Page 17

That was what his father called one of hisCrackpot Idea Rules.

He was ten minutes from his destination, and finally getting a feel for this particular camper.

This one was new, its predecessor having been burnt to the rims by two inconsiderate men who took issue with his involvement in their hunt for several people they wished to murder. It was the thirdmotor home Shaw had lost in the course of his reward-seeking business. Or was it the fourth? He wasn’t concentrating on much but the road.

And the job ahead.

Some people in his line of work—admittedly a small body—used the job description “rewardist.” One had even described their activity as “rewardism,” which Colter Shaw found absurdly pretentious. He kept to the more modest, and perfectly accurate, “reward seeker.”

People offered rewards for all sorts of reasons: Prison officials for an escapee (didn’t happen often).

Police for criminals they couldn’t find (happenedallthe time).

Then private citizens posting rewards for missing children, missing spouses and partners, missing parents. Missing business associates. Missing documents and even the occasional rare object (like the sacred Ashanti holy stool hiding in plain sight in the rec room of the offeror’s larcenous business associate).

While Shaw’s efforts to find a missing person or thing were sometimes astronomically complicated, the business relationship between Shaw and his clients was simple. A reward is a unilateral contract in the eyes of the law. One individual makes an offer—please find our missing fill-in-the-blank—and another individual, the reward seeker, endeavors to find him or her or it.

At that point there’s no contract, no obligation. The person who makes the offer can pull the plug without any expenses being due. And the reward seeker can simply walk away.

But once Shaw delivered, an “acceptance” to the offer occurred and a contract miraculously came into being. It was dues time. Most offerors paid up immediately, though there were sometimes complications. Shaw sometimes had to sue offerors who suddenly decided the missing person (a husband hiding out in Cancún with his lover) wasn’t worth the $20K. Being shot at and driven off the road, and losing a $140K camper to fire, to pick one example, for someone else’s benefit had to be compensated for.

At other times, he might have been successful but would either drastically reduce the reward or refuse to take it at all, much to the distress of Teddy and Velma Bruin, especially the latter, who would patiently explain that however generous he felt, he should at least collect enough of the reward to cover his outlay. Gasoline and ammunition were expensive, she would point out.

Then there was another type of “reward” job.

When no reward was being offered at all.

And they were just as valid as the others. Because a reward’s existence represented what to Shaw was an addictive drug: a problem that no one else could solve. After all, the very fact that a reward was offered meant it was a situation of last resort.

Unsolvable…

That was catnip to Colter Shaw.

Having been dubbed “the Restless One” by his family when young, he was true to that moniker; a man who needed challenges. His father’s lesson to the children was of physical survival, tricks of staying alive in the wilderness. But in a different, a broader sense, it was challenge that let Shaw surviveemotionally.

And what challenges would this particular job—another fee-free one—pose?

That was another thing about the reward business.

You never knew…

Shaw now eased the camper to a stop on the shoulder of the highway amid rocks and forests and swampland.

He stepped outside into the sheeting rain and surveyed the scene around him.

It was clear immediately, yes, that the enraged Never Summer River was more than powerful enough to have seized a full-size suburban utility vehicle containing four helpless souls, pulled them underwater and swept them downstream hidden from searches by its gray, turbulent surface.

And it had now fallen to him to do what he could to find them.

6.

Shaw returned to the camper and grabbed two large black suitcases from a storage area near the kitchen.

As he approached the end of the highway, he opened them. From one suitcase he took out an orange float, in the shape of a donut, about eighteen inches across, like a child’s pool toy. It would flow with the current, and if the device lodged against a log or rock, its sensors would shoot out jets of water to free it.

From the other case he removed a VidEye drone. He assembled it quickly and took out his phone from a pocket. He pulled up an app and typed in a command. The drone’s four motors came silently to life.

It was a heavy craft, about fifteen pounds, and would remain fairly stable even in this wind and slashing rain. He turned on its camera, radar and other sensors and sent it into the air. The craft rose and hovered patiently like a guest at a front door waiting to be admitted to a party after ringing twice.