Nightrise

But you're not going to find him."

    She was right. Jamie knew it. But it didn't matter. He couldn't stay here, not without Scott. "I have to see Uncle Don," he said.
    "Don?" The woman blinked. 'You mean Don White? His name was on the posters. Is he your uncle?"
    "No. He's nothing — but he made us call him that. He'll be wondering where we are. He was there at the theatre last night. Maybe he can help."
    "I'm not so sure…"
    "I don't care what you think." Jamie took a deep breath. "We were renting a house. It's over in Sparks.
    There's him and Marcie. I have to tell them what happened. They'll contact the cops."
    The woman thought for a moment. Then she nodded. "Why don't you call them?"
    There was a telephone on a table beside the bed. Jamie picked it up and dialed the number. He waited, listening as it rang at the other end. There was no reply. He let it ring a dozen times. Then he hung up.
    "If they cared about you, they'd have called the police already," the woman said.
    "How do you know they haven't?"
    The woman sighed. "Fair enough. I haven't seen the papers yet…"
    'You knew what happened." Jamie couldn't keep the hostility out of his voice. "Why didn't you call them?"
    "I wanted to talk to you first."
    "Great. Well, now you've talked to me. How long did you say I've been here? Eleven hours. That means you've given them eleven hours to get away with Scott. I don't even know your name but you don't have anything to do with me. I just want to go home."
    "I'm not stopping you!" The woman raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. 'You want to go home?
    That's fine! In fact I'll drive you there myself. Okay?"
    Jamie nodded.
    "Then let's go."
    The woman went over to the door and the two of them stepped outside. Jamie screwed up his eyes as the sun hit him. The door opened onto a parking lot and he could feel the heat, bouncing off the tarmac, roasting his forehead and cheeks. The air smelled of burning rubber and gasoline. The Bluebird Inn was an old-fashioned building, two stories high, mainly white-painted wood. It had been named after the state bird of Nevada but if anything with wings came close to the place, it was more likely to be a plane.
    The motel had been constructed exactly opposite the runway and even as he stood there, he heard the roar of a jet — though whether it was taking off or landing, he couldn't see.
    'You always stay here?" he asked.
    The woman glanced at him. "I always stay near airports," she replied.
    Why? What did she mean? But Jamie didn't ask her. Whatever her problems were, they had nothing to do with him.
    She had rented a car, a silver, four-door Ford Focus, and Jamie saw that she had called someone out early that morning. The window had been repaired. But one of the wing mirrors was missing. That would cost her plenty when she took the car back. He got into the front seat and closed the door.
    "Alicia McGuire," the woman said.
    "I'm sorry?"
    ''You didn't ask me my name, but I thought you'd like to know it anyway," She started the engine. "So where are we heading?"
    "It's just off Route 80.I can show you."
    They drove together in silence. Jamie looked out of the window as the offices and hotels of Reno slipped past. He knew them all. They had become as familiar to him as the features on his own face. And yet now, somehow, they seemed a long way away. As they drove up the ramp and onto the freeway, heading east, he felt a sense of dislocation. It was as if someone had taken a giant pair of scissors the night before and cut a straight line through his life.
    The air-conditioning was on full and he let the air current wash over him, separating his clothes from his skin. He hoped it would wake him up. He was still groggy, perhaps from the drug, perhaps from the shock of what had happened. He tried to make sense of the events at the theatre but he couldn't. At least four men, perhaps more, had come for him and Scott. Two of them had been in the audience. The others had appeared out of nowhere. But the whole thing had been carefully planned. That much was obvious.
    And if it hadn't been for Jagger, the two of them wouldn't even have made it out of the theatre.
    Frank Kirby's dog. Jamie remembered the struggle and hoped the animal was all right. Frank was always worrying about the dog…It was old and had a weak heart. Jamie knew that the men in the theatre would have quite happily killed Jagger without so much as a second thought — and these were the same people who had taken