Chapter 12 · The Auction Block

High beams caught me square in the face and the pier went white.

I dropped to one knee on the wet concrete. My hands were still hooked under the hull plate — nine inches of salt-eaten steel I'd been cutting since two in the morning with a torch down to its last amp. The edge sawed into my palm. Blood ran hot down my wrist and slicked the metal.

"Move," Garrett said. He didn't look back. "Ramp's ten feet out."

The Maybach sat across the lane, black and gleaming and ridiculous on a dead pier. June stepped out. Heels on rotten wood, like she was boarding a yacht instead of walking a ship graveyard. A slab of a man came around the back of the car — windbreaker, SHORE SECURITY across the chest.

"Two in the morning," June said, nose wrinkling. "God, Vivian. You smell like a gas station bathroom."

"You drove out here to critique my hygiene?"

"I drove out here to watch you fail." She nodded at the plate. "What is that, scrap?"

My arms were shaking. My fingers had locked into claws.