Page 147 of Blue Moon

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?”

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