The Collector
Page 97

“It depends.”
“I gave the information to Detective Fine,” Ash said. “They’ll get through the channels quicker than a foreign tourist. We should go back to the hotel, make sure it’s secure.”
Outnumbered again, Lila thought, and made no argument.
Ash stopped at the desk before leading the way to the elevator.
“No one’s come by or called looking for us—any of us. The hotel staff won’t forward any communications to the suite, or confirm we’re registered. If she’s here, and looking for us, it’ll make it harder for her to find us.”
“She’s here. I’m not wrong.”
He just ignored her. “I gave them her description. Hotel security will keep an eye out for her.”
They walked out of the elevator, down to the suite.
“I need to make some calls,” he announced, and went directly out onto the terrace.
“Cold shoulders are brutal.”
“Try to imagine how he’d feel if anything had happened to you,” Luke suggested. “The fact that it didn’t doesn’t change that ten minutes of fear that it could, or had.”
But he relented, kissed the top of her head. “I think we could all use a drink.”
Defeated, Lila sat while he opened a bottle of wine.
“You don’t get to sulk.” Julie pointed at her, then dropped into a chair.
“I’m not sulking. Yes, I am, and if everyone was mad at you, you’d sulk, too.”
“I wouldn’t have run like a crazed rabbit after a known killer.”
“I pursued, in a quick-thinking and careful manner. And I said I was sorry. Nobody’s saying good job on getting her location, Lila.”
“Good job.” Luke brought her a glass of wine. “Don’t ever do it again.”
“Don’t be mad,” she said to Julie. “I bought the shoes.”
“There is that. I couldn’t keep up. If you’d given me a chance I’d have gone with you. Then there would’ve been two of us if anything happened.”
“You didn’t believe I’d really seen her.”
“Not at first, then I was terrified you had. But you did buy the shoes. Speaking of which,” she added, and rose when Ash came in, “I should put my trophies away. Luke, you need to come see what I bought.”
Escape or discretion? Lila wondered. Probably a little of both, she decided as Luke carried Julie’s bags, going with her to their part of the suite.
“I apologized to them again,” she began. “Do you need another, too?”
“I talked to the airport where we keep the family planes.” His tone, cool and brisk, directly opposed the heat snapping in his eyes. “Someone using my father’s personal assistant’s name contacted them to confirm my flight information. It wasn’t my father’s assistant.”
“So she tracked us.”
“It’s a good bet.” He walked over, poured himself a glass of the wine. “I booked Lanzo and the hotel separately, on a recommendation my sister Valentina gave me more than a year ago. Harder for her to track all that, but if she digs around enough, she could.”
“We should tell Lanzo.”
“I already did.”
“You can be angry about how I went about it, but isn’t it better knowing? Any of us could have wandered off to get a gelato and run into her. Now we know.”
“You’re in this through me. There’s no getting around that. Oliver’s dead, through his own actions, but the fact is I didn’t pay attention. I brought Vinnie into it, and never anticipated. That’s not going to happen with you.”
He turned back to her, that temper still snapping. “It’s not going to happen with you. You either give me your word you won’t go off on your own no matter who or what you think you see, or I’m putting you on the plane back to New York.”
“You can’t put me anywhere. You can say get out, but that’s as far as it goes.”
“Do you want to put that to the test?”
She shoved out of the chair, walked around the room. “Why are you cornering me this way?”
“Because you matter too much for me to do anything else. You know you do.”
“You’d have done exactly what I did.”
“Then this would be a different conversation. I need your word.”
“Should I have just said, ‘Oh, gee, there’s Jai Maddok, international assassin, who’d like us all dead,’ then gone back to shopping with Julie?”
“You should have said, ‘I think that’s Jai Maddok,’ taken out your phone, contacted me. Then if you’d followed her, I’d have already been on my way to you. You’d have been on the damn phone with me so I wouldn’t think she might have turned on you, sliced you open with the knife this time while I’m buying you a f**king necklace.”
“Don’t swear at me, and you have a point. Okay, you have a point. I’m not used to checking in with anyone.”
“Get used to it.”
“I’m trying. You’ve got half a million siblings, this enormous family. You’re used to checking with, in and on. I’ve been on my own for years, through my own choice. I never thought about scaring you, any of you. I . . . you matter, too. I can’t stand thinking I spoiled things, with us—with everyone.”
“I’m asking for your word. You can give it to me, or you can’t.”
Outnumbered, Lila thought again, struggling against her own temper. When three people who cared about her saw things the same way, she had to admit her vision needed the adjusting.
“I can give my word I’ll try to remember I have someone to check with, that it’s important to him I do. I can do that.”
“Okay.”
She let out a breath she’d been holding, shakier than she realized. She didn’t mind a fight, but she couldn’t fight when she clearly saw where she’d gone wrong.
“I hate knowing I worried you so much, that I didn’t hear the stupid phone when you tried to reach me. If the situation had been reversed, I’d have been scared, too, angry, too. I reacted the way I’m used to reacting and . . . You bought me a necklace?”
“It seemed like the thing to do at the time. Now I’m not so sure.”