transportation.”
“I can send you money to rent a car or something-”
“Thank you,” he said, touched by the offer, “but I’d have to show ID and a credit card. I can’t risk that, either. I need you to meet me here and rent the car for me. Do you think you can get away without notice?”
“When and where?” she asked without hesitation.
He swallowed hard and looked at Jane. “I need you to take the first flight you can find to Reno. Tonight.”
“Reno? Tonight?”
“I’m sorry-I know it’s an imposition-”
“I’ll be there. Let me arrange it and I’ll call you right back with the flight information. Is this the number you want me to use?”
“Yes.” He’d called her on the disposable cell phone he’d bought when they’d first hit town. He had a couple hundred minutes to burn-surely enough to get them back to Wyoming safely. “I’ll wait for your call.”
He rang off and looked at Jane. “She agreed.”
“I heard. Was that hard?”
He found the sympathy in Jane’s eyes as unnerving as his phone call with his estranged stepmother. He looked away from her, pressing the heels of his hands against his gritty eyes. Was he ever going to get a decent night’s sleep again? Weariness was fogging his brain, weakening him.
He’d spent the past year shoring up the defenses Jane had dismantled during the few months of their relationship. That she’d knocked down years’ worth of emotional walls so quickly had come as a shock the first time around. That she was starting to knock them all down again, after all she’d put him through, scared the hell out of him.
His cell phone rang, giving him a start. He looked at Jane. She licked her lips and glanced down at the phone.
He answered. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” Melissa said. “I found an afternoon flight out of Jackson Hole. I can make it, no problem. The flight arrives around ten o’clock at the Reno airport.”
“Got it. Listen-you need to pack some food in your bag. I don’t want you to have to leave your room until you check out the next day. Take enough to get you through.”
Melissa paused. “Do you think I could be in danger?”
“I’m trying to make sure you aren’t,” he replied. “Thanks for this, Melissa.”
“I’m just glad you’ve given me a chance to repay you,” she said, her voice dark with tears. “I’ll never forgive myself for being too cowardly to stay and fight for you.”
Joe tamped down the emotions her words evoked, trying to stay focused on the present. He and Jane needed to spend the afternoon resting up for the long drive back to Wyoming. He couldn’t afford to wallow in old regrets.
“When does she arrive?” Jane asked after he hung up.
“Ten.” He stretched out atop the motel bed. “Better try to get a long nap, or we’ll fall asleep at the wheel.”
She lay facing him, her eyes wide with apprehension. “Are you sure you want to take me back there with you?”
He turned to face her. “It’s why I went to Idaho in the first place.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “That seems so long ago.”
“Five days.”
“Is that all?”
He nodded, his eyelids drooping. Rolling onto his back, he let them shut. “Get some sleep,” he murmured.
Her soft sigh was the last thing he heard as he drifted off.
Jane woke with a start, her heart racing. She pressed her hand to her aching chest and tried to grab the disappearing fragments of memory. She had a sense of pain. Fear. She strained for more but nothing connected into any sort of narrative she could make sense of.
In the other bed, a snuffling sound drew her attention. Joe lay asleep, his breathing slow and steady. She stared at him, overwhelmed with a fierce, unfamiliar sense of joy. For a moment, she’d had the terrible sense that he was gone from her forever, but the sight of him drove out the fear, leaving her weak and trembling with relief. She slid off the bed and made it halfway across the space between them before she stopped herself.
What was she going to do? Crawl into bed with him?
She sank onto the edge of her bed and watched him sleep, slowing her breathing to match his. Her pulse calmed in response, approaching normal. But she knew that sleep was now out of the question.
Pushing to her feet, she crossed to the window. Afternoon had begun to creep into evening, the desert sun dipping toward the Sierra Nevada range west of town. Jane watched the shadows on the rough-hewn mountains deepen, creases and folds appearing out of nowhere as if the crags were aging before her eyes.
She checked her watch. Almost five. Five hours to go before they had to meet Joe’s stepmother at the airport.
Then home to Wyoming.
She smiled bleakly at the thought. Home.
If you judged such a concept by family connections, she was already home. Her father still lived here in Reno, had apparently done so for at least eight years and maybe more. Put down roots.
And she was leaving here without asking the questions that only her father could answer.
She let the curtains drop and turned back to look at Joe. He was sleeping deeply. God knew he could use it. Between his injury and their adrenaline-fed flight south to Nevada, he’d slept little in the past few days. She couldn’t wake him now just to appease her curiosity.
But she couldn’t just sit here and do nothing, either.
Moving silently, she shrugged on a light jacket, picked up one of the room keys from the bedside table and crossed to the door. As quietly as she could, she opened the door and slipped outside.
The setting sun brought dipping temperatures, carried on a light breeze that lifted her hair and made her burrow deeper into her jacket. She gazed up the busy street, feeling a bit disoriented, as if still trapped in whatever nightmare had jarred her awake. A vague sense of foreboding lingered with her, making her queasy.
She finger-combed her hair back from her face, trying to settle her still-rattled nerves. She felt the need to do something constructive with the last few hours of their time in Reno. But what?
To begin with, she could at least go down to the front office and buy one of the Reno city maps the desk clerk had told her about on the phone earlier. She and Joe had never picked one up, sidetracked by finding her father waiting for them outside their room.
The front office was little more than a small kiosk located at the western end of the squatty two-floor motel. A young woman about Jane’s age, with short blond hair and pale blue eyes, looked up as Jane entered. Jane saw a flicker of recognition in the other woman’s eyes and something clicked into place. “Ashlee.”
The desk clerk’s eyes widened. “So you remember.”
Jane shook her head. “Not really. Just-pieces.”
Ashlee flattened her hands on the glass top of the front desk, her expression guarded. “Long time no see.”
