CHAPTER NINETEEN
The lock took longer than it should have. Not because it was complicated - just a basic deadbolt that any halfway decent burglar could pop in thirty seconds. But his hands kept shaking, and the pick kept slipping, and sweat made the tools feel greasy in his gloved fingers.
Performance anxiety. Even after Eleanor and Alfred, the anticipation still got to him.
It was amazing what you could learn about locks when you worked the job he did. Every collection that crossed his desk came with a security assessment, with notes about alarm systems and door hardware and the particular habits of owners who thought their precious things were safe behind Schlage deadbolts and four-digit alarm codes.
Finally, the cylinder turned with a soft click. He eased the door open, listening for any sound that meant his research had been wrong. But the house sat empty and quiet, just like he knew it would be. Just like the owner's schedule indicated.
Everything in this house would be maintained to museum standards, every surface polished to a fault. That's how they all lived, these people who built their identities around ownership. Like Eleanor with her climate-controlled doll room. Like Alfred with his carefully calibrated bug boxes.
Those records that crossed his desk were a goldmine if you knew how to read them. Not just the dry facts about collection values and insurance requirements, but the stories between the lines. The way some collectors talked about their pieces revealed everything about who they were. Or weren't.
The house smelled of furniture polish and old paper and that particular desperation that came from trying to hold onto pieces of the past. He knew the layout by heart - had memorized it from the assessment photos that crossed desk. Living room to the right, study to the left, and straight ahead - the collection room. Their holy of holies.
He'd chosen this one carefully. Not just for the value of his collection - though that was impressive enough to warrant a six-figure insurance rider - but for what those carefully curated pieces said about their owner. You could tell a lot about someone by what they thought was worth preserving.
Eleanor's dolls had been her substitute family. Each porcelain face was a substitute for the void her dead husband had left behind. Alfred's insects were his attempt to impose order on a chaotic universe, to pin down meaning like he pinned down beetles. Take away the collection and what was left? Just another empty vessel, like Eleanor without her dolls or Alfred without his insects. They'd all built themselves around these precious things, defined their worth by what they owned instead of what they were.
He understood that need. That hunger to possess something meaningful. But physical objects were just symbols. The real collection was the collectors themselves.
And the collection in this house spoke of deeper needs. Of a man trying to possess pieces of divinity itself.
The collection room waited in the basement behind a door that required both key and keypad entry. But he had those codes too. Amazing what people would write down on official forms if someone asked the right way.
His heart rate picked up as he typed in the combination. Like the moment before opening a perfectly wrapped gift.
The lock disengaged. He stepped inside.
Moonlight caught gold leaf and ancient wood, illuminating treasures that would make museum curators weep. This place was a veritable magpie's hoard, worth an accumulated ten million dollars. If this collector had any sense, he would have sold up and retired the moment his collection passed the seven-figure mark.
But that was the thing about these people. The value of their collections was their whole being. To them, it was some kind of game. Stockpile these expensive items, and the value upon death is what your life was worth. And that was what he was so desperate to understand.
He settled into the shadows to wait, surrounded by treasures that would soon lose their owner. In an hour, someone who'd spent his life collecting pieces of the divine was about to have a very personal encounter with his maker.
Some people filled their lives with beautiful things. He preferred collecting the people who collected beautiful things. It was all about value in the end - not the kind you could calculate on a spreadsheet, but the kind that transformed the mundane into something extraordinary.
So he slipped on the next mask and waited.