“That’s the edetate disodium,” he says. He has a smooth voice. Unassuming. Not overly cocky or elitist. A voice of someone you wouldn’t think twice about. “It will wear off in a few minutes.” I look to my left to see Zara, bound to another chair. The chair we passed out in the antechamber. She isn’t moving. But I can see the subtle rise and fall of her chest. At least she’s not dead. He probably hit her with the same cocktail he used on me. How long have I been out?

  “Krauss,” I say, my throat sore and my voice sounding like it’s been through a wood chipper. “Give up. It’s over.”

  “That’d be convenient for you, wouldn’t it, Agent Slate?” he asks.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I know more than your name,” he replies, crouching down in front of me. “I know your address, your phone number, the names of everyone in your family. I know your mother died when you were twelve, and your father passed just a few years ago. I know you’ve been with the FBI for four years, and that you were suspended four months ago for improper conduct on the job. I know you have a pit bull you rescued from a dog fighting ring. And I know up until three months ago, you had a husband.”

  “How—” I begin, but before I can finish, he shows me his phone. On it, is a picture of me, from earlier in the evening, when Zara and I had just entered the house. It’s a clear shot of my face, when I was sure he wasn’t watching. Below my picture continues to scroll strings and strings of biographical information. There’s more information on his phone than is collected anywhere else, including my own computer at home. “You broke into the FBI’s system,” I say. “It’s a back door.”

  He barks out a laugh. “You wish. The system I sold the FBI is a toned-down version of the one I built for myself. Using a complex algorithm which scours the internet for any and all information on a person, I am able to build a complete biographical profile off of nothing but a picture. Here.” He walks over to Zara and lifts her head, snapping a picture of her face. He turns the phone toward me and a second later, information begins to populate, showing Zara’s address, her contact information and all her background biographical information.

  “You built that? Why?” I ask.

  “You already have the answer,” he says, then points to the rooms on my right. I look at each of the four women, they’re all watching me, intently. On the floor of the fifth room, I can see the woman’s immobile body.

  “That’s how you located them,” I say. “You saw them, didn’t you? And then you took their picture, used it to find out their habits, and abducted them. But what did you do to them? They don’t look like they used to.”

  “All I’ve done is restore them to their original looks,” he replies. Each of the women now have blonde hair, though they all had blue eyes before. Something I should have picked up on. If I recall their case files we suspected could be connected, only one was a blonde originally.

  “What the hell is this, Krauss?” I ask. “What are you doing with these women?”

  “You know,” he says, standing back up and slipping his phone in his pocket. “I’ve never had anyone else down here before. Not anyone who was ever on this side, with me, I mean. And now I’ve got two of you, and nowhere to put you.”

  “You’re going to let us go,” I say. “We’re federal agents. And I’ve already notified my team. They’re on their way.”

  He shakes his head. “Do you really think they’re coming? I managed to scramble the GPS signal in your phone before it was too late. They’ll have a fifty square mile area they’ll have to search before they find this place. And even when they do, they’ll never find you down here.”

  “We found our way down here,” I say. “It honestly wasn’t that hard.”

  I see his face falter for a moment, the illusion that he’s untouchable gone for a brief instant before it’s back again, with a vengeance. “And I watched you the entire way,” he replies. “Imagine my surprise when I find what I think are two cat burglars attempting to break into my house. Except they’ve got some heavy-duty equipment to get past my systems. That was when I knew you were special. I looked you up, and here we are.”

  I want to bite back, to argue with him. Nick already knows we were headed here. Even if the call didn’t fully go through, he heard my voice. He’ll be sending everything the FBI has. I just need to hold out until they get here.

  The only problem is, I still haven’t sent him any proof. Janice could still shut this whole thing down, on the account of not wanting to piss off Krauss. If she only knew what we know now. “What’s the point of all this, Krauss?” I say, trying to keep him talking. My arms and legs ache like crazy, but if we’re going to get out of this, I have to keep him talking.

  “This?” he asks. “This is me dealing with two home intruders on my property. The State of Maryland allows for Castle Doctrine, which means I can shoot anyone who comes into my home and threatens my wellbeing.”

  “I know what it means,” I say. “But you can’t just kill two federal agents and think everything is going to be okay.”

  “I didn’t know you were federal agents,” he says, innocently. “You never identified yourselves to me, broke into my home, raided my things. I’m afraid I was forced to shoot to protect myself.”

  “Then what’s the point of all this?” I ask. “Why not just shoot us as soon as you saw us?”

  He seems to consider the question. “I admit I was curious. When I learned you were FBI, I knew I needed some answers from you first. So here goes. How?”

  “How what?” I ask, trying to play dumb. I need to string this out as long as possible.

  “How did you manage to trace everything back to me? I erased all the records, made sure I wasn’t on any surveillance cameras.”

  “Ryde 4 Lyfe backs up their driver data at an offsite location,” I say. “Their boss is a little paranoid.”

  He snaps his fingers, standing back up and pacing the room. “Damn. I knew I had been in that system too long. But it was necessary to establish some credibility.”

  “Why Hannah?” I ask. “And why these other women? What are you doing down here?”

  “Don’t you understand?” he asks. “They are my collection. Perfectly curated. Though, I’ll admit, one of my pieces was recently damaged. Unfortunately for me, it’s the most valuable piece. If I can’t repair her, I’ll have to find a replacement.” He gives me a curious look, like he’s sizing me up. And as he gets closer, I can smell his aftershave. I try to pull away from him, but being bound to the chair limits my options.

  “You’d never work,” he says. “Face structure is all wrong. The hair we can fix, but everything else is off.” He turns to Zara. “Too small. Neither of you are of high enough quality. Which means I don’t have a place for you in the collection.”

  He turns and begins walking away. I don’t like how ominous those words sounded. He doesn’t even see us as people. Instead, he sees us as some kind of specimens for his display and amusement. “Wait,” I call out. He stops. “Tell me about your…collection. When will you ever have another chance?”

  He considers it, then turns back. “I’m not stupid, Agent Slate. Your attempts to stall me are futile at best.”

  “But it’s like you said,” I say, silently willing Zara to wake up. “You’ll never have anyone down here again. What is a collection if you can’t show it off to someone?”

  He gives me another one of those curious looks. This is a man who likes for other people to be impressed by his accomplishments, though he pretends to remain humble. He gets off on people talking about him and saying that he doesn’t do interviews, that instead he works hard for the betterment of humanity, instead of basking in the spotlight. But there is one spotlight he can’t resist, and that’s the one he can’t tell anyone about. “That’s just the thing, though. This isn’t for anyone else; this is specifically for me.”

  “Still,” I say. “You must take some pride in having curated it to this level so far.”

  “It wasn’t easy,” he replies. “I had to create the software just to obtain the first piece.”

  “How long have you been…collecting?” I ask.

  “Roughly two years,” he replies.

  I honestly can’t believe what I’m seeing down here. Some of these women have been down here two years? I look back over at them. None seem to be in bad shape, in fact, they all look very healthy.

  “You take good care of your…pieces,” I say.

  “I have to, if I want them to last,” he replies. “It’s important to keep them in optimal condition. If a piece begins to deteriorate, then it risks falling out of the collection.”

  I look at each of the faces of the women, all of them watching us, watching me. Some of these women probably haven’t seen another person, other than Krauss for a long time. I recall the picture I saw in the control room. Finally, it falls into place. “They are all…they’re your sister, Lisa.” I hadn’t seen a picture of her in Krauss’s file, because we just hadn’t gone that deep on him yet. But I knew he lost his sister a few years back.

  “Very good, Agent Slate,” he replies. “You have a keen observational mind.”

  “But…” I say, turning back to him. “Why five of them? If you were looking to replace Lisa, why not just one?”

  “Lisa is the most fascinating, complex person I have ever known,” he says. It doesn’t escape my attention that he’s using the present tense. “She’s a multi-faceted jewel, someone who cannot be defined by just one characteristic. Or one season. Each piece in the collection represents Lisa in all the different ways I know her.” He walks over to the first window, where the youngest of the women looks back out. She can’t be older than seventeen, at best. “This is her inquisitive phase, where she has an insatiable lust for knowledge.” He walks to the next. She seems to be about nineteen, maybe twenty. “This is her prim phase, where she becomes more concerned with how people see her than how she sees the world. This is a difficult time for her.” He seems particularly proud of this one and hangs on a moment before moving to the third window. This woman is in her late twenties, early thirties. “This is her maturing phase, where she puts all she has learned to good use and builds a life.” He walks to the final window. A woman who is almost forty looks back at us. “This is her ascension phase, or the last phase of her life. As I’ve most recently known her.” Finally, he walks to the last window, where no one looks back. “This is supposed to be her rebellious phase, where she breaks free of the constraints of the world and goes out to meet new challenges. But I’m a bit embarrassed, as the piece is no longer fit for viewing at this time.”

  “Why?” I ask. “What happened?”

  “Not your concern,” he replies, walking past me back toward the control room. “Though you were right, Agent Slate. I did enjoy showcasing my collection for you. It’s just too bad you won’t be around very long to enjoy it as much as I have.”

  “That last phase,” I call out. “That was how she was when she died, wasn’t it?” He stops, and turns again, his eyes burning with anger.

  “What is wrong with you?” he spits. “She is right there!” He points to the windows.

  “Listen to me Krauss,” I say. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. You know I know what it’s like. My husband has only been gone four months and to be honest I don’t know how I get out of bed most days. To have lived with this pain for years…it’s almost unimaginable to me. But you’ve done it.”

  “My sister isn’t dead,” he says, vitriol coloring his words. “She’s there, preserved. A perfect specimen.” He glances over at the windows, but I see the briefest hint of a falter in his eyes. Part of him knows it’s all an illusion, a mind game he’s playing with himself.

  “You and I are the same,” I say. “We are both trying to deal with this grief in the best way we know how. You are trying to keep your sister alive by surrounding yourself with different versions of her. But you know in your heart none of them are really her. You’d have to combine all five of those women into one person to equal your sister. Me, on the other hand, I’m risking my job, my friends, maybe even my freedom to find out who took my husband from me. We’re both obsessed with this idea that we can’t let our loved ones go. But we have to.”

  He looks at me, earnestness in his eyes. “I feel for your plight, Agent Slate. But you and I are not the same. Your husband is dead. My sister is very much alive, right there. Right where I can always see her. Where I’ll always be able to see her.”

  He walks over to a table where he has all our equipment laid out. It seems he’s removed everything from our packs, including our phones and our weapons. But he’s far enough away that I can at least try to wake Zara.

  I attempt to shift my chair, only to find it’s in some kind of groove in the floor, which means I can’t move it without getting up. I try to reach over with my hand or my leg, but the ropes around them are too tight. Zara is too far away.

  “Zara, c’mon, wake up,” I whisper. But she’s not moving. I tug on my restraints, pulling against the wood boards of the chair as hard as I can. I think I start to feel one of the arms give when Krauss takes another syringe from the table and walks back over to me.

  “As much as I’d like to shoot you here and be done with it, I have to get you back upstairs first,” he says. “They need to find you right inside the door, where I’ll confess to shooting two intruders out of self-defense.” I know if he manages to stick me with that needle, I’m never waking up again. I can’t let that happen. I flex every muscle I can at once and use all the strength in my body to pitch myself forward, pulling the chair up out of the groove in the floor just as Krauss goes to jab me with the needle.

  The surprise move causes him to jump back out of the way as I crash to the floor, face down, hitting my face on the concrete. It sends a shockwave of pain through me, though I realize the force of the abrupt stop has loosened the arm on the old chair. I wrench the entire arm of the chair off just as I flop to the side, catching Krauss off-guard again. He’s got a determined look in his eye as he attempts to jab me in the side, but I strike his hand with the wooden board that still attached to my arm.

  Krauss drops the syringe as he yelps in pain, cradling his hand. Using my free hand, I manage to loosen the restraints on my other arm enough to pull it out from under the ropes. With both hands free, I try to grapple my way across the floor with my legs still attached to the chair.

  He sees I’m going for the syringe and Krauss runs over, trying to pick it up first. I swing my legs around and hit him with both them and the chair, knocking his legs out from under him and sending him down to the concrete. His head bounces off the ground and his eyes flutter, but they’re still open. My legs are now pinned under Krauss and it’s all I can do to continue clawing my way to the syringe. He moans and turns over, his legs flopping off the chair and I find I have some more freedom of movement, but not much. The syringe is too far away for me to grab, so I start working on my legs, trying to unbind the ropes holding them there.

  “Zara!” I yell. “Zara, wake up!” Even in my manic state I still think about how she’s only here because of me, and that we’re both in mortal danger because of my foolish choices. I finally manage to get one leg free just as Krauss rolls over onto all fours, then rubs the back of his head where it hit the floor.

  Our eyes meet and I can see the panic in his. He knows this is all about to come crashing down around him. The syringe is too far away for him to grab without having to go over me and he knows I can trip him up. Instead, he looks to the table where he laid out all our items. Where he laid out our weapons.

  Working furiously on the last knot, I do everything I can to get my leg free while trying to inch toward the syringe at the same time. Finally, I pull my foot out from the loosened rope and scramble up, grabbing the syringe just as a bullet clips the ground at my feet.

  I look up, and Krauss has my weapon in his hand. I dive behind one of the pillars, with the syringe just as another bullet hits the pillar between us.

  “This isn’t how I wanted this to go,” he calls out. “I could have made it painless for you.”

  “Pretty sure that’s off the table,” I call back. “Krauss, the FBI already knew we were coming here. They’re on their way. You need to give yourself up.”

  He laughs, though it’s forced. “You really don’t know me, Agent Slate. Do you think I got where I am today by giving up?”

  I examine the syringe in my hand. If I can just get close enough, I can impale this into his bloodstream in less than a second. But I don’t know how good of a shot Krauss is. So far, he’s been too close to the mark for me to risk it. I glance to my left. The row of cells is just beyond the next pillar.

  Taking a deep breath, I dive for the pillar as another shot rings out. I can almost feel the bullet whizz by. “Enough of this!” he yells out. I use the distraction to jump to the left again, and even though I’m in the open, he doesn’t fire.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, opening my arms like wings. I know I’m taunting him, but I’m also standing right in front of the cells. “Are you afraid of damaging your specimens?”

  He’s looking down the barrel of the gun at me, hatred seared across his face. The weapon is shaking in his hand, but he’s not shooting.

  “You can’t bring yourself to do it, can you?” I ask. “You’re too afraid of hitting one of the cells. That glass is strong, but it’s not bulletproof, is it? It’ll shatter if you shoot it.”

  Krauss grits his teeth but doesn’t move. I take a step closer. “It’s over,” I say. “The FBI is on their way. You can’t sustain this any longer.”

  Rage forms across his face and in an instant, he turns the weapon on Zara. “No!” I rush him as fast as I can, slamming into him just as I hear the shot. I stab him in with the injector, then knock the gun from his hand. He tries to knock me off, but a few seconds later, I feel his body begin to go limp. I scramble off him, and go to my friend. The only friend I have left. The friend whose life I’ve put in danger.