41. Emmy

41

In the passenger seat, Slater studied the file Echo had sent on Brianna Shelton, Anton Hebert's ex, while I focused on getting us to our destination as fast as possible. Easier said than done when the only rental vehicle left at the airport was a Fiat 500 that had been built for economy rather than speed. Stan, the Spanish stallion who lived at the estate I shared with Black in Virginia, would beat it on horsepower.

"Thoughts?" I asked.

"She's pretty hot."

"We're on the clock here. You don't have time to hook up with a woman, and you especially don't have time to hook up with a witness."

"I'm just saying that Hebert was punching above his weight, that's all."

"You know that sometimes women go for personality?"

"Hebert's idea of a first date involved a roofie and a ride in the trunk."

"A reasonable point."

Turned out that the reason Brianna Shelton wasn't answering the phone was because she'd gone on a digital detox, so her roommate told us when she staggered home at three o'clock in the morning and found us sitting on her porch. Now Brianna was somewhere in Glacier National Park, wild camping with her current boyfriend, and she wasn't expected back until Thursday. We couldn't wait until Thursday, so we'd hopped back on board the jet and headed north. Blackwood's carbon offsetting programme was taking a real hammering this weekend. We were going to have to buy another chunk of rainforest.

If I'd realised the job would have involved hiking in Montana, I'd have brought Gage instead of Slater because Gage grew up in Montana and was at least familiar with the terrain. But Slater was what I had. Slater and Echo, who was scouring real-time satellite feeds for our target. Gage had contacted a childhood friend of his who worked as a guide in the area, and she was going to meet us at the park entrance. Plus he'd already called in another favour with another acquaintance and we knew Brianna had a pass to camp in the Nyack/Coal Creek zone tonight, so at least we didn't have to scour the entire park.

I only hoped she'd be able to help.

The roommate didn't know much about Hebert, only that he was an asshole Brianna refused to discuss. Apparently, she wished she could erase the brief foray to Vegas from her life, and she was never leaving Montana again.

Slater's phone pinged.

"Echo has three possibilities in the right area."

Gage's friend Jacqueline met us at the entrance and led us to a parking space. We'd take her truck into the park, thank fuck. She was a short, stout woman who looked as if she knew her way around a can of bear spray, and when she opened a packet of candy and offered me a sucky sweet, I liked her immediately.

"Thanks for offering to help us."

"Gage said you'd pay double if I came on my day off. Tell me he wasn't kidding?"

"I can pay in cash, by credit card, or even with cupcakes."

"Cash is perfect. My kid fell off his bike and damaged his braces, and do you know how much orthodontists cost?"

"Thankfully, I have no idea." I handed her five hundred bucks and loaded Echo's satellite image onto my tablet. "We have three possible locations to check out. Can you take us there?"

"Wow, where did you get that picture? You can see the logo on the freaking tent."

"You didn't see this, and it doesn't exist."

Her eyes widened. "Wow, seriously? What did these folks do?"

"Nothing. The girl used to date an asshole, and he did something. We're just after whatever information she can give us."

It took four hours for us to find Brianna Shelton, and while we were trekking through the trees, Dan called with an update on the situation in Alexandria. Anton's mum had shacked up with a serial killer? Guess that explained a few things.

Brianna was understandably alarmed to see us, mainly because she was in a rather compromising position when we popped out from behind a large boulder. Jacqueline gasped as she saw what was going on. Brianna's boyfriend stumbled backwards, arms windmilling, pecker bobbing, and landed in a creek. Great. This was going well.

"Help him," I said to Slater, whose lips were twitching as he tried not to laugh.

"Who are you?" Brianna scrambled to her feet, face reddening. "Do you get off on sneaking up on people?"

"We need to talk."

"We do not need to talk. You need to get lost."

Slater hauled the dripping boyfriend out of the water and took a polite step back while the dude struggled to pull up wet jeans. That five-minute delay on the satellite photos was a killer.

"Two words: Anton Hebert."

Scarlet turned to white as the blood drained from Brianna's face. "Did he send you? Did that jerk send you to ruin my life again?"

Again? Interesting.

"Who the hell are you people?" the boyfriend demanded, finally finding his tongue.

"My name is Emmy, and I work for Blackwood Security. We're currently looking for a missing woman, and we have reason to believe Anton took her."

Brianna sat down hard on a rock. "What?"

"He kidnapped a guest from a hotel in Las Vegas."

"No. No way."

"You seem surprised by that."

"He's… Yes, I mean, he's a massive asshole, but he wouldn't kidnap a woman."

"You said he ruined your life. Did he do something that worried you?"

She glanced towards the boyfriend. How much did he know?

"I can't talk about this. Not here, not now."

"A woman's life is in danger."

"Anton would never?—"

"He forced another member of the hotel staff to help him, and he did that by taking her son and threatening to harm him. The kid identified Anton from a photo. Now Anton's vanished. He walked out of his job, left his apartment, and disappeared. Oh, and he's a suspect in a murder investigation too. Believe me, we wouldn't have tracked you down in the bloody wilderness if we didn't absolutely have to."

"Just tell them, Bri," the boyfriend said. "Is it that weirdo with the kid?"

Kid?

She nodded numbly.

"We were planning a life together, you know? We were looking at apartments. Then one day, this woman shows up at my place and causes a scene because he hasn't paid his freaking child support. She followed us home from work, and the kid was with her."

"Anton Hebert has a child?"

"A boy. He has the same colour eyes." Holy fuck. How had he kept that quiet? "She was so mad at him, and Marcus—that's the boy's name—he was crying, and one of my neighbours called the police because of all the yelling."

"Do you recall the woman's name?"

"Carole-Ann. She was actually quite nice. I mean, obviously I ditched Anton on the spot because who does that to a person? Totally forgets to mention they're a father? If he'd told me, I'd probably have been okay with it, but it was the way he pretended Marcus didn't exist… And he told me that he left Carole-Ann because she wasn't his destiny, and when I threw him out, he said that if I couldn't accept his past, then I clearly wasn't his destiny either."

"I'm sorry he put you through that."

"I just want to move on."

"We don't want to stir up the past, I promise. We only want to find the woman he took before it's too late. He mentioned to one witness that he had another property, possibly to the north or east of Vegas. Can you think of where that might be?"

"You think Anton has a second apartment? He couldn't even pay the rent on the first one. He still owes me over a thousand bucks."

So the money he had was a recent thing. A lottery win? Nevada didn't have a lottery, but California wasn't far away. An insurance payout? An inheritance from someone other than his mother?

"Did he ever mention an aunt? She would have lived in Minnesota when he was a teenager."

"An aunt? No, I don't remember an aunt. Only Julia, but he called her a second mom. Don't you think that's weird? Like, he had a regular mom, but he rarely mentioned her."

Julia. The name left a nasty taste in my mouth. My own uterus donor was called Julie, and honestly, the serial killer would've done a better job of raising me.

"Tell me what you know about her."

"Not much? She was a neighbour where he used to live, I think. He said she helped him a lot with his studies. Oh, and he used to call her with questions about the snakes, so I guess she kept snakes too."

"How many snakes did Anton have?"

"Two when I met him, and then he got Ajax and Karma. Snakes used to freak me out, but it turns out they're not that bad. I even used to hold them sometimes. They're not slimy."

"Do you know what species of snake they were?"

"Cosmo was a boomslang, Hedera was a green tree python, and Ajax was a California kingsnake. And Karma… She was a baby cobra." Brianna looked at the ground. "He wasn't meant to have her, or Cosmo. And I did consider reporting him after we split, but when I looked up how to do that, they said snakes would probably be euthanised if they were being kept illegally, and Cosmo and Karma didn't deserve to die. Anton was an asshole, but he did look after them."

Karma? Well, that was fitting. Perhaps I wouldn't mention that she'd been used as a murder weapon.

"Do you remember Julia's surname?"

"I don't think he ever told me that. But maybe she lives in NYC now? Anton went to visit her there one time. Or at least, he said he did, but who knows whether that was true or not."

New York City. Hey, that narrowed the search down to only five million women, give or take, and thanks to Romeo Serafini, we had an approximate date of death. How many women named Julia had died there in recent years?

"Did you ever meet her?"

Brianna shook her head. "No, but maybe Carole-Ann did? You want me to email her and ask?"

"You stayed in touch?"

"Not like regular. Happy Christmas, that sort of thing. We talked more right after the Vegas incident. The ex-girlfriend support club, you know?"

"Did Anton start paying child support?"

"Mostly. He moved jobs and started working extra shifts, she said. And then a year ago, she wanted to move away from South Carolina, and he offered to rent a house for her in California. Said a friend owned it who would give them a good deal. Carole-Ann said it's a real nice place."

"So she took him up on the offer?"

"Do you realise how high rent is out there? Of course she took him up on it."

"Have you got the address?"

"I only know it's in Berkeley."

"Do you have a surname for Carole-Ann?"

"That never came up. I mean, we're not close. She and Marcus spent a night on my couch, and we used to bitch to each other about Anton, that's all."

"Okay, get in touch with her and ask her to call me. Keep it vague. You don't put details of a kidnapping in an email."

Brianna swallowed hard. "I'll tell her Anton shit on another woman, so now there are three members of the club."

"Good plan. And forward me the last email you received from her. Make sure the header information is included."

"The what?"

"Just find me the email."

I sent what we needed to both Echo and Mack. Might as well cover all bases. Then I messaged Brett, Blackwood's pilot, and told him to get the jet ready. Again.

"What's Anton actually like?" I asked, curious. "Cruel or kind? He doesn't seem to be close to many people."

Brianna was silent for a long moment. "Neither. Sort of…awkward? He doesn't understand people. If you talked to him for a few minutes, you'd think he was charming, but sooner or later, he'll say something dumb or borderline rude, and he won't even realise. And he doesn't listen to people, not really."

"What do you mean?"

"Okay, so one time, I got this craving for egg rolls from Jade Palace. It's a little Chinese place near my old apartment in Vegas, and they serve the best egg rolls. So I asked him to pick up egg rolls. An hour later, he comes back with the set menu for two from Ming, and he assumes that because it cost three times as much, I should be three times as grateful, and he couldn't understand why I wasn't."

"You don't like the egg rolls from Ming?"

"There weren't any egg rolls. He substituted prawn toast. I guess what I'm trying to say is that he's not horrible, but he's self-centred. He does whatever he wants, and you're meant to fall in line. It's easy to see that now, but I was young when I dated him, and I'd never had a serious boyfriend before. It took me months to realise that wasn't normal."

And he'd decided to abduct Luna Maara? I'd pay good money to see that battle of wills. Ryder said Luna had softened around the edges in recent months, but she'd spent years surviving in a cutthroat industry, and a leopard didn't change its spots overnight. She was no pussycat.

"Did he ever hurt you?"

"Like, physically?"

I nodded.

"No, he definitely wasn't that kind of guy. I still can't believe he'd kidnap anyone. I mean, the only way he'd do that is if he convinced himself he was helping them. Like saving them from a worse fate or something."

Now that…that was interesting. And also good news. Mark Antony had swooped in to save his queen, hadn't he? It fit with what I'd been feeling in my gut all along. Fuck Tulsa and her statistics.

"Thanks for your help, folks. Brianna, keep your phone on, and try to stay somewhere with a signal."

"That's it?" the boyfriend asked, still dripping slightly. "We're done?"

"We're done. And just a tip—if you're planning to get jiggy in the great outdoors, do it under a tree." I pointed at the sky. "People are watching, and nobody wants to have to bleach their eyeballs."

With that, I beckoned to Jacqueline and Slater and headed for the truck. Next stop? Berkeley. When we got Luna back, I was going to personally handcuff her to Ryder's headboard. Trouble followed that girl around.