm. Not, I don’t know, not like a bounty hunter on TV. Anything you can do to find Fee. Please.”

“Fee.”

“Her nickname. So-fee. What she called herself when she was a baby.” He controlled the tears, though just.

“Has anybody else approached you for the reward?”

“I got plenty of calls or emails. Most of ’em anonymous. They said they’d seen her or knew what had happened. All it took was a few questions and I could tell they didn’t have anything. They just wanted the money. Somebody mentioned aliens in a spaceship. Somebody said a Russian sex-trafficking ring.”

“Most people who contact you’ll be that way. Looking for a fast buck. Anybody who knows her’ll help you out for free. There’s an off chance that you’ll be contacted by somebody connected with the kidnapper—if there is a kidnapper—or by somebody who spotted her on the street. So listen to all the calls and read all the emails. Might be something helpful.

“Now, finding her is our only goal. It might take a lot of people providing information to piece her whereabouts together. Five percent here. Ten there. How that reward gets split up is between me and the other parties. You won’t be out more than the ten.

“One more thing: I don’t take a reward for recovery, only rescue.”

The man didn’t respond to this. He was kneading a bright orange golf ball. After a moment he said, “They make these things so you can play in the winter. Somebody gave me a box of them.” He looked up at Shaw’s unresponsive eyes. “It never snows here. Do you golf? Do you want some?”

“Mr. Mulliner, we should move fast.”

“Frank.”

“Fast,” Shaw repeated.

The man inhaled. “Please. Help her. Find Fee for me.”

“First: Are you sure she didn’t run off?”

“Absolutely positive.”

“How do you know?”

“Luka. That’s how.”

5.

Shaw was sitting hunched over the wounded coffee table.

Before him was a thirty-two-page, 5-by-7-inch notebook of blank, unlined pages. In his hand was a Delta Titanio Galassia fountain pen, black with three orange rings toward the nib. Occasionally people gave him a look: Pretentious, aren’t we? But Shaw was a relentless scribe and the Italian pen—not cheap, at two hundred and fifty dollars, yet hardly a luxury—was far easier on the muscles than a ballpoint or even a rollerball. It was the best tool for the job.

Shaw and Mulliner were not alone. Sitting beside Shaw and breathing heavily on his thigh was the reason that father was sure daughter had not run away: Luka.

A well-behaved white standard poodle.

“Fee wouldn’t leave Luka. Impossible. If she’d run off, she would’ve taken him. Or at least called to see how he was.”

There’d been dogs on the Compound, pointers for pointing, retrievers for retrieving—and all of them for barking like mad if the uninvited arrived. Colter and Russell took their father’s view that the animals were employees. Their younger sister, Dorion, on the other hand, would bewilder the animals by dressing them up in clothing she herself had stitched and she let them sleep in bed with her. Shaw now accepted Luka’s presence here as evidence, though not proof, that the young woman had not run off.

Colter Shaw asked about the details of Sophie’s disappearance, what the police had said when Mulliner called, about family and friends.

Writing in tiny, elegant script, perfectly horizontal on the unlined paper, Shaw set down all that was potentially helpful, ignoring the extraneous. Then, having exhausted his questions, he let the man talk. He usually got his most important information this way, finding nuggets in the rambling.

Mulliner stepped into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a handful of scraps of paper and Post-it notes containing names and numbers and addresses—in two handwritings. His and Sophie’s, he confirmed. Friends’ numbers, appointments, work and class schedules. Shaw transcribed the information. If it came to the police, Mulliner should have the originals.

Sophie’s father had done a good job looking for his daughter. He’d put up scores of MISSING flyers. He’d contacted Sophie’s boss at the software company where she worked part-time, a half dozen of her professors at the college she attended and her sports coach. He spoke to a handful of her friends, though the list was short.

“Haven’t been the best of fathers,” Mulliner admitted with a downcast gaze. “Sophie’s mother lives out of state, like I said. I’m working a couple of jobs. It’s all on me. I don’t get to her events or games—she plays lacrosse—like I should.” He waved a hand around the unkempt house. “She doesn’t have parties here. You can see why. I don’t have time to clean. And paying for a service? Forget it.”

Shaw made a note of the lacrosse. The young woman could run and she’d have muscle. A competitive streak too.

Sophie’d fight—if she had the chance to fight.

“Does she often stay at friends’ houses?”

“Not much now. That was a high school thing. Sometimes. But she always calls.” Mulliner blinked. “I didn’t offer you anything. I’m sorry. Coffee? Water?”

“No, I’m good.”

Mulliner, like most people, couldn’t keep his eyes off the scripty words Shaw jotted quickly in navy-blue ink.

“Your teachers taught you that? In school?”

“Yes.”

In a way.

A search of her room revealed nothing helpful. It was filled with computer books, circuit boards, closetsful of outfits, makeup, concert posters, a tree for jewelry. Typical for her age. Shaw noted she was an artist, and a good one. Watercolor landscapes, bold and colorful, sat in a pile on a dresser, the paper curled from drying off the easel.

Mulliner had said she’d taken her laptop and phone with her, which Shaw had expected but was disappointed that she didn’t have a second computer to browse through, though that was usually not particularly helpful. You rarely found an entry: Brunch on Sunday, then I’m going to run away because I hate my effing parents.

And you never have to search very hard to find the suicide note.

Shaw asked for some pictures of the young woman, in different outfits and taken from different angles. He produced ten good ones.

Mulliner sat but Shaw remained standing. Without looking through his notebook, he said, “She left at four in the afternoon, on Wednesday, two days ago, after she got home from school. Then went out for the bike ride at five-thirty and never came home. You posted an announcement of the reward early Thursday morning.”

Mulliner acknowledged the timing with a tilt of his head.

“It’s rare to offer a reward that soon after a disappearance—absent foul play.”

“I was just … you know. It was devastating. I was so worried.”

“I need to know everything, Frank.” Shaw’s blue eyes were focused on the offeror’s.

Mulliner’s right thumb and forefinger were kneading the orange golf ball again. His eyes were on the Post-it notes on the coffee table. He gathered them, ordered them, then stopped. “We had a fight, Fee and I. Wednesday. After she came home. A big fight.”

“Tell me.” Shaw spoke in a softer voice than a moment ago. He now sat.

“I did something stupid. I listed the house Wednesday and told the broker to hold off putting up the For Sale sign until I could tell Fee. The Realtor did anyway and a friend up the street saw it and called her. Fuck. I should’ve thought better.” His damp eyes looked up. “I tried everything to avoid moving. I’m working those two jobs. I borrowed money from my ex’s new husband. Think about that. I did everything I could but I just can’t afford to stay. It was our family house! Fee grew up in it, and I’m going to lose it. The taxes here in the county? Jesus, crushing. I found a new place in Gilroy, south of here. A long way south. It’s all I can afford. Sophie’s commute to the college and her job’ll be two hours. She won’t see her friends much.”

His laugh was bitter. “She said, ‘Great, we’re moving to the fucking Garlic Capital of the World.’ Which it is. ‘And you didn’t even tell me.’ I lost it. I screamed at her. How she didn’t appreciate what I did. How my commute’ll be even longer. She grabbed her backpack and stormed out.”

Mulliner’s eyes slid away from Shaw’s. “I was afraid if I told you, you’d be sure she ran off, and wouldn’t help.”

This answered the important question: Why the premature reward offer? Which had raised concerns in Shaw’s mind. Yes, Mulliner seemed truly distraught. He’d let the house go to hell. This testified to his genuine concerns about his daughter. Yet murderous spouses, business partners, siblings and, yes, even parents sometimes post a reward to give themselves the blush of innocence. And they tend to offer fast, the way Mulliner had done.

No, he wasn’t completely absolved. Yet admitting the fight, coupled with Shaw’s other conclusions about the man, suggested he had nothing to do with his daughter’s disappearance.

The reason for the early offer of a reward was legitimate: it would be unbearable to think that he’d been responsible for driving his daughter from the house and into the arms of a murderer or rapist or kidnapper.

Mulliner said now, his voice flat as Iowa and barely audible, “If anything happens to her … I’d just …” He stopped speaking and swallowed.

“I’ll help you,” Shaw said.

“Thank you!” A whisper. He now broke into real tears, racking. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …”

“Not a worry.”

Mulliner looked at his watch. “Hell, I have to get to work. Last thing I want to do. But I can’t lose this job. Please call me. Whatever you find, call me right away.”

Shaw capped his pen and replaced it in his jacket pocket and rose, closing the notebook. He saw himself out.

6.

In assessing how to proceed in pursuing a reward—or, for that matter, with most decisions in life—Colter Shaw followed his father’s advice.

“Countering a threat, approaching a task, you assess the odds of each eventuality, look at the most likely one first and then come up with a suitable strategy.”

The likelihood that you can outrun a forest fire sweeping uphill on a windy day: ten percent. The likelihood you can survive by starting a firebreak and lying in the ashes while the fire burns past you: eighty percent.

Ashton Shaw: “The odds of surviving a blizzard in the high mountains. If you hike out: thirty percent. If you shelter in a cave: eighty percent.”

“Unless,” eight-year-old Dorion, always the practical one, had pointed out, “there’s a momma grizzly bear with her cubs inside.”

“That’s right, Button. Then your odds go down to really, really tiny. Though here it’d be a black bear. Grizzlies are extinct in California.”

Shaw was now sitting in his Chevy outside the Mulliners’ residence, notebook on lap, computer open beside him. He was juggling percentages of Sophie’s fate.

While he hadn’t told Mulliner, he believed the highest percentage was that she was dead.

He gave it sixty percent. Most likely murdered by a serial killer, rapist or a gang wannabe as part of an initiation (the Bay Area crews were among the most vicious in the nation). A slightly less likely cause of death was that she had been killed in an accident, her bike nudged off the road by a drunk or texting driver, who’d fled.

That number, of course, left a significant percentage likelihood that she was alive—taken at the hands of a kidnapper for ransom or sex, or pissed at Dad about the move and, the Luka poodle factor notwithstanding, was crashing on a friend’s couch for a few days, to make him sweat.

Shaw turned to his computer—when on a job he subscribed to local news feeds and scanned for stories that might be helpful. Now he was looking for the discovery of unidentified bodies of women who might be Sophie (none) or reports over the past few weeks of serial kidnappers or killers (several incidents, but the perpetrator was preying on African American prostitutes in the Tenderloin of San Francisco). He expanded his search around the entire northern California area and found nothing relevant.

He skimmed his notes regarding what Frank Mulliner had told him, following his own search for the girl Wednesday night and yesterday. He’d called as many friends, fellow students and coworkers whose names he could find. Mulliner had told Shaw that his daughter had not been the target of a stalker that any of them knew of.

“There is someone you ought to know about, though.”

That someone was Sophie’s former boyfriend. Kyle Butler was twenty, also a student, though at a different college. Sophie and Kyle had broken up, Mulliner believed, about a month ago. They’d dated off and on for a year and it had become serious only in early spring. While he didn’t know why they split he was pleased.

Shaw’s note: Mulliner: KB didn’t treat Sophie the way she should be treated. Disrespectful, said mean things. No violence. KB did have a temper and was impulsive. Also, into drugs. Pot mostly.

Mulliner had no picture of the boy—and Sophie had apparently purged her room of his image—but Shaw had found a number on Facebook. Kyle was a solidly built, tanned young man with a nest of curly blond hair atop his Greek god head. His social media profile was devoted to heavy metal music, surfing and legalizing drugs. Mulliner believed he worked part-time installing car stereos.

Mulliner: No idea what Sophie saw in him. Believed maybe Sophie thought herself unattractive, a “geek girl,” and he was a handsome, cool surfer dude.

Her father reported that the boy hadn’t taken the breakup well and his behavior grew inappropriate. One day he called thirty-two times. After she blocked his number, Sophie found him on their front yard, sobbing and begging to be taken back. Eventually he calmed down and they flopped into a truce. They’d meet for coffee occasionally. They went to a play “as friends.” Kyle hadn’t pushed hard for reconciliation, though Sophie told her father he wanted desperately to get back together.

Domestic kidnappings almost always are parental abductions. (Solving one such snatching, on a whim, in fact, had started Shaw on his career as a reward seeker.) Occasionally, though, a former husband or boyfriend would spirit away the woman of his passion.

Love, Colter Shaw had learned, could be an endlessly refillable prescription of madness.

Shaw put Kyle’s guilt at ten percent. He might have been obsessed with Sophie, but he also seemed too normal and weepy to turn dark. However, the kid’s drug use was a concern. Had Kyle inadvertently jeopardized her life by introducing her to a dealer who didn’t want to be identified? Had she witnessed a hit or other crime, maybe not even knowing it?

He gave this hypothesis twenty percent.

Shaw called the boy’s number. No answer. His message, in his best cop voice, was that he had just spoken to Frank Mulliner and wanted to talk to Kyle about Sophie. He left the number of one of his half dozen active burners, with the caller ID showing Washington, D.C. Kyle might be thinking FBI or, for all Shaw knew, the National Missing Ex-girlfriend Tactical Rescue Operation, or some such.

Shaw then cruised the three miles to Palo Alto, where he found the boy’s beige-and-orange cinder-block apartment complex. The doors were, inexplicably, baby blue. At 3B, he pounded on the door, rather than using the ringer, which he doubted worked anyway, and called out, “Kyle Butler. Open the door.”

Cop-like, yet not cop.

No response, and he didn’t think the boy was dodging him, since a glance through the unevenly stained curtain showed not a flicker of movement inside.

He left one of his business cards in the door crack. It gave only his name and the burner number. He wrote: I need to talk to you about Sophie. Call me.

Shaw returned to his car and sent Kyle’s picture, address and phone number to his private investigator, Mack, requesting background, criminal and weapons checks. Some information he wanted was not public but Mack rarely differentiated between what was public and what was not.

Shaw skimmed the notebook once more and fired up the engine, pulling into traffic. He’d decided where the next step of the investigation would take him.

Lunch.

7.

Colter Shaw walked through the door of the Quick Byte Café in Mountain View.

This was where Sophie had been at about 6 p.m. on Wednesday—just before she disappeared.

On Thursday, Mulliner had stopped in here, asking about his daughter. He’d had no luck but had convinced the manager to put up a MISSING flyer on a corkboard, where it now was pinned beside cards for painters, guitar and yoga instruction and three other MISSING announcements—two dogs and a parrot.

Shaw was surveying the place and smelling the aroma of hot grease, wilty onions, bacon and batter (BREAKFAST SERVED ALL DAY).

The Quick Byte, EST. 1968, couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a bar, a restaurant or a coffee shop, so it opted to be all three.

It might also function as a computer showroom, since most of the patrons were hunched over laptops.

The front was spattered plate glass, facing a busy commercial Silicon Valley street. The walls were of dark paneling and the floor uneven wood. In the rear, backless stools sat in front of the dim bar, which was presently unmanned. Not surprising, given the hour—11:30 a.m.—though the patrons didn’t seem the alcohol-drinking sort; they exuded geek. Lots of stocking caps, baggy sweats, Crocs. The majority were white, followed by East Asian and then South Asian. There were two black patrons, a couple. The median age in the place was about twenty-five.

The walls were lined with black-and-white and color photographs of computers and related artifacts from the early days of tech: vacuum tubes, six-foot-high metal racks of wires and square gray components, oscilloscopes, cumbersome keyboards. Display cards beneath the images gave the history of the devices. One was called Babbage’s Analytical Engine—a computer powered by steam, one hundred and fifty years old.

Shaw approached the ORDER HERE station. He asked for green huevos rancheros and a coffee with cream. Cornbread instead of tortilla chips. The skinny young man behind the counter handed him the coffee and a wire metal stand with a numbered card, 97, stuck in the round spiral on top.

Shaw picked a table near the front door and sat, sipping coffee and scanning the place.

The unbusy kitchen served up the food quickly and the waitress, a pretty young woman, inked and studded, brought the order. Shaw ate quickly, half the dish. Though it was quite good and he was hungry, the eggs were really just a passport to give him legitimacy here.

On the table he spread out the pictures of Sophie that her father had given him. He took a shot of them with his iPhone, which he then emailed to himself. He logged on to his computer, through a secure jetpack, opened the messages and loaded the images onto the screen. He positioned the laptop so that anyone entering or leaving the café could see the screen with its montage of the young woman.

Coffee in hand, he wandered to the Wall of Fame and, like a curious tourist, began reading. Shaw used computers and the internet extensively in the reward business and, at another time, he would have found the history of high technology interesting. Now, though, he was concentrating on watching his computer in the reflection in the display case glass.

Since Shaw had no legal authority whatsoever, he was present here by the establishment’s grace. Occasionally, if the circumstances were right and the situation urgent, he’d canvass patrons. Sometimes he got a lead or two. More frequently he was ignored or, occasionally, asked to leave.

So he often did what he was doing now: fishing.

The computer, with its bright pictures of Sophie, was bait. As people glanced at the photos, Shaw would watch them. Did anyone pay particular attention to the screen? Did their face register recognition? Concern? Curiosity? Panic? Did they look around to see whose computer it was?

He observed a few curious glances at the laptop screen but they weren’t curious enough to raise suspicion.

Shaw could get away with studying the wall for about five minutes before it looked odd, so he bought time by pulling out his mobile and having an imaginary conversation. This was good for another four minutes. Then he ran out of fake and returned to his seat. Probably fifteen people had seen the pictures and the reactions were all blasé.

He sat at the table, sipping coffee and reading texts and emails on his phone. The computer was still open for all to see. There were no tugs on the fishing line. He returned to the ORDER HERE counter, now staffed by a woman in her thirties, a decade removed from the waitress who had served him but with similar facial bones. Sisters, he guessed.

She was barking orders and Shaw took her to be the manager or owner.

“Help you? Your eggs okay?” The voice was a pleasant alto.

“They were good. Question: That woman on the bulletin board?”

“Oh, yeah. Her father came in. Sad.”

“It is. I’m helping him out, looking for her.”

A statement as true as rain. He tended not to mention rewards unless the subject came up.

“That’s good of you.”

“Any customers say anything about her?”

“Not to me. I can ask people who work here. Anybody knows anything, I’ll call you. You have a card?”

He gave her one. “Thanks. He’s anxious to find her.”

The woman said, “Sophie. Always liked that name. It says ‘student.’ The flyer does.”

Shaw said, “She’s at Concordia. Business. And codes part-time at GenSys. According to her father, she’s good at it. I wouldn’t know a software program if it bit me.”

Colter Shaw was quiet by nature, yet when working a job he intentionally rambled. He’d found that this put people at ease.

The woman added, “And I like what you called her.”

“What was that?”

“Woman. Not girl. She looks young and most people would’ve called her girl.” She glanced toward the waitress, willowy and in baggy brown jeans and a cream-colored blouse. She nodded the server over.

“This’s my daughter, Madge,” the manager said.

Oh. Not sister.

“And I’m Tiffany.” Mom read the card. “Colter.” She extended a hand and they shook.

“That’s a name?” Madge said.

“Says so right here.” Tiffany flicked the card. “He’s helping find that missing woman.”

Madge said, “Oh, girl on the poster?”

Tiffany gave a wry glance toward Shaw.

Girl …

Madge said, “I saw her pictures on your computer. I wondered if you were a policeman or something?”

“No. Just helping her dad. We think this is the last place she was at before she disappeared.”

The daughter’s face tightened. “God. What do you think happened?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“I’ll check inside,” said Tiffany, the mother—the generation-bending names of the women were disorienting. He watched her collect the flyer from the corkboard and disappear into the kitchen, where, presumably, it was displayed to cooks and busboys.

She returned, pinning up the flyer once more. “Nothing. There’s a second shift. I’ll make sure they see it.” She sounded as if she definitely would, Shaw thought. He was lucky to have found a mother, and one close to her child. She’d sympathize more with the parent of missing offspring.

Shaw thanked her. “You mind if I ask your customers if they’ve seen her?”

The woman seemed troubled and Shaw suspected she wouldn’t want to bother clientele with unpleasant news.

That wasn’t the reason for the frown, however. Tiffany said, “Don’t you want to look at the security video first?”

8.

Well. This was interesting news. Shaw had looked for cameras when he’d first walked in but had seen none. “You’ve got one?”

Tiffany turned her bright blue eyes away from Shaw’s face and pointed to a small round object in the liquor bottles behind the bar.

A hidden security camera in a commercial establishment was pointless, since the main purpose was deterrence. Maybe they were getting …

Tiffany said, “We’re getting a new system put in. I brought mine from home for the time being. Just so we’d have something.” She turned to Madge and asked the young woman to show Sophie’s picture to customers. “Sure, Mom.” The waitress took the flyer and started on her canvass.

Tiffany directed Shaw into the cluttered office. She said, “I would’ve told her father about the tape but I wasn’t here when he brought the poster in. Didn’t think about it again. Not till you showed up. Have a seat.” With a hand on his shoulder, Tiffany guided Shaw into an unsteady desk chair in front of a fiberboard table, on which sat stacks of paper and an old desktop computer. Bending down, her arm against his, she began to type. “When?”

“Wednesday. Start at five p.m. and go from there.”

Tiffany’s fingers, tipped in lengthy black-polished nails, typed expertly. Within seconds a video appeared. It was clearer than most security cams, largely because it wasn’t the more common wide-angle lens, which encompass a broader field of view yet distort the image. Shaw could see the order station, the cash register, the front portion of the Quick Byte and a bit of the street beyond.

Tiffany scrubbed the timeline from the moment Shaw had requested. On the screen patrons raced to and from the counter, like zipping flies.

Shaw said, “Stop. Back up. Three minutes.”

Tiffany did. Then hit PLAY.

Shaw said, “There.”

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.

He’s arranged pine boughs on the sloping roof and is now collecting moss to provide insulation. The campfire must remain outside.

A gunshot startles him. It’s from a rifle, the sound being chestier than the crack of a pistol.

The weapon was fired on Shaw property because it could not have been fired anywhere else; Ashton and Mary Dove Shaw own nearly a thousand acres, and from here it’s more than a mile’s hike to the property line.

Colter pulls an orange hunting vest from his backpack, dons the garment and walks in the direction of the shot.

About a hundred yards along, he’s startled when a buck, a small one, sprints past, blood on its rear leg. Colter’s eyes follow it as it gallops north. Then the boy continues in the direction the animal came from. He soon finds the hunter, alone, hiking deeper into the Shaw property. He doesn’t see or hear Colter approach. The boy studies him.

The broad man, of pale complexion, is wearing camouflage overalls and a brimmed cap, also camo, over what seems to be a crew-cut scalp. The outfit seems new and the boots are not scuffed. The man is not protected with an orange vest, which is a hugely bad idea in thick woods, where hunters themselves can be mistaken for game or, more likely, bush. The vests don’t alert deer to your presence; the animals are sensitive to the color blue, not orange.

The man wears a small backpack and, on his canvas belt, a water bottle and extra magazines for his rifle. The gun is a curious choice for hunting: one of those black, stubby weapons considered assault rifles. They’re illegal in California, with a few exceptions. His is a Bushmaster, chambered for a .223 bullet—a smaller round than is usually chosen for deer hunting and never used for bigger game. The shorter barrel also means it is less accurate at a distance. These guns are semiautomatics, firing each time the trigger is pulled; that aspect is perfectly legal for hunting, but Colter’s mother, the marksman in the family, has taught the children to hunt only with bolt-action rifles. Mary Dove’s thinking is that if you can’t drop your target fast with a single shot you (a) haven’t worked hard enough to get closer or (b) have no business hunting in the first place.

And, also odd, the Bushmaster isn’t equipped with a scope. Using iron sights to hunt? Either he’s an amateur’s amateur or one hell of a shot. Then Colter reflects: he only wounded the deer. There’s the answer.

“Sir, excuse me.” Colter’s voice—even then, a smooth baritone—startles the man.

He turns, his clean-shaven face contracting with suspicion. He scans the teenager. Colter is the same height then as now, though slimmer; he won’t put on bulking muscle until college and the wrestling team. The jeans, sweatshirt, serious boots and gloves—the September day is cool—suggest the boy is just a hiker. Despite the vest, he can’t be a hunter, as he has no weapon.

Colter is teased frequently by his sister for never smiling, yet his expression is usually affable, as it is now.

Still, the man keeps his hand on the pistol grip of the .223. His finger is extended, parallel to the barrel and not on the trigger. This tells Colter there is a bullet in the chamber and that the hunter is familiar with weapons, if not the fine art of hunting. Maybe he was a soldier at one time.

“How you doing?” Colter asks, looking the man straight in the eye.

“Okay.” A high voice. Crackly.

“This is our property, sir. There’s no hunting. It’s posted.” Always polite. Ashton has taught the children all aspects of survival, from how to tell poisoned berries from safe, to how to stymie bears, to how to defuse potential conflicts.

Never antagonize beast or man …

“Didn’t see any signs.” Cold, cold dark eyes.

Colter says, “Understood. It’s a lot of land. But it is ours and there’s no hunting.”

“Your dad around?”

“Not nearby.”

“What’s your name?”

Ashton taught the children that adults have to earn your respect. Colter says nothing.

The man tilts his head. He’s pissed off. He asks, “Well, where can I hunt?”

“You’re a mile onto our land. You would’ve parked off Wickham Road. Take it east five miles. That’s all public forest.”

“You own all this?”

“We do.”

“You’re kind of like a Deliverance family, aren’t you? You play banjo?”

Colter doesn’t understand; he would later.

“I’ll head off then.”

“Wait.”

The man stops, turning back.

Colter’s confused. “You’re going after that buck, aren’t you?”

The man gives a look of surprise. “What?”

“That buck. He’s wounded.” Even if the man is inexperienced, everyone knows this.

The hunter says, “Oh, I hit something? There was just a noise in the bushes. I thought it was a wolf.”

Colter doesn’t know how to respond to this bizarre comment.

“Wolves hunt at dusk and night,” he says.

“Yeah? I didn’t know that.”

And pulling a trigger without a sure target?

“Anyway, sir. There’s a wounded buck. You’ve got to find him. Put him down.”

He laughs. “What is this? I mean, who’re you to lecture me?”

The teenager guesses that this man, with his ignorance and the little-worn outfit, had been asked to go hunting with friends and, never having been, wanted to practice so he wouldn’t be embarrassed.

“I’ll help you,” Colter offers. “But we can’t let it go.”

“Why?”

“A wounded animal, you track it down. You don’t let it suffer.”

“Suffer,” the man whispers. “It’s a deer. Who cares?”

Never kill an animal but for three reasons: for food or hide, for defense, for mercy.

Colter’s father has given the children a lengthy list of rules, most of them commencing with the negative. Colter and his older brother, Russell, who call their father the King of Never, once asked why he didn’t express his philosophy of life with “always.” Ashton answered, “Gets your attention better.”

“Come on,” Colter says. “I’ll help. I can cut sign pretty well.”

“Don’t push me, kid.”

At that point the muzzle of the Bushmaster strays very slightly toward Colter.

The young man’s belly tightens. Colter and his siblings practice self-defense frequently: grappling, wrestling, knives, firearms. But he’s never been in a real fight. Homeschooling effectively eliminates the possibility of bullies.

He thinks, Stupid gesture by a stupid man.

And stupid, Colter knows, can be a lot more dangerous than smart.

“So what kind of father you have that lets his son mouth off like you do?”

The muzzle swings a few degrees closer. The man certainly doesn’t want to kill, but his pride has been thumped like a melon and that means he may shoot off a round in Shaw’s direction to send him rabbit-scurrying. Bullets, though, have a habit of ending up in places where you don’t intend them to go.

In one second, possibly less, Colter draws the old Colt Python revolver from a holster in his back waistband and points it downward, to the side.

Never aim at your target until you’re prepared to pull the trigger or release the arrow.

The man’s eyes grow wide. He freezes.

At this moment Colter Shaw is struck with a realization that should be shocking yet is more like flicking on a lamp, casting light on a previously dark place. He is looking at a human being in the same way he looks at an elk that will be that night’s dinner or at a wolf pack leader who wishes to make Colter the main course.

He is considering the threat, assigning percentages and considering how to kill if the unfortunate ten percent option comes to pass. He is as calm and cold as the pseudo-hunter’s dark brown eyes.

The man remains absolutely still. He’ll know that the teenager is a fine shot—from the way he handles the .357 Magnum pistol—and that the boy can get a shot off first.

“Sir, could you please drop that magazine and unchamber the round inside.” His eyes never leave the intruder’s because eyes signal next moves.

“Are you threatening me? I can call the police.”

“Roy Blanche up in White Sulphur Springs’d be happy to talk to you, sir. Both of us in fact.”

The man turns slightly, profile, a shooter’s stance. The ten percent becomes twenty percent. Colter cocks the Python, muzzle still down. This changes the gun to single-action, which means that when he aims and fires, the trigger pull will be lighter and the shot more accurate. The man is thirty feet away. Colter has hit pie tins, center, at this distance.

A pause, then the man drops the magazine—with the push of a button, which means it is definitely an illegal weapon in California, where the law requires the use of a tool to change mags on semiauto rifles. He pulls the slide and a long, shiny bullet flies out. He scoops up the magazine but leaves the single.

“I’ll take care of that deer,” Colter says, heart slamming hard now. “If you could leave our property, sir.”

“Oh, you bet I’ll leave, asshole. You can figure on me being back.”

“Yessir. We will figure on that.”

The man turns and stalks off.

Colter follows him—silently, the man never knows he’s being tailed—for a mile and a half, until he gets to a parking lot beside a river popular with white-water rafters. He tosses his weapon into the back of a big black SUV and speeds away.

Then, intruder gone, Colter Shaw gets down to work.

You’re the best tracker of the family, Colter. You can find where a sparrow breathed on a blade of grass …

He starts off in search of the wounded animal.

For mercy …

There isn’t much blood trail and the ground on this part of the property is mostly pine-needle-covered, where it isn’t rock; hoof tracks are nearly impossible to see. The classic tried-and-true techniques for sign cutting won’t work. But the boy doesn’t need them. You can also track with your mind, anticipating where your prey will go.

A wounded animal will seek one of two things: a place to die or a place to heal.

The latter means water.

Colter makes his way, silently again, toward a small pond named—by Dorion, when she was five—Egg Lake, because that’s the shape. It’s the only body of water nearby. Deer’s noses—which have olfactory sensors on the outside as well as within—are ten thousand times more sensitive than humans’. The buck will know exactly where the lake is from the molecules off-gassed by minerals unique to pond water, the crap of amphibians and fish, the algae, the mud, the rotting leaves and branches, the remains of frogs left on the shore by owls and hawks.

Three hundred yards on, he locates the creature, blood on its leg, head down, sipping, sipping.

Colter draws the pistol and moves forward silently.

And Sophie Mulliner?

Like the buck, she too would want solace, comfort, after her wounding—her father’s decision to move and the hard words fired at her through the smoke of anger. He recalled on the video: the young woman standing with shoulders arched, hand clenching and unclenching. The fury at the fallen helmet.

And her Egg Lake?

Cycling.

Her father had said as much when Shaw had interviewed him. Shaw recalled too the horseman’s elegant dismount as Sophie pulled up to the Quick Byte, and the powerful, determined lunge as she sped away from the café, feet jamming down on the pedals in fury.

Taking comfort in the balance, the drive, the speed.

Shaw assessed that she’d gone for the damn hardest bike ride she could.

Sitting in the front seat of the Malibu, he opened his laptop bag and extracted a Rand McNally folding map of the San Francisco Bay Area. He carried with him in the Winnebago a hundred or so of these, covering most of the United States, Canada and Mexico. Maps, to Colter Shaw, were magic. He collected them—modern, old and ancient; the majority of the decorations in his house in Florida were framed maps. He preferred paper to digital, in the same way he’d choose a hardcover to an ebook; he was convinced the experience of paper was richer.

On a job, Shaw made maps himself—of the most important locations he’d been to during the investigation. These he studied, looking for clues that might not be obvious at first but that slowly rise to prominence. He had quite a collection of them.

He quickly oriented himself, outside the Quick Byte Café, in the middle of Mountain View.

Sophie’s launch had been to the north. With a finger he followed a hypothetical route in that direction, past the 101 freeway and toward the Bay. Of course, she might have turned toward any compass point, at any time. Shaw saw, though, that if she continued more or less north she would have come to a large rectangle of green: San Miguel Park, two miles from the café. He reasoned that Sophie would pick a place like that because she could shred furiously up and down the trail, not having to worry about traffic.

Was the park, however, a place where one could bike? Paper had served its purpose; time for the twenty-first century. Shaw called up Google Earth (appropriately, since the park was only a few miles from the company’s headquarters). He saw from the satellite images that San Miguel was interlaced with brown-dirt or sand trails and was hilly—perfect for cycling.

Shaw started the Malibu and headed for the place, wondering what he’d find.

Maybe nothing.

Maybe cyclist friends who’d say, “Oh, Sophie? Yeah, she was here Wednesday. She left. Headed west on Alvarado. Don’t know where she was going. Sorry.”

Or: “Oh, Sophie? Yeah, she was here Wednesday. Pissed at her dad about something. She was going to her friend Jane’s for a few days. Kind of sticking it to him for being a prick. She said she’d be home Sunday.”

After all, happy endings do occur.

As with the buck at Egg Lake.

It turned out that the fast but thin bullet had zipped into and out of the deer’s haunch with no bone damage and had largely cauterized the wound.

Standing ten feet from the oblivious, drinking animal, Colter had replaced the pistol in his holster and withdrawn from his backpack the pint bottle of Betadine disinfectant he and his siblings kept with them. Holding his breath, he stepped in utter silence to within a yard of the deer and stopped. The creature’s head jerked up, alerted by a few molecules of alien scent. The boy aimed the nozzle carefully and squirted a stream of the ruddy-brown antiseptic onto the buck’s wound, sending the animal two feet into the air, straight up. Then it zipped out of sight like a cartoon creature. Colter had had to laugh.

And you, Sophie? Shaw now thought as he approached the park. Was this a place for you to heal? Or a place for you to die?

10.

San Miguel Park was divided evenly, forest and field, and crisscrossed by dry culverts and streambeds, as well as the paths that Shaw had seen thanks to the mappers of Google. In person, he observed they were packed dirt, not sand. Perfect for hard biking: both Sophie’s muscular variety and his own preferred petrol.

Owing to the drought, the place was not the verdant green that Rand McNally had promised, but was largely brown and beige and dusty.

The main entrance was on the opposite side of the park but Sophie’s route would have brought her here, to the bike paths off the broad shoulder of Tamyen Road. While not familiar with the area, he knew the avenue’s name. Hundreds of years ago the Tamyen, a tribe of Ohlone native people, had lived in what was now Silicon Valley. Their lands had been lost in a familiar yet particularly shameful episode of genocide—not at the hands of the conquistadors but by local officials after California achieved statehood.

Shaw’s mother, Mary Dove Shaw, believed an ancestor to be an Ohlone elder.

He killed the engine. Here were two openings in the line of brush and shrubbery that separated the shoulder from the park proper. The gaps led down a steep hill to trails, imprinted with many footprints and tire tread marks.

Climbing from the car, Shaw surveyed the expansive park. He heard a sound he knew well. The whine of dirt bikes, a particular pitch that gets under the skin of some but to others—Shaw, for one—is a siren’s song. Motorbiking was illegal here, a sign sternly warned. If he hadn’t been on a job, though, Shaw’d have had his Yamaha off the rack in sixty seconds and on the trails in ninety.

So: One, assume kidnapping. Two, assume it was Person X, in the gray stocking cap and sunglasses. Three, assume X put a tracker on Sophie’s bike and followed her.

How would it have gone down?

X would snatch her here, before she got too far into the park. He’d worry about witnesses, of course, though the area around Tamyen Road wasn’t heavily populated. Shaw had passed a few companies, small fabricators or delivery services. But the buildings had no view of the shoulder. There was little traffic.

The scenario? X spots her. Then what? How would he have approached? Asking for directions?

No, a nineteen-year-old honors student and employee of a tech company wouldn’t fall for that, not in the age of GPS. Exchanging pleasantries to get close to her? That too didn’t seem likely. X would see she was strong and athletic and probably suspicious of a stranger’s approach. And she could zip into the park, away from him, at twenty miles an hour. Shaw decided there’d be no ruse, nothing subtle. X would simply strike fast before Sophie sensed she was a target.

He began walking along the edge of the shoulder nearest the park. He spotted a tiny bit of red. In the grass between the two trail entrances was a triangular shard of plastic—that could easily have come from the reflector on a bike. With a Kleenex he collected the triangle and put it in his pocket. On his phone he found the screenshot of Sophie’s bike outside the Quick Byte—lifted from Tiffany’s security camera video. Yes, it had a red disk reflector on the rear.

Made sense. X had followed Sophie here and—the moment the road was free of traffic—he’d slammed into the back of her bike. She’d have tumbled to the ground and he’d have been on her in an instant, taping her mouth and hands and feet. Into the trunk with her bike and backpack.

Some brush had been trampled near the plastic shard. He stepped off the shoulder and peered down the hill. He could see a line of disturbed grass leading directly from where he was standing to the bottom of a small ravine. Maybe the plan hadn’t gone quite as X had hoped. Maybe he’d struck Sophie’s bike too hard, knocking her over the edge, and she’d tumbled down the forty-five-degree slope.

Shaw strode down one path to the place where she would have landed. He crouched. Broken and bent grass, and gouges in the dirt that might have come from a scuffle. Then he spotted a rock the size of a grapefruit. There with a smear on it: brown, the shade of dried blood.

Shaw pulled out his phone and dialed a number he’d programmed in several hours ago. He hit CALL. About ten feet up the hill came a soft sound, repeated every few seconds. It was the Samsung whistling ringtone.

The phone number he’d dialed was Sophie’s.

11.

Now, time for the experts.

Shaw called Frank Mulliner and told him what he’d found.

The man greeted the news with a gasp.

“Those sons of bitches!”

Shaw didn’t understand at first. Then he realized Mulliner was referring to the police.

“If they’d gotten on board when they should have … I’m calling them now!”

Shaw foresaw disaster: a rampaging parent. He’d seen this before. “Let me handle it.”

“But—”

“Let me handle it.”

Mulliner was silent for a moment. Shaw imagined the man’s mobile was gripped in white, trembling fingers. “All right,” Sophie’s father said. “I’m heading home.”

Shaw got the names of the detectives whom Mulliner had first spoken to about Sophie’s disappearance: Wiley and Standish of the Joint Major Crimes Task Force, based in nearby Santa Clara.

After disconnecting with Mulliner, Shaw called the JMCTF’s main number and asked for either of them. The prim-voiced desk officer, if that was her job title, said they were both out. Shaw said it was an emergency.

“You should call nine-one-one.”

“This is a development in a case Detectives Standish and Wiley are involved in.”

“Which case?”

Of course, there was none.

“Can you give me your address?” Shaw asked.

Ten minutes later he was headed for the JMCTF headquarters.

There’s no shortage of law enforcement in California. Growing up in the eastern wilderness of the state, the Shaw family had contact with park rangers—the Compound abutted tens of thousands of acres of state and federal forest. The family was no stranger to other agencies either: state police, the California Bureau of Investigation and, on rare occasion, the FBI. Not to mention Sheriff Roy Blanche.

The JMCTF was new to Colter Shaw. In a brief online search he’d found that it was charged with investigating homicides, kidnappings, sexual assaults and larcenies in which an injury occurred. It had a small drug enforcement group.

He was now approaching the headquarters: a large, low ’50s-style building on West Hedding Street, not far from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. He steered the Chevy into the lot and walked along the curving sidewalk bordered with succulents and red flowers, hearing the persistent rush of traffic on the Nimitz Freeway. At the front desk, he walked up to the window behind which a blond uniformed officer sat.

“Yessir?”

He knew the voice. It was the same young woman who’d fielded his earlier call. She was calm and stodgy. Her face was pert.

He asked again for either Detective Wiley or Detective Standish.

“Detective Standish is still out. I’ll see if Detective Wiley is available.”

Shaw sat in an orange-vinyl-and-aluminum chair. The waiting room was like a doctor’s office, without the magazines … and with bulletproof glass protecting the receptionist.

Shaw opened his computer bag, extracted his bound notebook and began to write. When he was done, he walked to the desk officer. The woman looked up.

“Could you please make me a copy of this? It’s for an investigation Detective Wiley’s running.”

Or, is soon to be running.

Another pause. She took the notebook, did as he’d requested and returned the notebook and copies to him.

“Many thanks.”

As soon as Shaw sat down, the door clicked open and a large man in his mid-forties stepped into the waiting area.

The plainclothes officer was an inverted pyramid: broad shoulders and a solid chest, testing the buttons of his shirt, tapering to narrow hips. Had to have played football in school. His salt-and-pepper hair was thick and swept back from a high forehead. The proportioned bulk, hair, along with the eagle’s beak nose and solid jaw, could have landed him a role as a detective in a thriller movie. Not the lead but the dependable—and often expendable—sidekick. His weapon was a Glock and it rode high on the hip.

His eyes, muddy brown, looked Shaw up and down. “You wanted to see me?”

“Detective Wiley?”

“Yes.”

“Colter Shaw.” He rose and extended his arm, forcing a handshake. “You got a call from Frank Mulliner about his daughter, Sophie. She disappeared on Wednesday. I’m helping him find her. I’ve found some things that make it clear she was kidnapped.”

Another pause. “‘Helping him find her.’ You’re a friend of the family?”

“Mulliner offered a reward. That’s why I’m here.”

“Reward?”

Wiley was going to be a problem.

“You’re a PI?” the detective asked.

“No.”

“BEA?”

“Not that either.” Bond enforcement agents are highly regulated. One reason not to go down that road. Also, Shaw had no desire to chase Failure to Appears in Piggly Wiggly parking lots, cuff them and haul their sweaty bodies to the grim receiving docks of sheriffs’ departments.

Shaw continued: “This is urgent, Detective.”

Another scan. Wiley waited a moment and said, “You’re not armed?”

“No.”

“Come on back to the office. We’ll just have a look in that bag first.”

Shaw opened it. Wiley prodded and then turned and walked through the security doorway. Shaw followed him along the functional corridors, past offices and cubicles populated with about fifteen men and women—slightly more of the former than latter. Uniforms—all gray—prevailed. There were suits too, as well as the scruffy casual garb of those working undercover.

Wiley directed him into a large, austere office. Minimal décor. On the open door were two signs: DET. D. WILEY and DET. L. STANDISH. The desks were in the corners of the rooms, facing each other.

Wiley sat behind his, the chair creaking under his weight, and looked at phone message slips. Shaw sat across from him, on a gray metal chair whose seat was not molded for buttocks. It was extremely uncomfortable. He supposed Wiley perched suspects there while he conducted blunt interrogations.

The detective continued to adeptly ignore Shaw and studied the message slips intently. He turned away and typed on his computer.

Shaw grew tired of the pissing game. He took Sophie’s cell phone, wrapped in Kleenex, from his pocket and set it on Wiley’s desk. It thunked, as he’d intended. Shaw opened the tissue to reveal the cell.

Wiley’s narrow eyes narrowed further.

“It’s Sophie’s mobile. I found it in San Miguel Park. Where she’d been cycling just before she disappeared.”

Wiley glanced at it, then back to Shaw, who explained about the video at the Quick Byte Café, the possibility of the kidnapper following her, the park, the car’s collision with the bike.

“A tracker?” That was his only response.

“Maybe. I’ve got a copy of the video and you can see the original at the Quick Byte.”

“You know Mulliner or his daughter before this reward thing?”

“No.”

The detective leaned back. Wood and metal creaked. “Just curious about your connection with all this. It’s Shaw, right?” He was typing on his computer.

“Detective, we can talk all about my livelihood at some point. But right now we need to start looking for Sophie.”

Wiley’s eyes were on the monitor. He’d probably found some articles in which Shaw was cited for helping police find a fugitive or locate a missing person. Or checking his record, more likely, and finding no warrants or convictions. Unless, of course, the powers that be at Cal had learned he was behind the theft of the four hundred pages yesterday from their hallowed academic halls, and he was now a wanted man.

No handcuffs were forthcoming. Wiley swung back. “Maybe she dropped it. Didn’t want to go home because Dad’d paid eight hundred bucks for it. She went to stay with a friend.”

“I found indications there’d been a scuffle. A rock that might have blood on it.”

“DNA is taking us twenty-four hours minimum.”

“It’s not about confirming it’s Sophie’s. It suggests that she was attacked and kidnapped.”

“Were you ever law enforcement?”

“No. But I’ve assisted in missing-person cases for ten years.”

“For profit?”

“I make a living trying to save people’s lives.”

Just like you.

“How much is the reward?”

“Ten thousand.”

“My. That’s some chunk of change.”

Shaw extracted a second bundle of tissue. This contained the small triangular shard of red reflector, which he believed had come from Sophie’s bike.

“I picked them both up with tissues, this and the phone. Though the odds of the perp’s prints being on them are low. I think after she fell down the hill she was trying to call for help. When the kidnapper came after her, she pitched the phone away.”

“Why?” Wiley’s eyes strayed to a file folder. He extracted a mechanical pencil and made a note.

“Hoping that when a friend or her father called, somebody’d find it and they could piece together that she’d been kidnapped.” He continued: “I marked where I found it. I can help your crime scene team. Do you know San Miguel Park? The Tamyen Road side?”

“I do not.”

“It’s near the Bay. There aren’t a lot of places a witness might’ve been but I spotted some businesses on the way to the park. Maybe one of them has a CCTV. And there’s a half dozen traffic cams on the route from the Quick Byte to San Miguel. You might be able to piece together a tag number.”

Wiley jotted another note. The case or a grocery list?

The detective asked, “When do you collect your money?”

Shaw rose and picked up the phone and the bit of plastic, put them back in his bag. Wiley’s face flashed with astonishment. “Hey there—”

Shaw said evenly, “Kidnapping’s a federal offense too. The FBI has a field office here, in Palo Alto. I’ll take it up with them.” He started for the door.

“Hold on, hold on, Chief. Take it easy. You gotta understand. You push the kidnap button, a lot of shit happens. From brass down to the swamp of the press. Take a bench there.”

Shaw paused, then turned and sat down. He opened his computer bag and extracted the copy of the notes he’d jotted while waiting for Wiley. He handed the sheets to the detective.

“The initials FM is Frank Mulliner. SM is Sophie. And the CS is me.”

Obvious, but in Wiley’s case Shaw wasn’t taking any chances.

  Missing individual: Sophie Mulliner, 19

  Site of kidnapping: San Miguel Park, Mountain View, shoulder of Tamyen Road

  Possible scenarios:

• Runaway: 3% (unlikely because of her phone, the reflector chip and evidence of struggle; none of her close friends—8 interviewed by FM—give any indication she’s done this).

• Hit-and-run: 5% (driver probably would not have taken her body with him).

• Suicide: 1% (no history of mental issues, no previous attempts, no suicidal communication, doesn’t fit with scene in San Miguel Park).

• Kidnapping/murder: 80%.

• Kidnapped by former boyfriend Kyle Butler: 10% (somewhat unstable, possibly abusive, drug history, didn’t take breakup well; hasn’t returned calls of CS).

• Killed in gang initiation: 5% (MT-44 and several Latino gangs active in area, but crews generally leave corpses in public as proof of kill).

• Kidnapped by FM’s former wife, Sophie’s mother: <1% (Sophie is no longer a minor, the divorce happened seven years ago, criminal records and other background check of mother make this unlikely).

• For-profit kidnapping: 10% (no ransom demand, they usually occur within 24 hours of abduction; father isn’t wealthy).

• Kidnapped to force FM to divulge sensitive information from one of his two jobs: 5% (one, middle management in automotive parts sales; the other, warehouse manager with no access to sensitive or valuable information or products). Would expect contact by now.

• Kidnapped to force Sophie to divulge information about her part-time job as coder at software development company, GenSys: 5% (does work not involving classified information or trade secrets).

• Killed because she witnessed a drug sale between boyfriend, Kyle Butler, and dealer who didn’t want identity known: 20% (NOTE: Butler is missing too; related victim?).

• Kidnapped/killed by antisocial perpetrator, serial kidnapper or killer; SM raped and murdered or kept for torture and sex, eventual murder: 60%–70%.

• Unknown motive: 7%.

  Relevant details:

• SM’s credit cards have not been used in two days; FM is on cards and has access.

• Quick Byte Café has video of possible suspect following her. Manager has preserved original and uploaded to cloud. Tiffany Monroe. CS has copy.

• Under expectation-of-privacy laws, FM cannot access her phone log.

• Perpetrator possibly put tracking device on bike to follow her.

• Mulliner’s house just on market, no prospective buyers yet to case the location for kidnapping potential.

The detective’s carefully shaved face wore a frown. “The hell all this come from, Chief?”

The nickname rankled but Shaw ignored it; he was making headway. “The information?” He shrugged. “Facts from her father, some legwork of mine.”

Wiley muttered, “What’s with the percentages?”

“I rank things in priority. Tells me where to start. I look at the most likely first. That doesn’t pan out, I move to the next.”

He read it again.

“They don’t add up to a hundred.”

“There’s always the unknown factor—that something I haven’t thought of’s the answer. Will you send a team to the park, Detective?”

“Alrightyroo. We’ll look into it, Chief.” He smoothed the copy of Shaw’s analysis and shook his head, amused. “I can keep this?”

“It’s yours.”

Shaw set the cell phone and the chip of reflector in front of Wiley.

His own phone was humming with a text. He glanced at the screen, noted the word Important! Slipped the mobile away. “You’ll keep me posted, Detective?”

“Oh, you betcha, Chief. You betcha.”

12.

At the Quick Byte Café, Tiffany greeted him with a troubled nod.

It was she who’d just texted, asking if he could stop by.

Important! …

“Colter. Come here.” They walked from the order station to the bulletin board on which Frank Mulliner had tacked up Sophie’s picture.

The flyer was no longer there. In its place was a white sheet of computer paper, 8½ by 11 inches. On it was an odd black-and-white image, done in the style of stenciling. It depicted a face: two eyes, round orbs with a white glint in the upper-right-hand corner of each, open lips, a collar and tie. On the head was a businessman’s hat from the 1950s.

“I texted as soon as I saw, but whoever it was might’ve taken it anytime. I asked everybody here, workers, customers. Nothing.”

The corkboard was next to the side door, out of view of the camera. No help there.

Tiffany gave a wan smile. “Madge? My daughter? She’s pissed at me. I sent her home. I don’t want her here until they find him. I mean, she bikes to work three, four times a week too. And he was just here!”

“Not necessarily,” Shaw said. “Sometimes people take Missing posters for souvenirs. Or, if they’re after the reward themselves, they throw it out to narrow the field.”

“Really? Somebody’d do that?”

And worse. When the rewards hit six digits and up, reward seekers found all sorts of creative ways to discourage competition. Shaw had a scar on his thigh as proof.

This eerie image?

Was it an intentional replacement, tacked up by the kidnapper?

And if so, why?

A perverse joke? A statement?

A warning?

There were no words on it. Shaw took it down, using a napkin, and slipped it into his computer bag.

He looked over the clientele, nearly every one of them staring at screens large and screens small.

The front door opened and more customers entered, a businessman in a dark suit and white shirt, no tie, looking harried; a heavyset woman in blue scrubs; and a pretty redhead, mid-twenties, who looked his way quickly, then found an empty spot to sit. A laptop—what else?—appeared from her backpack.

Shaw said to Tiffany, “I saw a printer in your office.”

“You need to use it?”

He nodded. “What’s your email?”

She gave it to him and he sent her Sophie’s picture. “Can you make a couple of printouts?”

“Sure.” Tiffany did so and soon returned with the sheets. Shaw printed the reward information at the bottom of one and tacked it back up.

“When I’m gone, can you move the camera so it’s pointed this way?”

“You bet.”

“Be subtle about it.”

The woman nodded, clearly still troubled about the intrusion.

He said, “I want to ask if anybody’s seen her. That okay?”

“Sure.” Tiffany returned to the counter. Shaw detected a change in the woman; the thought that her kingdom here had been violated had turned her mood dark, her face suspicious.

Shaw took the second printout Tiffany had made and began his canvass. He was halfway through—with no success—when he heard a woman’s voice from behind him. “Oh, no. That’s terrible.”

Shaw turned to see the redhead who’d walked into the café a few minutes ago. She was looking at the sheet of paper in his hand.

“Is that your niece? Sister?”

“I’m helping her father find her.”

“You’re a relative?”

“No. He offered a reward.” Shaw nodded toward the flyer.

She thought about this for a moment, revealing nothing of her reaction to this news. “He must be going crazy. God. And her mother?”

“I’m sure. But Sophie lives here with her father.”

The woman had a face that might be called heart-shaped, depending on how her hair framed her forehead. She was constantly tugging the strands, a nervous habit, he guessed. Her skin was the tan of someone who was outside frequently. She was in athletic shape. Her black leggings revealed exceptional thigh muscles. He guessed skiing and running and cycling. Her shoulders were broad in a way that suggested she’d made them broad by working out. Shaw’s exercise was also exclusively out of doors; a treadmill or stair machine, or whatever they were called, would have driven a restless man like him crazy.

“You think something, you know, bad happened to her?” Her green eyes, damp and large, registered concern as they stared at the picture. Her voice was melodic.

“We don’t know. Have you ever seen her?”

A squint at the sheet. “No.”

She shot her eyes down toward his naked ring finger. Shaw had already noticed the same about hers. He made another observation: she was ten years younger than he was.

She sipped from a covered cup. “Good luck. I really hope she’s okay.”

Shaw watched her walk back to her table, where she booted up her PC, plugged in what he took to be serious headphones, not buds, and started typing. He continued canvassing, asking if the patrons had seen Sophie.

The answer was no.

That took care of all those present. He decided to get back to San Miguel Park and help the officers that Detective Dan Wiley had sent to run the crime scene. He thanked Tiffany and she gave him a furtive nod—meaning, he guessed, that she was going to start her surveillance.

Shaw was heading for the door when he was aware of motion to his left, someone coming toward him.

“Hey.” It was the redhead. Her headset was around her neck and the cord dangled. She walked close. “I’m Maddie. Is your phone open?”

“My—?”

“Your phone. Is it locked? Do you need to put in a passcode?”

Doesn’t everybody?

“Yes.”

“So. Open it and give it to me. I’ll put my number in. That way I’ll know it’s there and you’re not pretending to type it while you really enter five-five-five one-two-one-two.”

Shaw looked over her pretty face, her captivating eyes—the shade of green that Rand McNally had promised, deceptively, to be the color of the foliage in San Miguel Park.

“I could still delete it.”

“That’s an extra step. I’m betting you won’t go to the trouble. What’s your name?”

“Colter.”

“That has to be real. In a bar? When a man’s picking up a woman and gives her a fake name, it’s always Bob or Fred.” She smiled. “The thing is, I come on a little strong and that scares guys off. You don’t look like the scare-able sort. So. Let me type my number in.”

Shaw said, “Just give it to me and I’ll call you now.”

An exaggerated frown. “Oh-oh. That way I’ll have captured you on incoming calls and stuck you in my address book. You willing to make that commitment?”

He lifted his phone. She gave him the number and he dialed. Her ringtone was some rock guitar riff Shaw didn’t recognize. She frowned broadly and lifted the mobile to her ear. “Hello? … Hello? …” Then disconnected. “Was a telemarketer, I guess.” Her laugh danced like her eyes.

Another hit of the coffee. Another tug of her hair. “See you around, Colter. Good luck with what you’re up to. Oh, and what’s my name?”

“Maddie. You never told me your last.”

“One commitment at a time.” She slipped the headphones on and returned to the laptop, on whose screen a psychedelic screen saver paid tribute to the 1960s.

13.

Shaw couldn’t believe it.

Ten minutes after leaving the café he was pulling onto the shoulder of Tamyen Road, overlooking San Miguel Park. Not a single cop.

Alrightyroo. We’ll look into it, Chief …

Guess not.

Shaw approached the only folks nearby—an elderly couple in identical baby-blue jogging outfits—and displayed the printout of Sophie. As he’d expected, they’d never seen her.

Well, if the police weren’t going to search, he was. She’d—possibly—flung the phone, as a signal to alert passersby when someone called her.

Maybe she’d also scrawled something in the dirt, a name, part of a license plate number, before X got her. Or perhaps they’d grappled and she’d grabbed a tissue or pen or bit of cloth, rich with DNA or decorated with his fingerprints, tossing that too into the grass.

Shaw descended into the ravine. He walked on grass so he wouldn’t disturb any tracks left by the kidnapper in sand and soil.

Using the brown-smeared stone as a hub, Shaw walked in an ever-widening spiral, staring at the ground ahead of him. No footprints, no bits of cloth or tissue, no litter from pockets.

But then a glint of light caught his eye.

It came from above him—a service road on the crest of the hill. The flash now repeated. He thought: a car door opening and closing. If it was a door, it closed in compete silence.

Crouching, he moved closer. Through the breeze-waving trees, he could make out what might indeed have been a vehicle. With the glare it was impossible to tell. The light wavered—which might have been due to branches bending in the wind. Or because someone who’d exited the car had walked to the edge of the ridge and was looking down.

Was this a jogger stretching before a run, or someone pausing on a long drive home to pee?

Or was it X, spying on the man with a troubling interest in Sophie Mulliner’s disappearance?

Shaw started through the brush, keeping low, moving toward the base of the ravine, above which the car sat—if it was a car. The hill was quite steep. This was nothing to Shaw, who regularly ascended vertical rock faces, but the terrain was such that a climb would be noisy.

Tricky. Without being seen, he’d have to get almost to the top to be able to push aside the flora and snap a cell phone picture of the tag number of the jogger. Or pee-er. Or kidnapper.

Shaw got about twenty feet toward the base of the hill before he lost sight of the ridge, due to the angle. And it was then, hearing a snap of branch behind him, that he realized his mistake. He’d been concentrating so much on finding the quietest path ahead of him that he’d been ignoring his flank and rear.

Never forget there are three hundred and sixty degrees of threat around you …

Just as he turned, he saw the gun lifting toward the center of his chest and he heard a guttural growl from the hoodie-clad young man. “Don’t fucking move. Or you’re dead.”

14.

Colter Shaw glanced at the attacker with irritation and muttered, “Quiet.”

His eyes returned to the access road above them.

“I’ll shoot,” called the young man. “I will!”

Shaw stepped forward fast and yanked the weapon away and tossed it into the grass.

“Ow, shit!”

Shaw whispered sternly, “I told you: Quiet! I mean it.” He pushed through a knotty growth of forsythia, trying to get a view of the road. From above came the sound of a car door slamming, an engine starting and a gravel-scattering getaway.

Shaw scrabbled up the incline as fast as he could. At the top, breathing hard, he scanned the road. Nothing but dust. He climbed back down to the ravine, where the young man was on his knees, patting the grass for the weapon.

“Leave it, Kyle,” Shaw muttered.

The kid froze. “You know me?”

He was Kyle Butler, Sophie’s ex-boyfriend. Shaw recognized him from his Facebook page.

Shaw had noted the pistol was a cheap pellet gun, a one-shot model whose projectiles couldn’t even break the skin. He picked up the toy and strode to a storm drain and pitched it in.

“Hey!”

“Kyle, somebody sees you with that and you get shot. Which entrance did you use to get into the park?”

The boy rose and stared, confused.

“Which entrance?” Shaw had learned that the quieter your voice, the more intimidating you were. He was very quiet now.

“Over there.” Nodding toward the sound of the motorbikes. The main entrance to the east. He swallowed. Butler’s hands rose fast, as if Shaw presently had a gun on him.

“You can lower your arms.”

He did so. Slowly.

“Did you see that car parked on the ridge?”

“What ridge?”

Shaw pointed to the access road.

“No, man. I didn’t. Really.”

Shaw looked him over, recalling: surfer dude. The boy had frothy blond hair, a navy-blue T-shirt under the black hoodie, black nylon workout pants. A handsome young man, though his eyes were a bit blank.

“Did Frank Mulliner tell you I was here?”

Another pause. What to say, what not to say? Finally: “Yeah. I called him after I got your message. He said you said you found her phone in the park.”

The excess of verbs in the last sentence explained a lot to Shaw. So, the lovesick boy had conjured up the idea that Shaw had kidnapped his former girlfriend to get the reward. He remembered that Butler’s job was bolting big speakers into Subarus and Civics and his passion was riding a piece of waxed wood on rollicking water. Shaw decided that the percentage likelihood of Kyle Butler being the kidnapper had dropped to nil.

But there was that related hypothesis. “Was Sophie ever with you when you scored weed, or coke, or whatever you do?”

“What’re you talking about?”

First things first.

“Kyle, does it make sense that I’d kidnap somebody hoping her father would post a reward? Wouldn’t I just ask for a ransom?”

He looked away. “I guess. Okay, man.”

The sound of the motorbikes rose and fell, buzz-sawing in the distance.

Butler continued: “I’m just … It’s all I can think about: Where is she? What’s happening to her? Will I ever see her again?” His voice choked.

“At any time was she with you when you scored?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Why?”

He explained that a dealer might have been concerned that Sophie was a witness who could identify him.

“Oh God, no. The dudes I buy from? They’re not players. Just, like, students or board heads. You know, surfers. Not bangers from East Palo or Oakland.”

This seemed credible.

Shaw asked, “You have any idea who might’ve taken her? Her dad didn’t think she had any stalkers.”

“No …” The young man’s voice faded. His head was down, slowly shaking now. Shaw saw a glistening in his eyes. “It’s all my fault. Fuck.”

“Your fault?”

“Yeah, man. See, Wednesdays we always did things together. They were like our weekend, ’cause I had to work Saturday and Sunday. I’d go out and new-school—you know, trick surf at Half Moon or Maverick. Then I’d pick her up and we’d hang with friends or do dinner, a movie. If I hadn’t … If I hadn’t fucked up so bad, that’s what we would’ve done last Wednesday. And this never would’ve happened. All the weed. I got mean, I was a son of a bitch. I didn’t want to; it just happened. She’d had enough. She didn’t want to be with a loser.” He wiped his face angrily. “But I’m clean. Thirty-four days. And I’m switching majors. Engineering. Computers.”

So Kyle Butler was the knight coming to San Miguel Park with a BB gun to confront the dragon and rescue the damsel. He’d win her back.

Shaw looked toward the shoulder of Tamyen Road. Still no cops. He called the Task Force. Wiley was out. Standish was out.

“Find me a bag,” Shaw said to Butler.

“Bag?”

“Paper, plastic, anything. Look on the shoulder. I’ll look here.”

Butler climbed the hill to Tamyen Road and Shaw walked the trails, hoping for a trash can. He found none. Then he heard: “Got one!” Butler trotted down the hill. “By the side of the road.” He held up the white bag. “From Walgreens. Is that okay?”

Colter Shaw was a man who smiled rarely. This drew a faint grin. “Perfect.”

Sticking to the grass once more, he walked to the bloodstained rock and picked it up with the bag.

“What’re you going to do with it?”

“Find a private lab to do a DNA test—I’m sure it’s Sophie’s blood.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“No, it’s just from a scrape. Nothing serious.”

“Why’re you doing that? Because the cops aren’t?”

“That’s right.”

Butler’s eyes flashed wide. “Yo, man, let’s look for her together! If the cops aren’t doing shit.”

“It’s a good idea. But I need your help first.”

“Yeah, man. Anything.”

“Her father’s on his way home from work.”

“His weekend job’s over in the East Bay.” Butler’s face showed pity. “Two hours each way. Got another job during the week. And he still couldn’t afford to keep their house, you know?”

“When he gets back, I need you to find out something.”

“Sure.”

“Sorry, Kyle. Might be kind of tough. I need to find out if she’s been dating anybody. Go through her room, talk to friends.”

“You think that’s who it is?”

“I don’t know. We have to look at every possibility.”

Butler gave a wan smile. “Sure. I’ll do it. It’s just a stupid dream I had anyway, us getting back together. It’s not going to happen.” The young man turned and started up the hill. Then he stopped and returned. He shook Shaw’s hand. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean to go all Narcos on you. You know?”

“Not a worry.”

He watched Butler hike back toward the far entrance.

On his mission.

His futile mission.

From his interview with her father and examination of her room, Shaw didn’t believe that Sophie was seeing anyone, not seriously, much less anyone who might have kidnapped her. But it was important for the poor kid to be elsewhere when Shaw discovered what he was now sure he’d find: Sophie Mulliner’s body.

15.

Shaw was driving along winding Tamyen Road, having left San Miguel Park behind.

A serial kidnapper stashing his victims in a dungeon for any length of time wasn’t an impossible likelihood. It did seem rare enough, though, that he focused on a more realistic fate: that Sophie’d been the victim of a sexual sociopath. In Shaw’s experience, the majority of rapists might be serial actors, but almost always with multiple victims. The rapist’s inclination was to kill and move on.

This meant Sophie’s corpse lay somewhere nearby. X was clearly not stupid—the tracker on her bike, the obscuring clothing, the selection of a good attack zone. He wouldn’t drive any distance with a body in his trunk. There might be an accident or traffic violation or a checkpoint. He’d do what he wanted, near San Miguel Park, and flee. In this southwest portion of San Francisco Bay were acres and acres of wet, sandy earth soft enough to dig a quick, shallow grave. But the area was open, with good visibility for hundreds and hundreds of yards; X would want his privacy.

Shaw came to a large, abandoned self-storage operation of about a hundred compartments. The facility was in the middle of an expanse of weeds and sandy ground. He parked and noted that the gap in the chain-link gate was easily wide enough for two people to slip through. He did so himself and began walking up and down the aisles. It was an easy place to search because the paneled overhead doors to the units had been removed and lay in a rust-festering pile behind one of the buildings, like the wings of huge roaches. Maybe this was done for safety’s sake, the way refrigerator doors are removed upon discarding so a child can’t get trapped inside. Whatever the reason, this practice made it simple to see that Sophie’s body wasn’t here.

Soon the Malibu was cruising again.

He saw a feral dog tugging something from the ground about thirty feet away. Something red and white.

Blood and bone?

Shaw braked fast and climbed out of the Chevy. The dog wasn’t a big creature, maybe forty or fifty pounds and rib-skinny. Shaw approached slowly, keeping a steady pace.

Never, ever startle an animal …

The creature moved toward him with its black eyes narrowed. One fang was missing, which gave it an ominous look. Shaw avoided eye contact and continued forward without hesitating.

Until he was able to see what the dog was tugging up.

A Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket.

He left the scrawny thing to its illusory dinner and returned to the car.

Tamyen Road made a long loop past more marshes and fields, and with San Francisco Bay to his left he continued south.

The cracked and bleached asphalt led him to a row of trees and brush, behind which was a large industrial facility, seemingly closed for decades.

An eight-foot-high chain-link fence encircled the weed-choked facility. There were three gates, about thirty yards apart. Shaw pulled up to what seemed to be the main one. He counted five—no, six—dilapidated structures, marred with peeling beige paint and rust, sprouting pipes and tubing and wires. Some walls bore uninspired graffiti. The outlying buildings were one-story. In the center was an ominous, towering box, with a footprint of about a hundred by two hundred feet; it was five stories high and above it soared a metal smokestack, twenty feet in diameter at the base, tapering slightly as it rose.

The grounds abutted the Bay and the skeleton of a wide pier jutted fifty yards into the gently rocking water. Maybe maritime equipment had been fabricated here.

Shaw edged the car off the driveway. There was nowhere to hide the vehicle completely, so he parked on the far side of a stand of foliage. Difficult to see from the road. Why risk a run-in with local cops for violating the old yet unambiguous NO TRESPASSING signs? Shaw was mindful too of the individual twenty minutes ago possibly surveilling him from the ridge above San Miguel Park. Person X, he might as well assume. He placed his computer bag and the bloody rock in the trunk. He scanned the road, the forest on the other side of it, the grounds here. He saw no one. He believed that a car had driven through the main gate at some point in the recent past. The grounds were tall grass and bent in a way that suggested a vehicle’s transit.

Shaw walked to the gate, which was secured by a piece of chain and a lock. He wasn’t looking forward to scaling the fence. It was topped with the upward-pointed snipped-off ends of the links, not as dangerous as razor wire but sharp enough to draw blood.

He wondered if there was any give to the two panels of this gate, as there had been at the self-storage operation. Shaw tugged. The two sides parted only a few inches. He took hold of the large padlock to get a better grip. He pulled hard and it opened.

The lock was one of those models without keys; instead they have numbered dials on the bottom. The shank had been pushed in. Whoever had done it had not spun the dials to relock the mechanism. Two things intrigued Shaw. First, the lock was new. Second, the code was not the default—usually 0-0-0-0 or 1-2-3-4—but, he could see by looking at the dials, 7-4-9-9. Which meant someone had been using it to secure the gate and had neglected to lock it the most recent time he had been here.

Why? Maybe the laziness of a security guard?

Or because the visitor had entered recently, knowing he’d be leaving soon.

Which meant that perhaps he was still here.

Call Wiley?

Not yet.

He’d have to give the detective something concrete.

He opened the gate, stepped inside and replaced the lock as it had been. He then walked quickly over the weed-filled driveway for twenty yards to the first building—a small guardhouse. He glanced in. Empty. He scanned two other nearby buildings, Warehouse 3 and Warehouse 4.

Keeping low, Shaw moved to the closest of these, eyes scanning the vista, noting the vantage points from which a shooter could aim. While he had no particular gut feeling that he was in fact in any cross-hairs, the lock that should have been locked and wasn’t flipped a switch of caution within him.

Bears’ll come at you pushing brush. You’ll hear. Mountain lions will growl. You’ll hear. Wolf packs’re silver. You’ll see. You know where snakes’ll be. But a man who wants to shoot you? You’ll never hear, you’ll never see, you’ll never know what rock he’s hiding under.

Shaw looked into each of the warehouses, pungent with mold and completely empty. He then moved along the wide driveway between these buildings and the big manufacturing facility. Here he could see faded words painted on the brick, ten feet high, forty long, the final letters weathered to nothing.

AGW INDUSTRIES, INC.—FROM OUR HANDS TO Y

Shaw stepped across the driveway and into the shadows of the big building.

You’re the best tracker in the family …

Not his father’s words, his mother’s.

He was looking for a trail. In the wild, cutting for sign is noting paw prints and claw marks, disturbed ground, broken branches, tufts of animal coat in brambles. Now, in suburbia, Colter Shaw was looking for tire treads or footprints. He saw only grass that might have been bent by a car a month ago—or thirty minutes.

Shaw continued to the main building—the loading dock in the back, where the vehicle might have stopped. He quietly climbed the stairs, four feet up, and walked to a door. He tried to open it. The knob turned yet the door held fast.

Someone had driven sharp, black Sheetrock screws into the jamb. He checked the door at the opposite end of the dock. The same. At the back of the dock was a window of mesh-impregnated glass and that too was sealed. The screws appeared new, just like the lock.

This gave Shaw a likely scenario: X had raped and killed Sophie and left the body inside, screwed the doors and windows shut to keep trespassers from finding her.

Now, time to call the police.

He was reaching for his phone when he was startled by a male voice: “Mr. Shaw!”

He climbed off the loading dock and walked along the back of the building.

Kyle Butler was approaching. “Mr. Shaw. There you are!”

What the hell was he doing here?

Shaw was thinking of the open gate, the likelihood that the kidnapper was still here. He held his finger to his lips and then gestured for the boy to crouch.

Kyle paused, confused. He said, “There’s somebody else here. I saw his car in a parking lot back over there.”

He was pointing to the line of trees on the other side of which was one of the outlier structures.

“Kyle! Get down!”

“Do you think Sophie’s—” Before he finished his sentence, a pistol shot resounded. Butler’s head jerked back and a mist of red popped into the air. He dropped straight to the ground, a bundle of dark clothing and limp flesh.

Two shots followed—make-sure bullets—striking Butler’s leg and chest, tugging at his clothing.

Think. Fast. The shooter would’ve heard Butler calling him and would know basically where Shaw was. And to make the headshot, he would have been close.

But the shooter—most likely X—would also be cautious. He would have seen Shaw at San Miguel Park and suspected he wasn’t the law but he couldn’t be sure. And would be assuming Shaw was armed.

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