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 the 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 from 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 Scott. Well Jamie would find them, with or without his uncle’s help. They didn’t know him. They didn’t know what they were up against.
“It’s the next exit,” he said.
Don White and his wife had rented a house in Sparks, a suburb of Reno, just a few miles to the east. Alicia turned off and they descended into a grid system of pretty, tree-lined streets that seemed a world apart from the main city. And yet the poker tables and slot machines had spread out even here. Two huge towers, bookends that didn’t quite match, rose up on the other side of the freeway. This was the Nugget, another enormous casino and hotel complex. Many of the people who lived in Sparks worked there as waiters, croupiers, cleaners or security guards. There was no escaping it. It seemed to look down and sneer at the little community as if to say, I am your master. You owe your livelihood to me.
Every house in Sparks was different and each one stood on its own little plot of land. There were cottages made of brick, wooden bungalows with painted shutters and verandas, villas built in the Spanish style with wrought-iron gates and white stucco walls. Some of the houses had been decorated with wind chimes, dolls and flowerpots. Others had been allowed to fall into disrepair. It just depended who was living there – and it seemed that all sorts of people had chosen this neighbourhood for their home.
Number 402 Tenth Street was at the top end, close to the casino. It stood out at once because it was the most dilapidated building in the street, with a garden that had been allowed to run wild and a rusting barbecue on its side in the grass. It had a porch with a net screen running all the way round, but it was full of holes, as if it had been stabbed. The paint was flaking. The window frames were rusting. A single air-conditioning unit clung to one wall as if by its fingernails. The house was two storeys high with a garage to one side. There was a caravan parked in the driveway and from the look of it, it hadn’t been moved in a long time.
“This is it,” Jamie said.
“I sort of guessed.” Alicia didn’t stop outside. She drove a few doors further down and pulled up beneath an acacia tree. “Park in the shade,” she explained.
Jamie nodded. “Thanks,” he said. He reached for the door handle.
“Wait a minute!” Alicia stared at him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s OK. This is where I live. You don’t need to come in.”
“It’s not OK! I can’t just leave you here. I want to see you’re safe.”
“Then wait in the car-”
“No!” Alicia turned off the engine. “I’m coming in with you.” Jamie opened his mouth to argue but she stopped him. “You’ve been away all night,” she went on. “Maybe it would help you if you had someone to explain what happened – to back up your story.”
Jamie thought for a moment, then nodded. The two of them got out of the car and walked back along the pavement, passing the house next to the one where he lived. It belonged to a family with two children – girls – about ten and twelve years old. Jamie often saw them playing on the front lawn and their bicycles were there now, parked next to a swing. But he had never spoken to them, not in all the time he had been at Sparks. The girls had probably been told to avoid him and Scott. Nobody ever went near number 402. It was as if the whole neighbourhood knew that these weren’t people you wanted to meet.
He climbed three concrete steps and crossed the porch to the front door. He was glad now that this woman was with him. There was no way that Don or Marcie could blame him for what had happened the night before, but the trouble was that the two of them were likely to strike out first and ask questions later. He had disappeared for more than twelve hours. At least Alicia would give him time to explain why. They wouldn’t dare hurt him while she was there.
At the last minute he stopped and rang the doorbell. It had suddenly occurred to him that he couldn’t just walk in, not with a complete stranger. It wasn’t midday yet. Marcie probably wouldn’t be dressed. He listened for any sound of life, a door slamming open or the tramp of feet coming down the stairs, but there was nothing. As usual, the television was turned on in the front room. That didn’t mean anything. Marcie switched it on first thing in the morning and sometimes left it on all day, even when she was playing music on the radio in the same room. He could hear a man’s voice reading a news bulletin. He rang a second time. There was no answer.
“They’re not in,” Jamie said.
“Do you want to wait for them?”
“Yes.” Jamie nodded. “You don’t have to worry about me. You can leave me here if you want to.”
“No. I’ll come in too.”
She was determined. Jamie shrugged and opened the door. He had known it wouldn’t be locked. It never was. There was nothing worth stealing in the house and none of the furniture belonged to them anyway. Don had rented the place through an agency. The owners were in another state, and whoever they were, they certainly hadn’t been house-proud. The carpets were thin, the wallpaper peeling and the light bulbs hung without any shades. The two boys had mattresses on the floor in one of the rooms upstairs. Don and Marcie had a sagging bed next door. In the kitchen, there was a table and four chairs. That was about it. The house was little more than a shell. If it had been abandoned altogether, nobody would have noticed any difference.
“…with less than five months until election day and still no lead opening up between the two candidates, the pressure is most definitely on. Who will be the next president of the United States? It seems that only time will tell. This is Ed Radway reporting from Phoenix, Arizona…”
There was no audience in the room for the television presenter who chatted on regardless, searching for eye contact with two empty seats.
“This is where you live?” Alicia couldn’t keep the dismay out of her voice.
“We just rent it,” Jamie explained. He was feeling ashamed although he had no reason to. “You don’t have to stay,” he added.
“Excuse me! Are you still trying to get rid of me?”
“No.”
But he was. He didn’t like anyone seeing him here. He didn’t like admitting that this was where he lived. Alicia was looking at him and Jamie realized that he had barely spoken to her since they had left Reno – and when he had, it was only to be rude. And yet what she had said back at the hotel was true. She had rescued him. She had risked her life, driving through gunfire. And he hadn’t even thanked her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Forget it.” Alicia looked around her. “You’re right. It doesn’t look like there’s anyone at home,” she said. “What does this woman – Marcie – do for a living?”
“She doesn’t really do anything.”
“So how did you-”
But Alicia never finished the question. They both saw it at the same time. The image on the television had
