The Collector by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online

was . . .”
    â€œDoing a Jimmy Stewart.”
    â€œYes!” Relief and laughter mixed in the word. “Yes, like
Rear Window
. Only you don’t expect to see Raymond Burr loading up the pieces of his dead wife into a big chest and hauling it out. Or was it suitcases? Anyway. I don’t think of it as spying, or didn’t until this happened. It’s like theater. All the world really is a stage, and I like being in the audience.”
    He waded his way through that to the key. “But you didn’t see Oliver. You didn’t see him hit her? Push her?”
    â€œNo. I told the police. I saw someone hit her, but it was the wrong angle to see him. She was crying and scared and pleading—I could see all that on her face. I got my phone to call nine-one-one, and then . . . She came flying out the window. The glass shattered, and she just flew through it and fell.”
    This time he put his hand over hers, left it there because it trembled. “Take it easy.”
    â€œI keep seeing it. Keep seeing the glass breaking, and her flying out, the way her arms went wide, and her feet kicked at the air. I hear her scream, but that’s in my head. I didn’t hear her. I’m sorry about your brother, but—”
    â€œHe didn’t do this.”
    For a moment she said nothing, just lifted her glass, sipped quietly at the lemonade.
    â€œHe wasn’t capable of doing this,” Ash said.
    When she lifted her gaze to his, sympathy and compassion radiated.
    She was no Valkyrie, he thought. She felt too much.
    â€œIt’s terrible what happened.”
    â€œYou think I can’t accept my brother could kill, then kill himself. It’s not that. It’s that I
know
he couldn’t. We weren’t close. I hadn’t seen him in months, and then only briefly. He was tighter with Giselle, they’re closer in age. But she’s in . . .”
    Sorrow fell into him again like stones. “I’m not entirely sure. Maybe Paris. I need to find out. He was a pain in the ass,” Ash continued. “An operator without the killer instinct it takes to be an operator. A lot of charm, a lot of bullshit, and a lot of big ideas without any practical sense of how to bring them around. But he wouldn’t hit a woman.”
    She’d watched them, he remembered. “You said they argued a lot. Did you ever see him hit her, push her?”
    â€œNo, but . . .”
    â€œI don’t care if he was stoned or drunk or both, he wouldn’t hit a woman. He wouldn’t kill a woman. He’d never kill himself. He’d believe whatever he’d gotten sucked into, someone would pull him out again. An eternal optimist, that was Oliver.”
    She wanted to be careful; she wanted to be kind. “Sometimes we don’t know people as well as we think.”
    â€œYou’re right. He was in love. Oliver was either in love or looking for it. He was in it. Whenever he’s ready to be out of it, he wiggles out, takes off awhile, sends the woman an expensive gift and a note of regret. ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ that kind of thing. Too many drama-filled divorces, so he went for the clean, callous break. And I know he was too damn vain to stick a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. If he was going to kill himself—and he’d never hit that much despair—he’d’ve gone for pills.”
    â€œI think it was an accident—her fall. I mean all in the heat of the moment. He must’ve been out of his mind in those moments after.”
    Ash shook his head. “He’d have called me, or come running. He’s his mother’s youngest and her only son, so he was indulged. When there was trouble, he’d call somebody to help him get out of it. That’s his knee-jerk. ‘Ash, I’m in some trouble here. You have to fix things.’”
    â€œHe usually called