Chapter 18: The Wrong City
The air in Frankfurt Airport was the same temperature everywhere. It was a curated, neutral chill that felt nothing like the outside world. Matt stood near a towering window overlooking the tarmac, watching a Lufthansa Airbus glide soundlessly into the gray morning. The polished steel and vast expanses of reflective floor made the terminal feel like a cathedral to transit, a place where people were processed, not housed.
He’d landed in Munich two hours ago. A brisk, pointless walk through baggage claim, a growing knot in his stomach as he scanned the crowd for a familiar straight-backed silhouette, a flash of dark hair. Nothing. He’d called the hotel listed on her now-cancelled reservation. They had no record of her checking in.
That’s when he’d called Elliot back, the connection crackling with static and his agent’s audible disbelief.
“Frankfurt?” Elliot had yelled. “She got off in Frankfurt? Who does that? It’s not a destination, it’s a purgatory with better pastries!”
A follow-up call to Elliot’s “guy” confirmed it. Dasha Waldorf had a through-ticket to Munich. Her boarding pass was scanned at the gate in LA. But when the flight landed in Frankfurt for the connection, she never re-boarded. Her seat to Munich had flown empty.
So Matt had gotten back on a plane. A short, shuddering hop that felt longer than the entire transatlantic flight. Now he was here, in the nexus of her disappearance. The departure boards flickered with a hypnotic rhythm of cities and times: Lisbon, Barcelona, Vienna, Prague. She could be on any of them. Or none of them.
He walked. He circled the vast Terminal 1, his carry-on bag rolling behind him like a useless anchor. He checked cafes, his eyes skimming over tourists and business travelers. He approached a harried-looking information desk clerk.
“I’m trying to find someone. A passenger who might have missed a connection last night. Is there a way to page her?”
The clerk, a young man with tired eyes, gave him a practiced, sympathetic smile that didn’t reach them. “Without a flight number or confirmation, sir, it is not possible. Privacy regulations. You could try the airline directly.”
He had tried. The airline, citing the same draconian privacy laws, would only confirm she had not taken the second leg of her journey. They could not and would not say if she’d booked another. She had simply stepped out of the stream.
He found himself in a quieter corridor, lined with rows of identical blue chairs. He sat. He took out his phone, stared at it. He could call Elliot again, demand more invasive digging, more calls to more shady “guys.” But the image that came to him was the tear-stained note. Handled. She hadn’t just left a job. She had erased her trail. She was a woman who filed a crisis in a personnel folder. Of course she would vanish cleanly.
A family trundled past, the parents bickering in low German, a child whining for a toy. The normality of it was a slap. He was sitting in an airport chair in Germany, chasing a ghost, while his life in LA—the film, the schedules, the carefully built edifice of his career—waited. He thought of the temp crying over his calendar. He thought of the Atlantic Cross producers, now hearing about his “creative breakdown.”
He unfolded the crumpled boarding pass stub from his pocket—the one from his LAX to Munich flight. He’d kept it, a stupid talisman. He looked at the creased paper, the meaningless string of numbers and letters. This was the sum total of his grand gesture: a piece of trash and a deepening sense of foolishness.
The reality, cold and simple as the airport air, settled over him. She didn’t want to be found. More than that, she had engineered it so she couldn’t be. He could hire a small army of private investigators, could flood European airports with her photo, could turn this into a dramatic, movie-worthy quest. And it would just be another performance. A louder, more expensive version of the note in the alley. An imposition.
She had seen the performance with Chloe. She had heard every unspoken word. She had written her one-word review and left the theater.
He stood up. The movement felt heavy, final. He wheeled his bag back towards the central concourse, towards the towering boards. He scanned them not for arrivals, but for departures. He found what he needed: a direct flight to Los Angeles, leaving in three hours.
He bought a ticket. First class. An act of quiet surrender. He didn’t call Elliot. He just sent a single text: Inbound LAX, UA 934. Get the temp tissues.
The flight back was a study in stillness. He drank water. He stared at the moving map on the screen, watching the little icon of the plane crawl over the Atlantic, retracing the route he’d taken with such frantic purpose not even a full day before. The hopeful tension that had wired him was gone, replaced by a hollow fatigue. He had crossed an ocean and found nothing but his own reflection in an airport window.
He couldn’t find her.
The wheels touched down in LA with a shriek of rubber and a jolt that felt like punctuation. The familiar, smog-hazed light bleached the cabin. He walked through customs, a ghost in his own city. The driver was waiting, holding a sign with a false name. Elliot had, of course, sent someone.
“Rough flight, Mr. Smith?” the driver asked, stowing his bag.
“Something like that,” Matt said, sliding into the backseat. He looked out at the sprawl of LA, the palm trees silhouetted against the evening glare. It was the same. The studio would be the same. His trailer, his marks, his lines—all waiting. The only thing that had changed was the quiet, lavender-scented space where Dasha’s desk had been, which now screamed even louder in its silence. He was back. She was gone. The note, still in his pocket, was now just a receipt.