The bidding had taken place so quickly that I was still reeling. At first, it had seemed like the skeletal man seated in the far row was keen to win, but at the last moment, the one standing wide and brooding at the bottom of the raised dais had leaped in. Even from here, I could sense a brewing hatred scything back and forth between them. But all that was merely background to the panic pumping through my veins. I was exposed to this crowd of ravenous strangers. All I had on me were high heels. Everything else was vulnerable beneath the spotlights. I tried to hide myself, but I knew it was no good. I was the prey. The sharks were all around me. “Six hundred thousand dollars!” the man had called out. I squinted and tried to get a better look at him, although the lights were too bright to make out much detail. All I could see was that he was massive, so muscular that I thought he might as well have been sculpted from marble, and the shadows of his face were dark and mysterious.
