Page 2 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)

2.

Colter Shaw had his enemies.

In his profession of rewards-seeking, he avoided bond enforcement—tracking down bail jumpers—but over the years he had found more than a few men and women who emphatically did not want to be found.

Nearly all rewards involving criminals were offered for “information leading to their arrest or capture,” with the first word of that phrase always emphasized. The last thing the authorities wanted was private cops engaging in tactical work and bringing the bad guys in, zip-tied. But whether Shaw simply offered up “information” on the whereabouts of a fugitive or physically took him down himself (he’d been a championship college wrestler), the opponents were not pleased.

And they often held grudges. Some of the more sociopathic ones had actually sent him graphic descriptions of what they intended to do when they were out of prison. One had illustrated the torture, and the drawings were surprisingly good.

The incarcerated also had friends and family who roamed the land freely, often with nothing better to do than track down the man who had sent Papa or Mama, or a sibling, to jail.

So Colter Shaw had created an early warning system of sorts. People he knew—personally or professionally—would be in touch when someone suspicious inquired about him.

Which was why he was presently in his late father’s office in the mountain house of his youth, working his way through five thousand sheets of the man’s notes and correspondence.

He was searching for a reference to a particular individual, and having zero luck.

The lean, six-foot Shaw was dressed for the outdoors, in black jeans, 5.11 tactical boots, and two T’s under a sweatshirt for insulation. It was nearly summer but this June was in March mode, drizzling, cold and windy. None of this would have stopped him from hiking the hundreds of acres that made up the Shaw Compound in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, an activity that was to have been on his agenda today.

But instead, he was chasing paper.

And coming up with nothing.

He tested the coffee. It had lost its last hint of warmth, and he set the mug aside. He’d get more—a pot was in the kitchen—but not until he hit an arbitrary milestone of another half inch of documents.

Stretching, he slumped in a chair in whose back was carved the face of a brown bear—a grizzly. Young Colter had been fascinated with the bas-relief in his youth and had once done a rubbing of it, like people do on the gravestones of the famous dead. The result, on gray newsprint, was presently hanging, framed, on a wall in his home on the East Coast.

He now looked around the room where he’d spent many, many hours with his eccentric father, as Ashton imparted endless rules about survival. Shaw recognized dozens of the objects and books that had absorbed his youthful attention like the chairback: maps, Native American weapons, lacquered boxes, books on politics and philosophy, paintings, one of his sister’s model locomotives, a bowie knife that his older brother and their father had forged.

Some good memories and some tough ones.

Then, it was time to tuck the past away. And return to the hunt for the threat—if indeed a threat existed.

The early warning message had been ambiguous. It was from a political science professor at the Bay Area university where his father had taught, in Berkeley, though not the famed Cal. The professor had been a student of Ashton’s and was well aware of the cranky man’s mission back then—and the enemies he’d made. The text the man sent read:

Colter, You should know. Someone called the university, asking about Ashton and his family. Directed to me because I knew him. My assistant took the call. A woman gave the name Margaret. No last name. She knew about the Compound but didn’t know where it was and was looking for it. She wouldn’t leave a number or say why she was interested. Said she’d call back but never did. My assistant said the woman seemed “edgy” and “blunt.” Maybe nothing but thought you should know.

Margaret…

The name meant nothing to Shaw, and as this had happened just an hour ago, he had not had a chance to pose the question to his mother, who was working in the garden.

He slogged on through the documents—the process slowed by the fact that anything Ashton generated was written by hand.

One preliminary question: Who exactly was at risk? He was the logical front-runner, given the number of suspects and escapees he had rounded up. Yet the mysterious caller had been interested not in Shaw himself but the “Compound” and the “family.” Maybe the danger was to someone else: His sister, Dorion, three years younger; his brother, Russell, six years his senior; or their mother, Mary Dove. Or even the Shaws as a whole.

And why might they be targets?

A very likely answer: because of the patriarch, Ashton Shaw.

It was here to the Compound that Ashton had fled with his wife and children years ago when the man had learned of threats against him due to research he had engaged in. He had poked the bear of corporate and government overreach and corruption, and learned that people were gunning for him.

Ashton had not been able to outrun the threat, though Shaw and Russell had teamed up to make sure that the main actors would never be able to harm anyone again.

But the enemies’ reach had been vast, and it was not impossible that some successors in interest might wish to pay a visit to the Shaw Compound to exact revenge on the family.

More documents. And more after that.

Ashton was the master of what he called the Never Rules, a list of prohibitions he formulated as the consummate survivalist.

Never be without a means of escape, never be without access to a weapon…

And a vital one.

Never write anything in any electronic medium now or in the future created…

A rule that Ashton had followed religiously. Hence the twenty pounds of paper before Shaw presently—covered in handwriting so small it would be described by graphic artists as “mice type.”

Completing his milestone half inch of documents, Shaw ran his hand over his short-cropped blond hair and stretched once again. He glanced out the window to see his mother planting seeds in the half-acre garden, the early start intended to beat a predicted inundation later that day. Mary Dove had the touch, and she would be raising a crop large and varied enough to keep herself, family visitors and neighbors in staples for a year. Colter Shaw enjoyed vegetables and fruit as much as anyone. You couldn’t argue with vitamins and whatever else they contained, but tending a plot of dirt from season to season remained an alien mystery to him, as it would to anybody who clocked more than 300K miles, give or take, in a Winnebago every year.

The Restless One…

A slim woman in her sixties with long white hair, today in a single braid, Mary Dove was pulling off her gardening gloves and walking toward the cabin. He had not yet told her about the early warning. He would now get a second cup of coffee and ask her if she knew of anyone named Margaret from the days when she and Ashton were in Berkeley, and if so was there anything concerning about her and her interest in the Compound.

Maybe it was a family friend who’d lost touch. Nothing more than that.

Of course:

Never assume what appears innocent is not a threat.

He heard Mary Dove in the kitchen, the water running, plates clanking. Shaw picked up his coffee cup and started out of the office, happening to glance down at the next sheet of paper on the stack.

He froze.

It was a draft of a letter Ashton had been composing. There were cross-outs and additions, the typical edits one would make in an effort to refine the final product.

Unremarkable in every way, except for one word.

Dr. Sheridan Tillis

Assistant Director of Curriculum

San Francisco Consolidated School Board

Hello, Sheridan:

Thank you for the recommendations of grade schools for my daughter Margaret. It was most helpful and I will keep you apprised of our decision. If you can think of any schools in Marin or Contra Costa as well, they would be appreciated. Please send to the address below. And, again, discretion would be appreciated.

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Kindest regards,

Ashton

The shocking word: daughter .

All right. Assess.

Shaw had never heard any talk that Ashton had been married before Mary Dove or that he had fathered a child before the marriage. In fact, Shaw knew, his parents had gotten together when they were young, meeting by coincidence in a prohibited area of a national park.

Was there some explanation that this letter was not evidence of an affair he’d had?

Well, the timing wasn’t going to clear him. The date indicated that it had been written after Ashton had been married to Mary Dove for fifteen years. A child going to grade school at that time meant that she had been conceived well into Shaw’s parents’ marriage.

And the address the recipient was supposed to send the recommendation to was a safe house in San Francisco whose existence Ashton had kept secret from the family; it had been discovered by Shaw and Russell only recently, long after the man’s death.

And there was that telling admonition regarding discretion.

“Colter, are you all right?”

Mary Dove stood in the doorway.

His heart thudded.

“Fine. A little tired.”

The universal response that people used as a fencing foil to parry a question. Men, mostly, Shaw believed.

She held a pot of coffee and lifted it. “More?”

Covering the letter as she walked up would be too suspicious. His mother had an eagle eye. So he strode quickly to her instead, and she poured. He liked milk but was concerned if he went to get some from the kitchen, she might wander to the stack of documents. He’d drink it black.

She turned, was saying something about neighbors coming for dinner.

Shaw’s mind was on the letter. “Good,” he said.

Mary Dove laughed.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I just said that we’re not doing mushrooms because Kathy’s violently allergic to them. And you said, ‘Good.’?”

“I mean good that you’re not serving them.”

His nieces—Dorion’s daughters—would have responded to his comeback as “lame.”

Which it certainly was.

Mary Dove gave him a questioning look but let the matter drop. She never pushed. If he wanted to talk to her about something, she knew he would. This was true about everyone in the Shaw family. Of course there were secrets. But if one clearly wanted them to remain hidden, none of the others pried.

It made for a curious but effective genre of familial harmony.

Setting down the coffee he’d lost all taste for, he stared at the letter, flipped through a dozen sheets below, but none were related to the “Margaret” note.

A secret half-sibling…

Mary Dove had been through a great deal in her marriage to Ashton Shaw. She was a talented, in-demand academic, researcher and physician; she’d supported his crusade against corrupt politicians and corporations; and she had endured, if not relished, the move to the Compound, where she, like the children, learned the art of survivalism.

It challenged her body, her spirit, her mind.

And ultimately his actions had left her a widow.

But in her heart, all the offspring knew, she believed in the same values and thought his decisions were the right ones. The couple was in unity, and always had been.

Or so it seemed.

Infidelity?

Beyond the pale.

Another two dozen sheets of paper.

Frustratingly, nothing.

All he knew was Margaret’s present age—mid- to late twenties. And probably Anglo, given the name, though an ethnic minority was certainly a possibility.

Why not give Ashton’s colleague in Berkeley her full name and relationship and number if there was nothing to hide?

And why not contact Shaw through his website, where people desperate to find missing loved ones left messages about rewards they were offering, which his business associates back in Florida, Teddy and Velma Bruin, monitored several times a day. They would have instantly forwarded notice.

What did she want?

Never speculate. Once you have sufficient facts, your process is analysis—not speculation.

Well, the sole answer was to go through the entire stack—now “only” seventeen or eighteen pounds of documents—one by one. Looking for Margaret or the words daughter or girl or child .

He bent forward and began again, when he was interrupted by a text.

The first words were arresting.

Need help. Now.

He read the full message, and his mind was instantly transported to a different place altogether. His father’s infidelity became a secondary issue, as did Margaret and her mission.

After sending a brief response, he charted a route to the destination provided in the text.

His eyes took in the documents once more, and he came to a decision. Gathering the stack up, he shoved the sheets into an empty orange gym bag sitting under a nearby table. He wouldn’t abandon the search for Margaret altogether. He placed a call to his local lawyer, Tony Rossano, whose office was a few miles away. The man sounded shocked at the news, which Shaw relayed nearly in a whisper. The attorney, sworn to secrecy, agreed he would continue the search for Margaret in the maze of Ashton’s writing, in Shaw’s absence.

After disconnecting, Shaw collected his black backpack from the floor beside the desk and walked into the kitchen, where he told his mother he had to leave immediately, and gave her what details he knew.

“Oh, my, I’m sorry to hear.”

He told her that he didn’t know how long it would take but to count on his missing the mushroom-free dinner.

They embraced and then he hurried out into the morning.

He fired up the white-and-tan Winnebago and headed down the lengthy drive.

GPS assured him his destination was forty-five minutes away.

A quick trip.

But as to the question: Would he be too late?

That was another matter entirely.