The Business Trip

Bill, general manager of the news station where Trent works, receives a phone call from the Madison police chief informing him that Trent has been formally accused of murder. He spends the next few hours on the phone with various members of the organization, trying to align statements and calm advertisers. The following day, competing news outlets spread damaging information about Trent, including the fact that he had a DUI, that he has a history of bullying female subordinates, and that his ex-wife considered filing a restraining order against him. Bill also receives a phone call from a woman at the San Diego conference, who reports that Trent pursued Stephanie from the moment they met, skipped out on important sessions, and made inappropriate jokes while drunk. Furious that Trent has lied to him, Bill decides to fire him.

Convinced of his innocence, Trent believes that his general manager, Bill, will soon arrive at the police station to clear his name. Under questioning, he denies seeing Stephanie beyond the conference and explains that he was sick the entire weekend after the conference. He urges the police to speak to the other people he met at the news conference but does not tell them about skipping the mental health session, knowing that Stephanie was also absent then. He is shocked to learn that blood, hair, and semen-stained underwear with DNA linking him to Stephanie were found in his apartment. He also learns that an ID and DNA from Jasmine Littleton were found in his suitcase. Trent recognizes Jasmine as the woman he met at the bar but cannot explain why her belongings were found at his home.

Trent’s bail is set at $1 million. Confident that the station will pay the bail and support his lawsuit, Trent calls Bill. Bill questions Trent about his activities at the conference, and Trent is forced to admit that he skipped the afternoon session on mental health. Bill informs him that he has been fired for lying and that the station will not pay his bail.

Trent then calls a friend to ask for help with bail, but the friend does not want to be connected to Trent’s scandal. Desperate, Trent uses his last call to ask his ex-wife, Katrina, to bail him out. Katrina calls him a “monster” and reminds him that she knows from firsthand experience that he is capable of violence. Alone in his cell, Trent cries for the first time in years.

After returning from Atlanta, digital manager Lucy cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong with the police’s current story. She searches Trent’s social media and finds a picture of him and other conference-goers, including Stephanie, in which everyone but Stephanie is tagged. She reaches out to Dorothy, a news director grouped with Trent and Stephanie at the conference, and shares her suspicions. Dorothy mentions that Stephanie had chicken for lunch, shocking Lucy, who knows her as a vegetarian. Dorothy sends the conference sign-in sheet off for analysis, which shows that the “Stephanie” who signed in was right-handed. The real Stephanie is left-handed. After listening to a recording of the real Stephanie speaking, Dorothy believes that the woman she met was not the real Stephanie. Lucy and Dorothy decide to contact the police.

Jasmine boards her plane to Denver and is seated next to a young, professional woman named Stephanie. When another passenger notes how similar they look, Stephanie mentions a website that uses photo recognition to find your doppelganger. Jasmine begins to fantasize about taking over Stephanie’s life in order to fully escape Glenn. She questions Stephanie about her life and learns about the news conference in San Diego. When Stephanie goes to the bathroom, Jasmine steals her ID.

Flashbacks reveal that Jasmine killed her classmate Allison in high school out of jealousy for her perfect life and then framed Allison’s boyfriend, Drake. Jasmine becomes resentful of what she imagines is Stephanie’s perfect life and determines to become her. In Denver, Jasmine buys a ticket to San Diego, where she follows Stephanie to her hotel. She cuts and dyes her hair so that she looks as much like Stephanie as possible.

Jasmine waits outside of Stephanie’s hotel for an hour. She sees a group of drunk professionals (including a man implied to be Trent) enter the hotel. When she is confident that the lobby is empty, she enters the hotel and uses Stephanie’s stolen ID to obtain a key to her room. Jasmine is shocked to find that Stephanie has not used her safety latch, and she is able to enter the room without detection. She finds Stephanie asleep in bed next to a bottle of Ambien. As Jasmine studies Stephanie’s carefully laid-out clothes and shoes, she grows increasingly jealous and resentful of her, grouping her in with rich, spoiled women like her high school classmate Allison. Determined not to make her trip to San Diego a waste, Jasmine prepares to smother Stephanie with a pillow.

As Jasmine smoothers Stephanie, she relives the abuse she faced from Glenn, her mother, and Allison. She stuffs Stephanie’s body into an oversized suitcase and reasons that she has about 12 hours before the body begins to smell. Jasmine finds a sticky note with the passwords for Stephanie’s phone and laptop, which she uses to learn as much as possible about Stephanie’s life. On the laptop, she finds a document with passwords for Stephanie’s bank and other important accounts. She decides to live as Stephanie at the conference for one day before emptying her bank accounts and disappearing to live a new life. She believes that she can send messages to Stephanie’s friends and family that will make them assume that Stephanie just wanted a fresh start. She goes to sleep, thrilled by the idea of becoming Stephanie.

The next day, Jasmine attends the conference as Stephanie, posting a photo on Stephanie’s social media to avoid suspicion. She meets and is immediately disgusted by Trent, who pursues her aggressively. During the conference, Jasmine struggles to keep up with the professional lingo and worries that others will begin to suspect that she is not a news director. After an uncomfortable lunch in which Trent tells her all about his life, Jasmine asks for two bags of ice to bring to her room to cool Stephanie’s body. When she returns to the room, a maintenance man attempts to enter to offer her a new fridge. Jasmine rejects the offer and Trent’s offer to go out drinking, though she accepts his key, realizing that she can pin Stephanie’s murder on him. Jasmine researches a spot along the coast to dump Stephanie’s body and then reaches out to her friend Raven for help framing Trent in Atlanta.