Alter Ego

45

Gray dawn broke through the snow as Craig Dawson completed his overnight maintenance shift at the Duluth Airport. Stormy nights always made for hard, backbreaking work inside and outside the terminal building. He’d been on the job for sixteen hours straight when his boss finally told him to go home. He was ready for a hot shower, a hot breakfast, and a cold beer.

Craig trudged across the skyway that led from the terminal to the parking garage. He wore his heavy coat, unzipped, his overalls, and his dirty work boots. An empty coffee thermos dangled from his hand. Snow had crusted on the skyway windows, but below him he could see the parking lot, which was mostly empty of cars. Flights had largely been canceled throughout the previous evening, and no one was here to make drop-offs and pickups. The handful of cars in long-term parking wore deep caps of snow.

He reached the covered ramp and made his way to his white F-150 pickup truck. As he turned on the engine, Maroon 5 blared from the radio. He dug in his coat pocket for a bottle of Advil and swallowed two pills. He wiped his brow, which was damp with sweat despite the cold.

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.