The Collector
Page 106

“I never said I’d—”
“Play with the bathroom,” he interrupted. “And we’ll both see how we feel about it.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime, since the cops haven’t given us any more, I’m going to contact Vasin directly.”
“Directly? How?”
“If we’re going to have an actual conversation, I want actual food.” He opened the refrigerator, stared at the very limited contents. Opened the freezer. “I have frozen waffles.”
“Sold. He’s a recluse, and we can’t even be sure where he is. What if he’s in Luxembourg? And you’re going to say we’ll just hop on your handy private plane and go to Luxembourg. I’m never going to get used to that.”
“It’s not mine, specifically. It’s the family’s.”
“Or that either. With that kind of wealth, he’d have all kinds of walls around him. Metaphorically.”
“Metaphoric walls usually consist of people—lawyers, accountants, bodyguards. People clean his homes, cook his meals. He has doctors. He collects art, so someone arranges for that. He has plenty of staff.”
“Including his personal hit woman.”
“Including,” Ash agreed as he dropped two frozen waffles into the toaster. “I only need one person to start.”
Her heart gave a hard little skip. “You’re not thinking of using his hired gun.”
“She’d be the most direct. But since she’s probably still in Italy, I think we start with the lawyers. He has business in New York, property in New York, he’ll have lawyers in New York.”
He rooted through a cabinet—with a newly tightened door—came up with syrup.
Lila eyed the bottle warily. “How long has that been in there?”
“It’s basically tree sap, what difference does it make?”
He plucked the waffles out when they popped, tossed one on each plate, dumped syrup over both. And handed her one.
She frowned at the underdone waffle drowning in a lake of questionable syrup. “You always had cooks, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I also know people on Long Island who have cooks, so that might be an avenue.” He grabbed a couple of knives and forks, passed hers to her and, standing at the counter, cut into his own waffle. “But the lawyer’s more direct. Our lawyers contact his lawyers, inform them I want to have a conversation. Then we see what happens next.”
“He wouldn’t expect the contact. It could piss him off or intrigue him. Maybe both.”
“Both is fine,” Ash decided. “Both is better.”
Understanding she’d need something to wash the soggy waffles down, she opened the fridge.
“You have V8 Fusion. The mango blend.” Her morning favorite, she thought as she took the still unopened bottle out, shook it.
He paid attention, and that—to her—was more romantic than roses and poetry.
“You should drink some, too. It’s good for you.”
When he only grunted, she got down two juice glasses. “Back to possibly Luxembourg. Vasin’s not going to admit he had anything to do with what happened to Oliver. He’d be crazy to.”
“He’s a recluse who hires killers to get his hands on objets d’art he can’t show to anyone. I think we’ve already established crazy.”
“Point taken.” She set a glass of juice on the counter beside him.
“But I just need him to make an offer on the egg. We can’t bluff we have the second one, because we know he does. So we use what we know. Having one is an enormous prize—a big accomplishment for a collector.”
“And having two is beyond.” The waffle wasn’t as bad as it looked, she decided. But if she stayed any amount of time, she was definitely taking charge of the shopping. “What good does having him make you an offer do? There’s nothing illegal about that—you have a bill of sale, so it’s a legitimate deal.”
“I’ll refuse it. Make it clear there’s only one thing I want in exchange for it. Maddok.”
“His HAG? Why would he give her over—why would she let herself be traded that way?”
“First part first. She’s an employee—almost certainly a valuable one, but paid help.”
“She’s a person,” Lila objected. “A horrible person, but a person.”
“You’re not thinking like a man who’d kill for a gold egg.”
“You’re right.” She let her own sensibilities and morals go for a moment, tried to think, to feel, like Vasin might think or feel. “She’s a means to an end, a tool.”
“Exactly. Frederick Capelli worked for him, at least must have taken a fee. Vasin didn’t have a problem disposing of him.”
“All right, I’ll agree the egg’s worth more to him than a human being. But he can’t risk turning her over, Ash. She’d flip on him, she’d make a deal, tell the police chapter and verse. Or he’d certainly have to weigh that in.”
Because it was right there, he sampled the juice, found it surprisingly good. “I’m not interested in giving her to the cops, letting her make a deal. Why would I take a chance of her getting immunity, or witness protection?”
“Well, what else?”
He set the glass down with a snap. “I want revenge, I want her to f**king pay. I’m going to make her f**king pay. The bitch killed my brother. She spilled my family’s blood, now I want to spill hers.”
Her heart gave that hard kick again, then shuddered. “You can’t possibly mean—you don’t. You wouldn’t.”
“For a second you thought I might.” He gestured with his fork, stabbed another bite of syrup-soaked waffle. “You should know me a lot better than he would or could, and you nearly believed it. He’ll believe me. He’ll believe me,” Ash repeated, “because there’s a part of me that means it.”
“Even if he did believe you, and even if he said, ‘Hey, let’s shake on it,’ she wouldn’t go along. She killed two trained agents when they got too close.”
“That’s his problem. You want the egg, give me the bitch who killed my brother. It’s all I want. Otherwise I’ll destroy it.”
“He’d never believe you could do that.”