The Collector

by Nora Roberts

  strategy to simple truth. “He could hurt you, Lila, a deliberate way to pressure me to turn over what he wants. That’s what it looks like the idea was with Oliver and his girlfriend.”

  “I’d think a man like that wouldn’t repeat the same mistake. Of course, he could hurt you to pressure me.”

  She bit into the sandwich, gave a decisive nod. “I’ll go, you stay.”

  “Are you being obstinate or just trying to piss me off?”

  “Neither one. You want me to sit back and wait while you go into the lion’s den alone. Are you trying to piss me off?” She took the wine from him, drank. “You can’t talk about lifetimes and commitments, then put me aside. We both go. Ash, if I commit to you, to anyone, I can’t do it without knowing it’s a full partnership.”

  She hesitated a moment, then brought it back to herself. “My mother waited. No one could ever say she was anything but a good, strong military wife. But I know how hard it was for her to wait. However proud of him she was, however steadfast, it was so hard for her to wait. I’m not my mother.”

  “We go together. With insurance.”

  “What insurance?”

  “If you’re . . . if either one of us,” he corrected, “is harmed in any way, we’ve left instructions for the egg to be destroyed.”

  “Not bad—a classic for a reason, but . . . I’m wondering about the break-the-egg idea. Not that you wouldn’t be convincing. I saw the rehearsal. But spoiled children would rather see a toy broken than share it, wouldn’t they? He might have that impulse.”

  “Go ahead and break it,” Ash considered. “If I can’t have it, nobody can. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “What about if either of us is harmed, we’ve left instructions for an immediate announcement to the media about the discovery. And the egg is to be immediately turned over to an undisclosed museum and its security. Details to follow.”

  “Threatening to destroy it is so much more satisfying, but you’ve got a point. More than insurance,” he decided, and took the wine back, sharing it as they shared the sub. “Truth. We’ll set it up just that way.”

  “We will?”

  He set the wine back on the tray, took her face in his hands. “You don’t want to hear it, but I won’t let anything happen to you. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe, whether you want me to or not. If anything happens, if I think anything’s going to happen to you, I push that button.”

  “I want the same option, with you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Whose button is it?”

  He rose, wandered the room. It should have been Vinnie’s, he thought. It should have been. “Alexi’s, from my family compound. Believe me, it can be arranged there—my father can make it happen. And it’s as secure as it gets.”

  “It’s a good idea. It’s a smart idea. But how do we push the button?”

  “We’ll work it out.” He stopped, looked out the window. “We have to end this, Lila.”

  “I know.”

  “I want a life with you.” When she said nothing, he glanced back. “I’m going to get it, but we can’t really start on it until this is done. Whatever happens with Vasin, we end it.”

  “What do you mean, exactly?”

  “We don’t go in bluffing about Maddok. We push the button if he refuses to trade her, get the hell out. And the rest is up to the cops.”

  “We both know if she’s free she’ll come after us. That’s been part of the point.”

  “She has to find us. You can write anywhere. I can paint anywhere. We’ll go anywhere. You like to travel. We’ll go from anywhere to anywhere. I saw the gypsy in you the first time I met you. We’ll be gypsies.”

  “You don’t want that.”

  “I want you. We’ll rent a cottage in Ireland, a villa in Provence, a château in Switzerland. Lots of new spaces for you, lots of new canvases to paint for me.”

  And her, he thought, in the kitchen every morning. A short thin robe and a multi-tool.

  “They’ll put her away or put her down eventually,” he said. “But until then, if this doesn’t work out our way, we have another option. See the world with me, Lila.”

  “I . . .” The little bubble of panic fizzed in her throat. “I have a business.”

  “We can start that way. Keep it that way if you want. But away from New York, as soon as we can manage it. Think about it,” he suggested. “It’s a big world. I’m going to contact Alexi, start setting things up, then get another hour or two in my studio. Why don’t we see if Luke and Julie want to meet us for dinner later? Get out of here for a while?”

  “Getting out’s good. You’re not worried about it?”

  “Interested in it, on a couple levels. No reason to send his bitch after us if he’s considering meeting with me, seeing what I’m offering. Eight work for you?”

  “Eight’s fine. I think it would— Oh God.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “His bitch.”

  “What now?”

  “Don’t get mad—you’re a little scary when you’re mad. Then I’ll get mad, and I can be a little scary. And it was already scary.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “She called. Jai Maddok called me—my cell phone. She called me.”

  The amused exasperation flipped directly to cold fury. “When?”

  “After you left. But a while after, so I don’t think she was just waiting for me to be alone. I don’t think that mattered.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me? Goddamn it, Lila.”

  “I would have, was going to. I was . . . I had the phone in my hand to call you, then the buzzer—your father. And he wasn’t really happy to see me, then you came and— Damn it back, Ashton, it’s been nothing but drama. It went out of my head with all the rest. Plus I am telling you. It’s not like I’m keeping it a secret. I was—”

  He sat again, put his hands firmly on her shoulders. “Stop. Breathe.”

  She drew air in, stared into his eyes as he rubbed her shoulders. And felt the little bubbles of hysteria in her throat pop and dissolve. “I’d just finished the base coat. My phone rang, and it was her. She meant to scare me, and she did. I’m glad we weren’t Skyping so she couldn’t see my face. She asked if I enjoyed Italy. I tried to pull a little Kaylee—you know, give as good as you get. I asked if she had, and I brought up the art dealer. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but it gave her a bad moment, I could tell.”

  “Let me have your phone.”

  “My— Oh, stupid. I didn’t even check the number. It all happened so fast. But I recorded most of it. I remembered my recording app.”

  “Of course you did,” he replied. “And of course you have a recording app.”

  “Because you never know, right? The buzzer sounded right after she hung up, and then everything just rolled.”

  She handed him the phone.

  “Private caller,” he read when he scrolled her incomings.

  “I don’t think she wanted me to call back and chat. It’ll be a drop phone. Everybody who reads popular fiction or watches TV knows that. Untraceable drop phone. She just wanted to spook me. She did.”

  “Tell me what she said to you.”

  “It’s there. You can listen.”

  “Tell me first, then I’ll listen.”

  “A lot about killing me, and it came through loud and clear we were right. I’m pretty sure she called me a couple of very nasty names in Chinese, which I’ll need to look up. It’s not the job to her, not now. I screwed things up for her, and I punched her—and I reminded her of that because she scared me. I was going to call you, I promise, and the police, but then your father was here, and I was in my scut clothes, so that couldn’t have been worse.”

  “Your scut clothes? What does that have to do with it?”

  “Every woman in the world would understand how that was worse.”

  “Okay.”

  Some tears had trickled through. He brushed them away with his thumbs, laid his lips lightly o
n hers.

  He looked down at her phone. “Where’s the app?”

  “Here, let me do it.” She brought it up, tapped play.

  Refused to shudder when she heard Jai’s voice, when she heard the words again. She saw the fire rekindle in his eyes, saw it burn there when the recording ended and those eyes looked into hers.

  “I gave her a couple of bad moments right back. I didn’t sound terrified or panicked. But—”

  He wrapped around her when she threw her arms around him.

  “I was. I admit it, I was. It got real. Really real—her voice on the phone, knowing she wants to kill me. She wanted to taunt me, but there was this rage under it. So much rage I could feel it as much as hear it.”

  “We’ll go.” He drew her back. “Anywhere you want. Tonight. Nothing else matters.”

  “No, no, no. We can’t live like that—I can’t. We can’t just walk away from it. It didn’t work for Jason Bourne either. You know, you know.” Now she had to struggle not to babble as bafflement joined the fire in his eyes. “The books, the movies. Matt Damon.”

  “I know.” Her mind, he thought, stroking her hair, was a wonderful thing. “Okay.”

  “This is all the more reason to finish it. She can’t get away with turning me into a tremble puddle on the floor. She can’t be allowed to dictate how either of us lives. It got real, Ash, and I’m not going to let her turn me into someone I don’t like or recognize. Don’t ask me to do that.”

  He pressed his lips to her forehead. “I’ll call Fine.” He looked at Lila’s phone again. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I need my phone. Half my life’s on that phone.”

  “I’ll get it back to you.” He stroked a hand down her hair one more time, rose. “You were heading out of the house when I walked up. Alone.”

  “I was mad, insulted. Stupid. God, I didn’t even take my purse.”

  “As long as you recognize the stupid, and don’t do it again. I’ll go call Fine, fill her in. Are you all right up here?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay now. I need to go back to the book—I can dump myself in it, let this go.”

  “Do that, then. I’m downstairs or in the studio. I’m here,” he said. “I’m going to be right here.”

  “Ash.” She slid off the bed, onto her feet. Because her stomach quivered, she started fast. “My father’s a really good man.”

  “I’m sure he is.” Something here, he thought, and brushed her hair back from her face.

  “He’s a military man. It wasn’t that he put his duty before his family. But that duty came first. I’d never blame him for that because it makes him what he is. And he’s a good man. But he wasn’t there, a lot. He couldn’t be.”

  “That was hard for you.”

  “It was, sometimes, but I understood his service to country. My mom’s great. She made her life without him when he couldn’t be there, set it aside without a blink when he could be. She can really cook—I didn’t get much of her skill there. She could, and can, juggle a dozen things at once, which I’m pretty good at, too. She couldn’t change a lightbulb. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much.”

  “So you learned to fix things.”

  “Someone had to—and I liked it. Figuring out how to fix things. And it made him proud. ‘Give it to Lila,’ he’d say. ‘She’ll figure out how to fix it, or it can’t be fixed.’ That meant so much. At the same time, when he was home, he ruled. He was used to giving orders.”

  “And you didn’t like taking them.”

  “You cope with the changes, being the new kid—again—finding your rhythm in a new place—again. You get self-sufficient. He liked that I could handle myself—and he taught me how to. How to fire a weapon, clean it, respect it, basic self-defense, first aid, all of that. But yeah, we did rub up against each other when it came to doing it because I said to do it. You’re a little like him there, but you’re more subtle about it. The Lieutenant Colonel is very direct.”

  “People who don’t rub up against each other from time to time probably get very bored.”

  She laughed. “They probably do. But the point is, I love him. You love your father, too. I could see it, even though you were really angry, even disappointed in him. You let him think he’s the head of the family when he’s not—not really. You are. But you let him have that because you love him. I accept that my father couldn’t be there for prom night or high school graduation. I love him, even though the times—a lot of times I really needed it—he couldn’t say, ‘I’m here.’”

  And there, he understood, was the center of it.

  “But I will be.”

  “I don’t know what to do when someone sticks, when I start wanting them to.”

  “You’ll get used to it.” He trailed a finger down her cheek. “I’d like to meet them, your parents.”

  Not quite panic, she thought, but a clutch in the belly. “Oh. Well. Alaska.”

  “I have a private plane. Whenever you’re ready. Dump it into the work,” he said. “And I am here, Lila. You can count on it, and eventually you will.”

  Alone, she told herself to go back to work, just go back into the book and not think about anything else.

  What kind of man offered to leave everything, travel the world with you to keep you safe and give you new spaces? He saw her as a gypsy—and she often thought of herself that way. On the move.

  Why not just do it, then? Pack up and go, as she had countless times, only now with someone she wanted to be with? She could take it a day, a place, an adventure at a time.

  She should jump at it, she realized, gradually shift her house-sitting business international. Or give it a rest, just write and travel.

  Why wasn’t she jumping at it?

  And more, could she really get used to—let herself get used to—counting on someone when she knew herself well enough to understand she worked it the other way? She was the one people counted on.

  With their homes, their pets, their plants, their things. She was the one who tended, who could be relied on to be there—until she wasn’t needed.

  Too much on her mind, she told herself. They needed to deal with what was—the egg, Vasin, Maddok. No time to be building pretty fantasies.

  Reality came first.

  She went back to her desk, read over the last page she’d worked on.

  But kept thinking of traveling wherever she wanted. And couldn’t quite see it.

  Twenty-seven

  Ash asked Fine and Waterstone to come to his loft—a deliberate move. If Vasin still had eyes on the loft, the claim of police harassment would hold more weight.

  He gave them credit for listening to what he’d done and planned to do—and to Lila for recording the phone call from Jai Maddok.

  “I made a copy.” Lila offered Waterstone a memory card she’d put in a small baggie, labeled. “I don’t know if you can use it, but I thought you might need to have it. For your files. It’s legal to record a phone conversation, right, since I was one of the parties? I looked it up.”

  He took it, slipped it into the pocket of his sport coat. “I’d say you’re clear on it.”

  Fine leaned forward, gave Ash what he’d come to think of as her hard-line cop stare.

  “Nicholas Vasin is suspected of international crimes, including murder-for-hire.”

  “I’m aware, since my brother was one of his victims.”

  “His hired gun made personal contact with you. Twice,” she said to Lila. “Personal’s what it is now.”

  “I know. That’s really clear. Um. Biao zi is Mandarin for ‘bitch,’ which is pretty tame. Bi is . . .”—she winced because she hated saying it out loud—“cunt. That’s really ugly, and I consider that a lot more personal.”

  “And yet the two of you come up with some scheme to take Vasin