The Never Game Read online

  You’ve been abandoned. Escape if you can. Or die with dignity.

  Shaw read Maddie Poole’s margin notes: In the chapter on Level 3, The Sinking Ship, she’d written: More stabbings on this level than the others. Knives, razors? Gasoline too. Look out for flares.

  He spotted a passage in the front:

  CS:

  You game.

  I game.

  We both game . . .

  Xo,

  MP

  Standish asked, “Shaw?”

  He set the booklet down.

  She continued: “Got a question. Your impression? Brad Hendricks’s homelife? His parents?”

  “Bad, A to Z. A stepfather happy to sell the boy out even before he knew the facts. Mom, all but comatose in an armchair, watching TV. Smell of pot in the air. The way she looked at her husband, you couldn’t help seeing bad choice written in her eyes. Couldn’t tell about physical abuse. Probably not. The house was a mess.”

  “That’s why he gets lost in the games. His social life is make-believe.”

  The Turtle . . .

  The route was taking them through increasingly deserted hills and forest. The road was serpentine, working to their advantage. They were hidden from view by trees and brush but were able to follow glints of chrome and glass ahead of them.

  “You have your weapon?”

  “I do.”

  “Don’t shoot him, okay?” Standish said. “The paperwork for something like that . . .” She clicked her tongue.

  “You’ve got a sense of humor too.”

  “I wasn’t being funny.”

  Ahead of them, the car turned onto a dirt road.

  Standish braked and they consulted the GPS. The unnamed road ended about two miles ahead, at the ocean. There was no other exit. She drove on, remaining some distance behind now yet not too far. It was a balance. They couldn’t take him too early; he had to lead them to Chabelle. They couldn’t lag too much either, because he was here to kill the woman and they’d have to move in fast.

  At ten miles per hour, they rocked along the unsteady road.

  “I’m going to see about starting a new division.”

  “In the Task Force?”

  She nodded. “It’s a different kind of street in SV, different from EPA and Oakland. But it’s still street. Look at Brad. I want to get to kids like him early. So they have a chance. I can do just what I did back in the ’hood. Talk to the parents, teachers. It puts a frame around the kids, people see them differently, for the first time.”

  “Were you in a crew, Standish?” Shaw asked.

  A smile on her face as she tugged on the heart earring. “A mascot. I was a mascot.” A laugh. “My daddy, badass. Frankie Williamson. You can look him up. Oh, Lord, that man was a tough one. At home, he was the best father you could want. All of us kids, he took care of us. I’ll show you pictures sometime. His crew’d come around and bring us stuff.” She shook her head, nostalgic. “In the den they’d do their business, exchange the envelopes—you know what I’m saying? With us, they brought us Legos and board games. Cabbage Patch dolls! I was thirteen and had a crush on Devon Brown you wouldn’t believe and Daddy’s crew was giving me dolls! They were all so proud, though, so of course I made a fuss. Why, I’ve got pictures of me sitting on the knee of Dayan Cabel. The hitman? That boy’ll never see the outside of San Quentin in twenty lifetimes.

  “I’m going to start that program. It’s in the works. Street Welfare Education and Excellence Program. SWEEP.”

  “Like it.”

  She watched the dust trail of the car ahead of them settle. “This is weird crime, Shaw, fantasy crime. Like the Zodiac, Son of Sam. I don’t want fantasy anymore. Helping kids stay alive. That’s real. How about you, Shaw? You run with a crew? I could see you in a blackleather jacket, smoking behind the gym.”

  “Homeschooled with my brother and sister.”

  “You’re kidding.” She then nodded out the windshield. “Road ends up there. We can’t go any farther; he’ll see us.” Standish steered into a stand of trees and cut the engine.

  They climbed out and, without communicating, both left the doors open for the silence. They started forward on ground that Shaw pointed toward: pine needles. They moved about thirty feet into the dunes and crouched not far from the car they’d been pursuing.

  A moment later the driver climbed out, the man Shaw and Standish had concluded two hours ago at the Quick Byte was the Gamer: not Brad Hendricks at all but the brilliant if shy game designer Jimmy Foyle.

  63.

  Silhouetted against a haze-dulled sun, Foyle turned toward the ocean and stretched.

  Shaw and Standish eased lower into the congregation of brush and yellow grass. The man would undoubtedly be armed with the Glock with which he’d killed Kyle Butler and Henry Thompson, though at the moment he held only his key fob in one hand and, in the other, a small bag. Inside the sack would be some of the items from the backpack Shaw had given him—the detritus from Brad’s gaming station desk in the family’s pungent, dank basement. Pens, batteries, Post-it notes.

  Foyle had returned here, to the place where he’d stashed Elizabeth Chabelle, as Shaw had anticipated, to plant these things as evidence implicating the innocent boy; they’d have his fingerprints and DNA on them.

  The kidnapper’s next step, Shaw was sure, would be to head straight to the Hendrickses’ house and hide the murder weapon in the backyard or garage. He’d then call in an anonymous tip as to where Elizabeth Chabelle was, giving a description of Brad, maybe a partial tag number of his car. The police would find her body and the evidence here, which would eventually lead to the family house.

  This had been a gamble on Shaw’s part but a rational one, a sixty or seventy percent one. He concluded that Brad Hendricks was innocent and that it was Jimmy Foyle who was the Gamer, so he’d set up the trap, pretending to enlist his help in the decryption, hoping he’d the take the bait: the contents of the backpack.

  It was Foyle, whom Shaw and Standish had just been following, texting the man occasionally to make him believe they were elsewhere tailing Brad Hendricks.

  And where was the sinking ship?

  Foyle walked between two dunes and disappeared.

  Shaw nodded in that direction and he and Standish rose and followed. At the crest of a dune they crouched, looking down at an old pier that jutted fifty feet into the choppy Pacific. Midway along it was an ancient fishing boat, half sunk.

  1 - Sinking Ship with Five Objects

  2 - L.S.

  3 - Pier South of Pedro Point

  “Your armor snug, Shaw?”

  They were both in bulletproof vests. He nodded.

  “You know how to cuff somebody?”

  “I can. Better with restraints.”

  Standish handed him two zip ties. “I’ll cover him. You get his weapon and get his hands.” She drew her Glock, rose and walked forward silently to the sand. Twenty feet from Foyle, she raised her weapon and aimed. “Jimmy Foyle! Police. Don’t move. Hands in the air.”

  Foyle jerked to a stop, turning slowly.

  “Drop the bag. Hands up.”

  Shocked, he stared their way. Dismay flooded his face.

  “Drop the bag!”

  He did and lifted his hands as he looked from Shaw to Standish and back to Shaw, no doubt understanding how this had come together. The great computer game strategist had been outplayed. Bewilderment morphed to anger.

  “Get on your knees. Knees! Now!”

  Just then, from behind them, came the blaring sound of a car horn.

  Shaw realized then that the key fob was still in Foyle’s hand. He’d hit the panic button.

  Instinctively, the detective started to turn at the sound.

  “Standish, no!” Shaw shouted.

  Foyle crouched and drew h
is Glock. A series of ragged flashes sprouted from his right hand. Standish gave a high yelp as slugs tore into her body.

  64.

  Shaw dove for her, squinting against the sand spitting into the air from Foyle’s gunshots.

  He drew his own Glock, raising the weapon in both hands, steadying it, scanning for a target.

  Foyle had circled to the left, sprinting flat out through the trees, and Shaw had no clear shot. Foyle’s car started up and sped away.

  Shaw returned to Standish, who was writhing in agony. “Okay, they don’t teach you this shit. Hurt, hurts.”

  He assessed the damage: Two slugs had hit the vest. She’d taken one in the forearm, which had nicked the suicide vein, and one low in the belly.

  Shaw slipped his gun into his jacket pocket and put pressure on the wounds, saying, “Had to be sensitive, didn’t you, Standish? Couldn’t shoot a man armed with a BMW key fob?”

  “Get to the boat, Shaw. If Elizabeth’s still . . . Go!” A gasp.

  “This’s going to hurt.”

  He put pressure on Standish’s abdominal wound, pulled her locking knife from its holder and, gripping the blade, used the weight of the handle to flick it open, one-handed. He lifted his bloody palm away from the wound only long enough to cut a strip of his shirttail and tie a tourniquet. This went around her biceps. He used a branch to tighten the cloth. The fierce bleeding in Standish’s shattered lower arm slowed. He closed the blade and slipped the knife into his pocket.

  “Hurt, hurts . . .” Standish repeated, gasping. “Call it in, Shaw. Don’t let him get too far.”

  “I will. Almost there.”

  There wasn’t much to do with the gut shot, except pressure. He gathered some leaves and placed them on the wound and then found a rock that weighed about five pounds. He set this on top. Standish groaned in pain, arched her back.

  “No. Stay still. I know it’s tough, but you’ve got to stay still.”

  He wiped his hands on his jacket and slacks so he could use his phone. He dialed.

  “Police and fire emergency. What’s—”

  “Code 13. Officer shot,” Standish said weakly.

  He repeated this, then looked at his GPS and gave the longitude and latitude.

  “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Colter Shaw. Supervisor Cummings at the JMCTF’ll know me. Armed suspect. Fleeing from location I gave you. Might be headed east in white late-model BMW, California plate, first numbers 9-7-8. Didn’t get the rest. Suspect is Jimmy Foyle, employed by Knight Time Gaming. Wounded officer is Detective LaDonna Standish, also with the Task Force.”

  The dispatcher was asking more questions. Shaw ignored her. He left the line open and set the iPhone next to Standish. Her eyes were dim, lids low.

  Shaw released the tourniquet for a moment. Then tightened it again. He pulled a pen from Standish’s breast pocket and wrote on her wrist, slightly lighter than the ink, the time he’d twisted it tight. It would let the med techs know that it had been binding the arm for some time and that they should relax it to get blood circulating, to minimize the risk she’d lose the arm.

  No words passed between them. There was nothing to say. He set the pistol next to the phone, though it was clear the woman would be unconscious in a few minutes.

  And probably dead before help arrived. Yet leave her he had to.

  He pulled off his jacket and vest and covered her with them, then stood. Then:

  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 plunged in.

  65.

  Please. Save yourself.”

  Twenty minutes later Colter Shaw was inside the sinking ship’s cabin, at the bulkhead door separating him from Elizabeth Chabelle. With the flowerpot shard, he continued to try to chip away the wood around the hinges.

  “You with me, Elizabeth?” Shaw called.

  The Seas the Day settled further. The water was now streaming in through the gap in the front of the cabin. Soon it would be cascading in.

  “My baby . . .” She was sobbing.

  “Keep it together. Need you to. Okay?”

  She nodded. “You’re nah . . . nah . . . not police?”

  “No.”

  “The . . . then . . . ?”

  “Boy or girl?”

  “Wha . . . what-t-t?”

  “Baby. Boy or girl?”

  “Girl.”

  “You have a name for her?”

  “Buh . . . Buh . . . Belinda.”

  “Don’t hear that much.

  “You need to get as high as you can on the bunk.”

  “And your . . . ?” Whispering. “Name?”

  “Colter.”

  “Don’t . . . Don’t hear that much.” She smiled. Then began to cry again. “You . . . you . . . you’ve done everything you . . . you can. Get . . . out. You have a family. Get out. Thank you. Bless you. Get out.”

  “Farther, climb farther! Do it, Elizabeth. George wants to see you. Your mom and dad in Miami. Stone crabs, remember?”

  Shaw squeezed her hand and she did as he’d asked, paddling to the bunk and climbing it. He tossed away the useless ceramic shard.

  Time left on the hypothermia clock? It would’ve run out. Of course.

  “Go!” she called. “Get out!”

  Just then gray water, flecked with kelp, poured into the forward cabin through the gap where the window had been.

  “Go! Puh . . . Please . . .”

  Die with dignity . . .

  Shaw scrabbled to the front window frame and, with a look back toward Chabelle, vaulted through and outside, into the ocean. Dizzy from the cold, disoriented.

  A wave hit the boat, the boat hit him, and Shaw was shoved again toward a pylon. His foot found a deck railing and he pushed himself out of the way just before he was crushed.

  He heard, he believed, Chabelle’s sobs.

  Hallucination?

  Yes, no . . .

  Shaw turned toward the submerged stern of the boat and swam hard for it. He’d stopped shivering, his body saying, That’s it. No point in trying to keep you warm.

  With the forward window gone, the water rushed inside as if flowing through a rent in a broken dam. The ship was going down fast.

  When the cabin was almost entirely underwater, Shaw took a deep breath and dove
straight down.

  At about eight feet below the surface, he held on to a railing and, remembering where the door handle was located, gripped it hard. Bracing his feet on the cabin wall, he slowly extended his legs.

  The door resisted, as before. But then, at last, it slowly swung outward.

  A gamble of his, paying off. With Sophie, the Gamer had left one door open. The rules of The Whispering Man stated there was always a way to escape if you could figure it out.

  Here, the only way out was the cabin door. It wasn’t sealed with screws; it was held fast by the unequal pressure: water outside, air within. Shaw had speculated that as soon as the water was the same height on the inside as on the outside, it could be wrestled open. And it could.

  The transit of the door seemed to take forever. Finally there was enough of a gap for him to kick inside, grab the nearly unconscious Chabelle and pull her out. Together they floated free of the Seas the Day, which disappeared beneath them, rolling to the starboard as it sank. The suction following the ship pulled them after it, but only momentarily. Soon they broke again to the surface, both gasping hard.

  Shaw, kicking, looked around, orienting himself.

  They were still thirty feet from the shore. The pier was five feet above them yet featured no ladder. The pylons, slick and green, couldn’t be climbed.

  “You with me?” Shaw shouted.

  Chabelle spat out water. A cough. A nod. She was very pale.

  Kicking to keep them on the surface, Shaw used one hand to fend off the pylons as the indifferent waves shouldered them toward the pier.

  The only way out was the shore . . . What he saw wasn’t encouraging. The sharp-edged stone—fossil gray—was also covered in the green moss-like growth. There were places where he could get a grip, it seemed, but to get close meant being at the mercy of the ocean, which surged against the rocks. It would fling them against the rocks too, breaking them the way the water itself broke.