CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The motel room felt smaller at two in the morning, the walls pressing in as Kari hunched over her laptop, the glow of the screen the only light in the darkness.
She'd been at this for hours, following digital threads that led nowhere, searching for any trace of Diana Shepherd before she became Diana Shepherd.
The ice in her glass of water had long since melted, and her eyes burned from staring at the screen, but she couldn't stop.
Something was wrong with Diana's story. Something fundamental. And Kari was going to find out what.
The woman was a ghost. That was the only way to describe it.
In an age where everyone left digital footprints everywhere they went, Diana Shepherd had somehow managed to materialize out of thin air approximately six years ago.
Before that—nothing. No high school yearbook photos on Facebook, no old tweets or Glimmer posts from her twenties, no mentions in local newspapers from whatever small Midwestern town she claimed to be from.
Kari had tried everything she could think of. Social media archives using the Wayback Machine. Modeling industry forums where aspiring models discussed agencies and scouts. Gossip sites that chronicled the rise and fall of would-be stars with vicious glee.
She'd searched for Diana Shepherd, Diana S.
, D. Shepherd, and every other variation of the name she could imagine.
She'd looked for women matching Diana's approximate age—mid-thirties now, so late twenties when she started at Image Management—who had worked in modeling in the mid-2010s and then vanished from the industry.
Nothing concrete. Or rather, too much noise and not enough signal—hundreds of young women who had come to L.A. with dreams and disappeared back into obscurity when those dreams didn't pan out. There was no way to know which of them, if any, had become Diana Shepherd.
She shifted her approach, searching for scandals and breakdowns instead of specific names.
The modeling industry had no shortage of those—young women who cracked under the pressure, who made scenes at fashion shows or had very public meltdowns that ended up on gossip blogs and entertainment sites.
Most of them faded quietly into history, their fifteen minutes of infamy forgotten as the next scandal took their place.
But one thread on an old modeling forum caught her attention. The post was from seven years ago, archived on a site that catalogued industry gossip and rumors:
Anyone remember that girl who completely lost it at Fashion Week a few years back?
The one from Iowa or Nebraska or wherever?
She was walking the runway—pretty big show too, one of the tent shows—and she just stopped in the middle.
Like, completely froze. Then she started crying, couldn't move, couldn't speak.
Security had to literally carry her off the runway.
Heard she got institutionalized after that. Total career ender.
The replies were vague and contradictory, the way memories get when they're passed from person to person over years.
Some people claimed to remember the incident vividly, describing details that couldn't possibly all be true.
Others thought it was an urban legend, a cautionary tale passed around to scare newcomers about the pressure of the industry.
No one could agree on the model's name, or exactly when it had happened, or which show it had been.
But the timeline fit. Seven or eight years ago would put it right before Diana started working at Image Management.
Kari kept digging, following links from one archived forum to another.
She found another reference on an old gossip blog, a brief mention of "that model who went crazy and ended up in a psych ward—remember her?
Whatever happened to her anyway?" The post was from six years ago, with no replies.
Again, no name. Again, no specific details.
Just fragments of a story that people half-remembered and couldn't quite piece together.
A model from the Midwest. A very public breakdown. Hospitalization. And then... what? A new name, a new identity, a job as an assistant at the very agency that recruited vulnerable young women?
It wasn't proof. It wasn't even close to proof. But it was something—a thread to pull, a hint that Diana Shepherd had a past she'd deliberately erased. People didn't reinvent themselves so completely without a reason.
Kari leaned back from the laptop, rubbing her tired eyes until she saw spots.
She thought about the conversation at the cafe, about Diana's presentation of herself as a survivor who now helped others.
I came to L.A. with dreams of my own, once upon a time.
Small town girl from the Midwest. It didn't work out.
The story had felt genuine at the time—the weary wisdom of someone who'd been through hard times and come out the other side.
But what if it was only a partial truth?
What if "it didn't work out" was a massive understatement?
What if Diana hadn't just struggled in the industry—what if she'd broken completely, publicly, in a way that required hospitalization and a complete reinvention of identity?
She checked the time—almost three AM. She needed sleep, needed to approach this with fresh eyes in the morning. But the questions kept circling in her mind, refusing to let her rest, demanding answers she didn't yet have.
Finally, she closed her laptop and lay back on the motel bed, staring at the water-stained ceiling. The air conditioner hummed in the corner, providing a white noise that should have been soothing but instead felt oppressive.
Tomorrow she would go back to Image Management. She would find Diana and ask her directly about her past, about the breakdown that the forums hinted at, about what she'd done before she started working as Vanessa Caldwell's assistant.
Or, if Diana wasn't there, she would find someone who knew the truth.
Vanessa Caldwell had hired Diana after her breakdown, had given her a second chance when no one else would.
According to Diana's own story at the café, Vanessa had felt responsible for bringing her to L.A.
and wanted to make amends. That meant Vanessa knew who Diana really was—knew her real name, knew what had happened to her, knew the secrets she'd buried beneath her new identity.
And Kari was going to make her talk.