“Yeah, and fuck Nick Hogan and his ultimatums.” She gives me a reassuring nod. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with Nick, but I know capturing Krauss is more important than what happens to me or anyone else at the Bureau. We’ll call in backup as soon as confirm Krauss is our man.

  “Okay, let’s head down there,” Zara whispers.

  I deactivate the goggles and slip them up off my head. My pack is full of equipment we may need to get into Krauss’s house. Since we don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with, Zara got a little bit of everything. I obtained the satellite photo of his home, but that’s about all the information we had beforehand, other than what Zara dug up. We’re going way off-book here, though I’m not worried about the local P.D. showing up. I’m more worried about what Krauss might do when he figures out we’re snooping around his house.

  We both keep low and run through the tall grass from the edge of the clearing to the base of the trees that make up the outer section of one of Krauss’s walls. Zara turns me around and opens my pack, pulling out a long, metal contraption. Above us, the wall is about eight feet high, with no handholds anywhere.

  As I’m standing there, Zara begins extending the device she pulled from my pack. It starts as an extendable pole, but then I see little ledges flip down from the body of the pole itself. When it reaches its full height, it’s about six and a half feet tall. She leans it up against the wall. “After you.”

  “A portable ladder?” I ask. “How do you know about all this stuff?”

  “When you’re stuck at a desk all day, dreaming about doing anything else, you find yourself looking at a lot of different things online,” she says. “Now get up there.”

  I climb the rungs with ease, which allow me to push myself up on top of the concrete wall. Zara is right behind me, and I take her hand to hoist her all the way up. She brings the ladder with her and collapses it back down. “For getting back up if we have to get out of here unnoticed,” she says, putting it back in my pack.

  The only reason we’d need to leave unnoticed is if we don’t find anything. That’ll be the worst-case scenario, given what could happen if Krauss finds two FBI agents sneaking around like a couple of cat burglars in his house. But come hell or high water, we’re doing it together.

  I hang down off the edge of the wall, then drop the additional three feet to the ground. Zara does the same and we crouch down, staring at our target. “Here,” I say, pulling a pair of nitrite gloves out of my pocket and handing them to her. I put on a second pair. The last thing I want to do is leave fingerprints.

  The house is long and flat, and very modern by design. There’s not a pitched roof in sight. Instead, clean lines, large windows and sharp angles make up Douglas Krauss’s home. The number of windows is good on one hand, as they allow us to see a lot of the inside. But they’ll be a problem once we get in there and want to remain unseen. Lights are on all over the place, though I don’t see Krauss anywhere.

  “This guy isn’t social and he should live alone, so we probably won’t encounter anyone else,” I tell Zara. “Do you see anything concerning?”

  She’s looking at the house using a small scope. “I only see two…wait, three motion sensors. No cameras though, which is strange. I think if we stay close to the wall and move around to the back, we’ll be out of their range.” I nod and follow her so that we stay between the trees on this side and the concrete wall.

  Around back, Krauss has a large swimming pool, and a small maintenance building off to the side. The pool deck is lit up with accent lighting, though there’s no one outside. “Hang on,” I whisper to Zara. I make my way over to the maintenance building, finding it unlocked. Inside are just a bunch of pipes and pumps. All to control the pool.

  “Nothing,” I say when I get back to her. “Let’s keep moving.”

  She nods and we make our way across the backyard, staying in the shadows as much as possible. Zara is checking all the angles for any motion sensors, but I assume she doesn’t see any as we don’t stop anywhere. We reach one of the back doors, which happens to be all glass. There’s a small lock built into the metal frame.

  From this angle, if anyone were to walk into the living room, which is what is on the other side of the back ceiling-to-floor windows, they’d see us immediately. I peer into the room, spotting a small box with a flashing light near the ceiling. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Zara is pulling a small case out of her pack when she looks up. “Yep. Monitoring station.” She digs in the pack some more. “Here, get ready to use this.” She hands me a small, black device with an orange button on it while she uses a keyset on the lock itself. In less than ten seconds, she has it unlocked. “Get ready to push and hold that button,” she says.

  I nod. She motions and I push and hold. Zara slides the back door open and crouch-walks in. I follow and she closes the door behind us. She motions that I can take my finger off the button. “What is this?” I whisper.

  “A radio frequency jammer,” she says. “Uses the same frequency as those.” She points to the still-blinking station over the door.

  “Let’s get started,” I say. “The quicker, the better.” More than likely Krauss is asleep in his bedroom. I pray the proof we need isn’t in there. We’re both on the lookout for any cameras Krauss might be using inside the house, but I don’t immediately see any. It doesn’t really surprise me, considering those cameras can be easily hacked. Krauss doesn’t want anyone else looking in on what he’s doing, which makes me even more certain he is our guy.

  The house is spotless and minimalist in nature. He doesn’t seem to have anything that’s out of place, and no clutter anywhere. Instead, every surface is clean and what little he does have is organized. I don’t see a personal or family photo anywhere. The only things up on the walls are art pieces.

  As I make my way into the kitchen, it’s as immaculate as the rest of the house. The cabinets are all modern, without any handles or hardware, and the counter is a smooth, solid piece of marble that goes all the way to the floor. It seems Krauss has a flair for fancy décor. But walking through this house, it comes across more like a museum than a home.

  I meet back up with Zara near the back door where we came in. “Anything?”

  She shakes her head. “The place is clean as far as I can tell. But I have three closed doors down on that side of the house. I wanted to meet back up with you before we decided to go in.”

  Smart. In the event Krauss is behind one of those doors, sleeping, it’s better we’re together. I can’t help but think about just how crazy this is. But I know Federico isn’t our guy. He never was. It’s this man, who managed to break into Ryde 4 Lyfe and delete his own record.

  “Wait,” I whisper. “This guy is a computer whiz, so where’s the computer?” I haven’t even seen so much as a cell phone charging cord in this place. “We’re missing something big.”

  Zara motions for me to follow her to the doors. One is at the beginning of a long hall that heads down the east end of the house, while the other two are at the far end. I unclip my service weapon and motion for her to open the first door. She does and I make a quick peek around the corner only to see nothing but darkness. No windows in the room at all. I pull out the goggles again and put them on, only to find it’s not a room, but a staircase leading to the basement.

  I give her the signal to follow me, quietly. Thankfully, this house doesn’t seem that old so it doesn’t have all the creaks and sounds a settled house would have. The stairs make a ninety-degree turn halfway down, which leads us into the room below. I search for a switch, finding it and turning off the goggles before I flick it.

  “Huh,” Zara says, her voice still hushed. “I was expecting something…more scandalous than just a game room.”

  A pool table dominates the front part of the basement, while a large television and a leather couch sit off to the side. Compared to the museum upstairs, this is the coziest part about this house. There’s even a makeshift bar over beside one wall, complete with a couple of stools.

  I look around, my hands on my hips. “So where’s the sex dungeon?” I ask.

  “Yeah…I’m not sure.” She pulls her phone out and begins examining the blueprints again.

  “This doesn’t look anything like the house upstairs. It looks like two different people designed these places. Doesn’t this basement strike you as small for the size of the house upstairs?” The room itself is barely as large as the whole kitchen.

  “Yeah,” she says. “You’re right. None of this matches the original documents, there has to be more somewhere.”

  “And they wouldn’t have poured a concrete slab, just to dig this part out,” I say. “For someone who has a ton of money at his disposal, this is downright pitiful for a game space.”

  We take our time going over every inch of the room, looking for anything Krauss might have hidden. I’m wary, given the fact I still haven’t seen any evidence of his equipment. I also feel like this is taking too long. I don’t know how light a sleeper Krauss might be or if he’s even up there at all.

  “Hey, Em,” Zara says. She motions over by the bar. She’s pulled back the rug that covered the space between the bar itself and the back wall. Underneath is what looks like a hatch of some kind. “Secret entrance?” She grins.

  I can’t see that it’s anything else. And whatever is down there, Krauss definitely doesn’t want people to find. My pulse is racing.

  “Open it,” I say.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Zara lifts up on the small ring set into the hatch itself and it swings up, revealing another staircase, descending even further.

  “Whoa,” she says. “Cool.”

  “How deep does this house go?” I ask. “We have to be at the water table by now, right?”

  “Doesn’t look wet down there to me,” she says. This stairwell is different than the other one. It’s completely poured out of concrete, with small lights inset into the walls as the stairs descend. “Whatever is down there, it’s not looking too good for Krauss.”

  “No, it’s not,” I say, taking the lead. The stairs take us down another level, into what I can only describe as an antechamber. Here, a large, metal door with a keypad sits in the middle of a concrete wall. The only other thing in the room is an old wooden chair off to the side. For some reason the chair creeps me out more than the door does.

  “You were right, Em. This guy definitely has something going on. No one good keeps an underground bunker like this.”

  I survey the room and spot a camera in the upper right-hand corner. But I don’t see a light or anything to indicate it’s active. “We need to hurry. We might be visible. Can you get inside that thing?”

  “Give me just a minute,” she says, pulling out a small electronic box. She sets it on top of the keypad and toggles the switch on the side. “I kinda feel like Batman right now.”

  “If I’d known you had access to so much illegal technology I would have quit years ago. We could have just robbed a bank or something. Set ourselves up for life.”

  The machine on top of the keypad beeps, showing a sequence of numbers. Zara enters the sequence and the bolt on the door slides, allowing us to open it. I pull out my weapon, ready for anything.

  On the other side of the door is a metal staircase, leading even further down. But this space is much larger, with higher ceilings. And the entire place is made out of concrete. Pillars form the basis of the large room, sectioning it off into smaller rooms. The entire place is lit with florescent lighting.

  “Definitely not a sex dungeon,” Zara says behind me.

  When we reach the bottom of the short stairs, I look down, noting a crimson stain on the ground. “Look at this.” I crouch, looking at the stain, and realize there is something small under the stairs. I reach in and pull it out. “Shit.”

  “That’s a tooth,” Zara says.

  “Get an evidence bag,” I say. It’s not conclusive, but it’s a step in the right direction. There’s nothing to say this isn’t Krauss’s tooth, but a quick check with his dentist would reveal if he’d ever come in with any missing teeth. Unfortunately, that will have to wait until tomorrow.

  I slip the tooth into the evidence bag and seal it, tucking it in my pack. A couple more crimson stains lead off in one direction. We follow them, only for them to abruptly end.

  “Something bad happened here,” I say.

  “Hey, Em,” Zara says. She’s over on the far left side of the room, beside another metal door. Except this one doesn’t have a lock. She tries it, and it opens to reveal what looks like a command center of sorts.

  There’s a desk in the middle of the room, with a dozen different monitors, all showing different parts of the house. “He does have cameras,” I say. But either he wasn’t watching, or us being in the home didn’t set off any additional systems. But five of the screens show rooms we haven’t seen yet. Each one identical, and all look like they have the lights off as we’re seeing the rooms in the green of night vision.

  In each room is a woman, all of varying ages as far as I can tell. Three are on their respective beds, one is on the floor and the other is standing, up against the side of the room, her ear pressed to the wall.

  “Holy shit,” I say. “We found them.”

  “Can you tell which one is Hannah?” Zara asks.

  I can’t. All the women look eerily similar. A couple of the other monitors show programs running, but I don’t recognize any of them. “Does any of this make sense to you?”

  Zara sits in the chair, inspecting the monitors. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. These must be programs he’s developed for himself. Maybe to control what goes on in those rooms? I’m seeing temperature controls, light levels, humidity, and a few other things I don’t recognize.”

  “He’s got them caged up, like his own personal zoo,” I say. That’s when my eyes land on the only personal photograph I’ve seen since entering this house. It’s a portrait of a young woman, long blonde hair, blue eyes. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was Hannah Stewart’s sister. “Who is this?”

  “Em, we need to call for backup,” Zara says. “We’ve got him. Cold.”

  I nod, pulling out my phone. But unsurprisingly, there’s no service. “I think we’re too far underground. We need to get back up to the top level.”

  “And we need to get them out of there,” she says. “Look at this one, on the ground. She doesn’t look too good.” It’s hard to tell, but I think she’s right. The woman isn’t moving, and it seems like she’s laying at a strange angle.

  “Where are these rooms?” I ask.

  “Probably somewhere down here, in this little maze he’s built. But good luck getting into them.”

  “Can you do it?” I ask. “Can you find a way to unlock the cells so we can get them out of here?”

  She shakes her head. “Maybe. But this is Aruz all over again. Without a key, I may not be able to do anything.”

  “Get working on it,” I say. “I’ll head back up to call for backup. Get those doors open. And keep your safety off. If anyone comes in here but me, you know what to do.”

  Zara gives me a strange look, but pulls out her weapon and sets it on the desk beside her, then turns back to the terminals. I head back out to the main chamber, looking around for what might be the rooms, but the place is such a maze that it would take me ten minutes just not to get turned around. I head back to the metal staircase and exit through the door to the antechamber. Unfortunately, my phone still doesn’t have any bars. I head back up to the “basement” level through the trap door. Thankfully, when I make it into the room, one bar appears on my phone. I keep an eye on the staircase, just in case Krauss decides to come down.

  “I actually didn’t think you’d call,” Nick says on the other end.

  “Not now, Hogan,” I say. “We’ve got—”

  I feel him before I see him.

  The hair on the back of my neck stands up and I instinctively turn, only for a syringe to plunge into the side of my neck. “Ack—” is all I’m able to get out as I try to knock it away, though I know it’s too late. It’s one of those fast-delivery syringes, shooting the entire dosage into me all at once. I catch sight of Krauss’s face and raise my weapon, only for him to knock it out of my hand. It seems like I’m moving in slow motion, and I find I’m much too concerned with where he came from than the fact I’m rapidly losing consciousness. I don’t even know where my phone is anymore, but I can feel the darkness pressing in on my vision and I do everything I can to keep myself up. But each time I blink, I feel my world growing smaller. I fall to one knee, then collapse back, looking up at the ceiling tiles of this shitty basement he’s got set up. Krauss’s face comes right into my view just as I close my eyes.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The pain is what wakes me. It begins as a dull ache, pulling me from an unconscious state. But as my body slowly begins to work again, I find I can lift my head, only to realize my legs and arms are strapped down to a chair. Strangely, the image of Federico goes through my mind.

  I open my eyes and blink a few times, realizing I’m back down in the sub-basement. Nothing but concrete floors, pillars and walls. Though I’m in a different part than I was before. To my right are a series of “walls”, though they’re not actually walls. Instead, they’re windows, each looking into a different room. And in four of those rooms, women stand beyond the glass, staring back at me. These are the kidnapped women. And strangely, they all look very similar, though some are younger than others.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” a voice asks.

  I turn my head, something that causes a headache to erupt in my brain and I’m forced to close my eyes again until it begins to subside.