“You’re the one who told my father where to find me.”
“I thought the old man would want to know.”
“You still work for him?” Jane asked.
“No. Got out of that a few years back. I have a baby now.” Ashlee reached for something under the desk and came back with a wallet. She opened it and showed Jane a photo of a little girl with blond ringlets and eyes as big and blue as her mother’s. “That’s Kathryn. She’s two.”
Jane smiled, although a phantom pain raced through her insides. She tamped it down. “She’s beautiful.”
“She’s mommy’s little angel.” Ashlee put the wallet away and looked at Jane with a furrowed brow. “What happened to you, Shan? Why don’t you remember anything?”
“I don’t know,” Jane admitted. “What do you remember about me?”
“We were friends-we kind of had to be, since we were the youngest in the crew. My daddy was your daddy’s right-hand man. They planned a lot of the scams together.”
“Did I tell you where I was going when I left Reno?”
Ashlee shook her head. “We’d drifted apart by then. My pop had gone out on his own, so we didn’t see much of you and your pop anymore. I just heard you took up with some older guy and he took you out of here.”
“Was his name Clint? Clint Holbrook?”
“I don’t know. I never heard the name.”
Another dead end, Jane thought.
“Are you and your fellow going to be in town long? Maybe my husband and I could take you out to dinner-”
Jane shook her head. “We’re heading out of town soon. But it was nice to see you. Listen-on the phone this morning, you mentioned I could buy a city map here-”
Ashlee reached under the counter and pulled out a map. “Here. On me.”
Jane took the map and smiled her thanks. “It was good to see you again, Ashlee.”
“I hope you get your memory back, Shan. Some of the old times are worth remembering.”
Jane smiled at Ashlee and gave a little wave before she headed out of the office into the waning sunlight.
“Going somewhere?” The sound of Joe’s low drawl made her jump.
She whirled to face him, placing her hand over her pounding heart. “Don’t do that!”
“What? Sneak around?”
She sighed and started walking back toward the motel room. “I just came down here to get that city map we never got earlier.”
He fell into step. “Planning on a little sightseeing in the next couple of hours?”
“I thought we might go look for the Lady Luck if you woke up in time.”
He put his hand on her arm, stopping her in the middle of the walkway. “You want to see your father?”
“I may never see him again,” she said softly, surprised by the bleak emotion accompanying that thought. “I just don’t want to leave without asking him a few more questions about my former life. Can you understand that?”
The hand on her arm moved gently, his touch becoming a caress. “Yeah. I can.”
They returned to the motel room together and unfolded the map on Joe’s bed. Jane found Pridemore Avenue on the map. “It’s about twelve blocks from here.”
“Better grab a jacket, then.”
She looked at him. “We’ve got a long drive tonight once we get that rental car. I don’t think you need to walk twelve blocks in the cold.”
“You’re not going by yourself.”
“I know that. But I have an idea.” She picked up the phone and rang the front desk.
Ashlee answered. “Front desk.”
“Ashlee, it’s Shannon Dugan,” Jane said. “Do you have a car?”
“PRIDEMORE is up ahead,” Joe said from the passenger seat. He was playing navigator while Jane drove, though he’d questioned that arrangement when she admitted, as she belted herself behind the steering wheel, that she wasn’t entirely sure she knew how to drive a stick shift.
But apparently she did, because she handled the borrowed Honda Prelude with skill, negotiating Reno’s busy streets without any difficulty. He suspected that more of her memory was coming back to her-in pieces, perhaps, but sliding back into her consciousness little by little, making her feel more at ease with the world she lived in.
Joe could tell that she was growing nervous about seeing her father again. He laid his hand on her shoulder and gave a little squeeze. “It’s going to be fine,” he assured her. “We’ll find Harlan, you can ask him the questions you want to ask him, and then we can go.”
“I’m not sure what I want to ask him,” she admitted.
“You said you think he knows more about Clint Holbrook than he’s telling. You could start there.”
Jane turned the Honda onto Pridemore Avenue and glanced his way. “How much farther?”
“Two blocks up, according to this map.” Ashlee had given them the actual address of the Lady Luck, marking it for them on the map before she handed Jane the keys to the Honda. Joe wasn’t completely at ease putting their safety in the hands of a former con artist Jane barely remembered, but having the car at their disposal would at least make them more mobile if they ran into trouble.
The Lady Luck Tavern was a two-story storefront building in the middle of the block, with only a neon beer sign in the window to differentiate it from the other shabby-looking shops and offices surrounding it. A small sign advertised parking in the rear, but Joe spotted an open parking slot on the street half a block up and suggested that Jane park there instead. “I don’t want to get trapped in a back parking area,” he explained.
Traffic on this part of Pridemore Avenue was light, and the cars parked along the street were older-model vehicles for the most part, a few of them well past their primes. As he and Jane crossed the street and headed for the tavern entrance, he noticed that the dark-tinted tavern windows allowed for no good look inside. It gave him an uneasy feeling, and on instinct he reached behind him to feel for the holster and weapon that wasn’t there.
He dropped his hand back to his side and caught Jane’s arm as she started for the door. “Wait a second.”
She looked up at him. “What is it?”
Before he could answer, he heard a muffled cry coming from somewhere behind the building.
His instinct was to go back to the car and get the hell out of there, but Jane exclaimed, “That’s my father!” and started running toward the narrow alley between the tavern and the insurance company office next door.
Cursing softly, he ran after her, grabbing her arm before she darted into the open area behind the building. “Wait a second!” he hissed.
The sounds of a struggle echoed through the alley, and Joe had to hold on to her to keep her where she was. “Someone’s hurting him!” she whispered urgently.
“You stay right here.” He crept forward to the edge of the building and peered around the corner.
In the dimly lit parking lot at the back of the bar, two large, muscular men took turns pummeling Harlan Dugan while the older man tried to fend off their blows.
It was a warning beating, Joe recognized immediately, not a real attempt on the old man’s life. The thugs were pulling their punches too much to be really serious about it, like a couple of tomcats toying with a scared mouse.
He didn’t see either man carrying any weapons, though he supposed they might have weapons concealed beneath their jackets or in their boots. It wasn’t a risk he wanted to take, however. Not with Jane’s life at stake, too. Better to call 911 and tell the cops there was an assault taking place in the parking lot of the Lady Luck. He turned to tell Jane his decision.
But she was nowhere in sight.
Chapter Thirteen
Joe hurried up the alley, biting off a string of curses. He’d told her to stay put, damn it! Where the hell had she gone?
He had almost reached the street when two enormous men filled the narrow opening of the alleyway, carrying what appeared to be large nightsticks. They stopped short, apparently surprised to find him staring back at them.
