Page 82 of Marked By Shadows

“You said it’s not a case of Joe hurting his girlfriend. You’re looking for this third person who seemed to be chatting with all the missing girls. Though Byrony isn’t missing anymore. You said she’s dead. Something tied you back to the groups,” Alex glanced at the stack of papers, “and to narrow it to this one person, who happened to have trackable conversations with the other two missing girls. Did you find them as well?”

Manning said nothing and that was confirmation enough.

“Fuck,” Alex cursed. “Next vacation we get beaches and private cabins instead of cosplay fanatics,” Alex told me.

“There are fanatics everywhere,” Manning said.

“Serial killer ones?” Alex asked. “Because let’s be clear. What I’m getting from your questions and lack of specific answers is that multiple women from the cosplay group are confirmed dead by mysterious circumstances in some random Texas woods? That doesn’t happen every day, right?” He held up his hand then. “Okay if the statistics point to yes, I don’t need that in my head.”

“You’re far too observant,” Manning remarked.

“My brother is a police detective. Comes with the territory. What do we need to do? Should we head home? Is it safe here?”

“I can’t answer that for you. I don’t know. This could be one of the members of the small group. Or someone who follows them around,” Manning said. “Social media makes stalking people a lot easier these days. We have cops who specialize in the digital side trying to pull apart their profile, get a real name. Honestly, at first, I thought it was Richards,” he looked at me.

“Me?” I was shocked.

“You and Cartwright had a history. I thought you might have played a prank that went wrong. That was before everything else. The rest doesn’t fit. Sarah actually vanished while you were gone. Vanished yourself, or whatever,” Manning said.

“What sort of prank?” Alex asked.

“Mr. Thomas had a gun. This is Texas after all. We think he was shooting at something and accidentally hit Miss Cartwright. The initial shot wasn’t fatal, but the wound without care was.”

Alex frowned. “There’s only one member of the group who lives in Texas though.”

“Freya wouldn’t…” I said.

“We are certainly looking at her specifically. However, her alibi is pretty sound. Since she runs a hotel and does quite a few events each year, she’s got a lot of records. And again, we can’t find much for ties between her and the missing women. Has she said anything to either of you that might sound suspicious?” Manning wanted to know.

“No. She’s been very polite and accommodating. Though she did seem a little annoyed with Byrony that first night we were here,” Alex said.

“Because they spooked the group,” I added. “Woke everyone up because they scared people silly. I was annoyed too.” I looked at the detective, a thousand thoughts in my head. “Freya’s always been very approachable, and helpful to everyone. I don’t know why anyone would think she’d hurt anyone.”

“One of the others in the group mentioned she might be eliminating competition,” Manning said.

“That would sort of be all of us, wouldn’t it? Since we’re a cosplay group?” I thought about that. Not believing that Freya’s fame was at all dependent on everyone else’s failure.

“The same type of cosplay? Sounds like Miss Pejic is a big name.”

“She is,” I agreed. “One of the biggest in the world. But there are others. Some in the group, some not.”

“You used to be a big name yourself?” Manning asked.

“I guess? Had a few years of being invited to special events and offered product deals of stuff. But that was a long time ago.”

“Before you disappeared.”

Everything came back to that, didn’t it? “Technically, I was working in a different trade then as well.” Had been doing the porn videos for almost a year prior to that.

“What made you change trades?” Manning wanted to know.

“My boyfriend at the time, mostly. It sounded interesting. And I was growing bored of always trying to think of new videos, costumes, and pictures to take to keep people interested. It’s a never-ending need for content. Absolutely exhausting in my opinion. So I transitioned into something that was less work.” Having sex on camera, posting a video once a week and getting a couple million views, that had been easy. Thinking of new dirty ways for people to see me on my knees dressed up as a fem boy and acting out scenes, that became work. In the end it hadn’t been all that different from the influencer roll. New content brought added revenue, but people by nature were quickly bored and moved on.

“Some in the group were suggesting you would be returning to the influencer roll,” Manning said.

“And that would make me want to kill Byrony and some other girls a few years ago, why? What would I gain?”

“Their followers, perhaps? Is that how it works?”