“I’d love it,” I say, my heart lurching into my throat. “Although I don’t see how your friend could possibly track Samantha down. Unlike Jonas, I don’t have an email or any other kind of online activity for Henn to trace.”
“I don’t think he’d necessarily need that,” Sarah says. “Right, Josh? Henny tracked down Oksana the Pimpstress for me without an email address, remember?”
“Yeah, but only because you’d figured out all those great leads for him to follow, thanks to your friend at the post office,” Josh says.
Whoa. I’m totally confused. What the fuck are these people talking about?
“Good point,” Sarah says. “Well, then, I guess we’ll just have to figure out some leads for Henn to follow here, too. A little brainstorming and we’ll probably have a whole list of leads.” She looks at me. “You game to try a little brainstorming to find your flight attendant, Ryan?”
“Of course,” I say, even though I’m not quite sure what the hell good it will do. “Thanks.”
The four of us drag chairs around poor, pathetic Kat and ready ourselves to “brainstorm.”
“Okay, first things first,” Sarah says, her tone all business. “Did Samantha mention her age?”
My pulse quickens slightly. “Twenty-seven.”
Sarah beams a full smile at me. “Now see? Two seconds of brainstorming and we’ve already drastically narrowed the field of flight attendants named Samantha.”
“Well, assuming that’s Samantha’s actual age,” Jonas chimes in. “Common wisdom is that men lie about their height and women lie about their age.”
“Samantha wasn’t lying about her age,” I say confidently. “Or anything else, for that matter. That’s what I liked about her the most: she doesn’t have a bullshit-bone in her body.”
“My kind of girl,” Jonas says. He winks at Sarah.
“Yeah, mine, too,” Josh says dryly, barely able to keep himself from cracking up. “Gotta love a woman who doesn’t have a bullshit-bone in her body.”
“Consider yourself punched,” Kat says weakly, her head lolling to the side.
Josh grabs Kat’s limp hand. “Aw, babe, I adore your bullshit-bone along with every other gorgeous bone in your body. You know that. I’m all-in, PG.”
Kat smiles weakly, apparently satisfied with that explanation. “Yeah, I know, PB.”
Inexplicably, my heart has begun clanging with excitement. Could this really work? “I don’t know if it helps at all,” I say, “but Samantha also said she’s a Virgo.”
“Fabulous,” Sarah says. “Now we’ve got a thirty-day window for Samantha’s date of birth. You never know what information Henn might find useful when he’s poking around.”
“But poking aroundwhere?” Josh says. “That’s the question. It’s not like there’s some centralized database cataloging all humans by first name, age, and occupation.”
Sarah’s face lights up. “Her employer, then.”
“Precisely,” Jonas says.
Sarah looks at me. “Ryan, did Samantha say which airline she works for?”
My shoulders slump. “No. We didn’t talk about our jobs at all. It was refreshing, actually.”
Josh’s phone buzzes and he looks at it. “It’s Henn, replying to my text. He says for us to call him in thirty minutes. He’s gotta finish something and then he says he’ll be happy to talk to us.”
“Great,” Sarah says, clearly energized. “Hmm. I gotta think, even if Samantha didn’t identify her airline, she probably said something from which we coulddeduceit.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Like, I dunno, maybe she mentioned her regular route? Or what time her usual flight departs or arrives? I’m grasping at straws here, I know, but I think figuring out Samantha’s employer is our best shot at tracking her down.”
“I agree,” Josh says. “Henn’s got to have somewhere specific to target or it’ll be like shooting a flare gun into outer space.”
I think for a moment. “Well, she mentioned she flies out of L.A.,” I say tentatively. But there’s something else, something much more important, niggling at my brain. But I can’t...Boom. All of a sudden, my brain clicks into place. “She was wearing a scarf around her neck as part of her uniform,” I blurt, excitement flooding me. “And it had a pattern on it.” I close my eyes, trying to visualize it. “Little red triangles—I think it was a logo.”
