The Auction at Pier 66

The carving had been aboard for three hours. Tess knew because she'd watched the unmarked truck arrive at 3:00 PM, the crate marked with the auction house logo unloaded by two men in suits who didn't move like movers. They'd carried it up the gangway with the careful blankness of people transporting something worth more than their annual salary.

Now she stood at the edge of Pier 66, tablet in hand, wearing the auction house lanyard Ruth had left in a restroom at Pike Place Market that morning. The badge said Melissa Horne, Catalogue Assistant. The real Melissa Horne was, according to Ruth's last text, stuck in traffic on I-5 with a conveniently flat tire.

The Aurora Spirit sat low in the water, her white hull gleaming under the pier's industrial lights. Mid-size, maybe 250 passengers at capacity, the kind of vessel cruise lines used for intimate Alaskan routes. Tonight she'd carry fewer than eighty guests, all of them bidding on the thirty-seven lots spread across the main salon on Deck 5. Lot 47 was red cedar, eighteen inches tall, carved by hands that had known the salmon runs and the winter ceremonies before the government made both illegal.

Tess touched the edge of her lanyard. Her throat was dry.