No one else was leaving at the same time he was. He drove through the garage and used his key card to exit onto the one-way access road. He was distracted, thinking about what the driveway would look like at his farmhouse. He kept a plow attachment on his pickup at this time of year, and he knew he’d have to push through a quarter mile of eighteen-inch snow to make it to his garage.
He tapped the wheel to the music as he neared the four-way stop at Haines Road. He wasn’t looking for other traffic on the lonely highway, so he had to slam on his brakes to avoid a sleek black limousine that breezed through the intersection without stopping. Craig leaned on his horn, but the limo driver didn’t even slow down as he cruised toward the airport terminal.
Annoyed, Craig rolled down the window and shoved his hand into the cold air with his middle finger extended. He shouted a curse, which no one could hear. It made him feel better.
He continued eastward through the four-way stop on his way home.
But he kept thinking about the limousine.
He also remembered the business card tucked into his wallet and the name of the woman who’d given him the card. JoLynn Fields.
He’d met her at Sir Benedict’s the previous Thursday, when he’d gone to listen to the weekly Celtic Jam over a pint of Boddington’s. JoLynn, with her red-and-blue hair, was obviously an out-of-towner. The two of them were both around thirty, and when JoLynn had started chatting him up at the bar, he’d thought at first that she was hitting on him. Then he realized she was talking to all the men, asking questions about who they were and what they did and dropping off business cards.
She was a reporter looking for spies.
When she found out that Craig worked at the airport, she’d bought him two more drinks and let him put a hand on her leg. As she left, she told him, “If you see anybody famous coming or going or if something looks weird to you, give me a call. There’s a hundred bucks in it for every solid tip and five hundred more if it turns out to be something that gets in the paper.”
Craig thought an early-morning limousine was just the kind of thing that might be worth a hundred bucks.
He turned his pickup around and headed back toward the airport. At the four-way stop, he turned into the airport complex and was surprised to find the limousine stopped in the small cell phone lot just east of the terminal building. It wasn’t dropping off; it was picking up. Craig pulled into the same lot and parked a few empty spaces from the black limo.
He waited. Five minutes passed. Then ten. He was about to give up and go home when he saw lights in the sky. A private jet dropped below the blanket of dark clouds and zeroed in on the main runway. As Craig watched, it touched down, slipped a little, and decelerated all the way to the fence on the other side of the grassy field in front of him.
Craig knew his planes. He recognized it as a Gulfstream G280. It was very sleek and very expensive. He grabbed a pen and notepad from his glove compartment, and while the plane was turning around on the tarmac, he jotted down the tail number.
The limousine headed out of the cell phone lot toward the terminal building. Craig watched it go, and then he followed. The limo didn’t stop at the terminal doors; instead, it continued past the main building and turned into the driveway of the rental car parking lot. Craig waited outside the lot and watched with the engine running and his phone in his hands. The limo headed up to the locked gate that led onto the taxiway, and a few seconds later, the Gulfstream taxied into view on the other side of the fence. A guard met the limo and opened the gate, and the car drove up beside the private jet. The driver got out, ready to open the rear door.
The door of the plane swung outward. Metal stairs unfurled to the pavement. One passenger got out of the plane and carefully descended the steps in the light snow. Craig couldn’t see who it was. He zoomed in as far as he could and snapped several shots, but he knew the images were out of focus. He didn’t have time to do anything else. When the lone passenger had deplaned and climbed into the rear of the limousine, the steps went back up inside the jet and the door closed.
The limo headed for the gate.
Craig shot off in his pickup truck before anyone started asking questions. He’d text the photos to JoLynn Fields as soon as he got home.
This was definitely worth a hundred bucks.
Maybe more.
46
Lori Fulkerson was gone.
Serena and Stride arrived at her house, which was steps from the overpass of the I-35 freeway, in the semidarkness of the early morning. There was still a police officer parked outside to watch the house. Lori’s red Yaris was parked in the yard on the matted-down snow. Even so, when they pounded on the door, the only answer was frenzied barking from Lori’s terrier. They looked through the front windows and didn’t see anyone inside.
“Did anything happen overnight?” Serena asked the cop. “Did you see anyone?”
“Negative,” the officer replied. “There were no cars on the road during the storm. Nobody came or went. If she left the house, she left on foot, and she didn’t use the front door.”
“She can’t have gone far,” Stride said. “I’ll check inside and make sure the house is empty.”
Serena nodded. “I’ll go around back.”
She climbed down the steps to the front yard. Ahead of her, on the other side of the narrow dirt road, was a mass of trees and brush marking the fringe of Keene Creek. She couldn’t see the freeway beyond the trees, but she could hear the roar of the car engines. She struggled through the snow to the back of the house, where a wooden deck led down from the rear door into the grass.
There were footprints in the fresh snow. Lori Fulkerson had left a trail for them.
Serena grabbed her phone. “Jonny, I’ve got her. She left tracks leading toward the freeway. I’m going to follow her as far as I can.”
“I’ll get Guppo to send backup your way. Be careful.”
“Understood.”
Serena watched the footprints heading away from the house. The plows hadn’t reached the back roads, so there was no difference between the snow in the streets and the snow in the woods. Wherever Lori had gone, she didn’t seem to be hiding her route, as if she knew that sooner or later the police would follow her.
The footprints went from the house to the dirt road, then veered into the trees toward a bridge leading over the frozen creek. Serena followed, pushing through the deep snow. She crossed the bridge, and where the woods ended, she found herself adjacent to the I-35 overpass. Matching sets of concrete pillars, like football goalposts, stretched below the highway decks. Ahead of her was a children’s playground and a small parking lot.
She remembered the photographs in Lori Fulkerson’s living room.
Is that your father?
Yeah. Those were taken at the playground near the freeway when I was six.
The footsteps led to the climbing equipment. Serena could see that Lori had stopped for a while and sat down at the base of the kiddy slide. The snow had been brushed away there.
Why?
What was this all about?
Beyond the playground, the footprints continued under the overpass to Sixty-Third Avenue. The plows already had come through, erasing any evidence of where Lori had gone next. Serena walked into the middle of the street. The road was empty, and the morning was still mostly dark. The freeway overpass ended at a wall built into the side of a sharp hill. The parallel concrete beams overhead were like railroad ties. She turned completely around, looking for more footprints, but Lori’s trail seemed to stop.
Serena listened as the snow hushed every sound. Every few seconds, car lights passed on the freeway overhead with a thunder of tires. Otherwise, it was desolate here. There was no one else around. She could hear herself breathe, and she could see the steam clouding in front of her face. She felt the cold. The lingering flurries brushed like fingers against her cheek.
She put a question into her mind: Where are you, Aimee?
She didn’t expect an answer. That wasn’t how life worked.
Then, in the silent aftermath, she had the strangest experience of her life. It was as if a voice had whispered in her head. She was utterly alone, but she heard it as vividly as if Aimee had been standing next to her and murmuring in her ear.
Save me.