Seal'd Auction Read online

  We slowed and came to a stop in front of one of a dozen anonymous, squat, gray buildings. The only thing that separated this one from its neighbors were the two men bulging out of their suits flanking the door. The cool night air rushed in as the driver opened my door and offered me his hand. I stepped out cautiously. Even given what I had been through since I came into Kovalev’s orbit, this was strange. And strange was frightening. I hated my regular life. It was monotonous and unpleasant. But at least it was predictable, safe. All of the excitement I had felt earlier in the evening at the prospect of a luxurious night out had twisted into apprehension, although my imagination seemed unable to come up with a plausible scenario of what would await me past the twin guardians at the door that I was quickly escorted toward.

  One of them opened the door for me without a word, revealing a deep darkness inside. The other held his arm to his mouth and said something too low for me to hear. Announcing my arrival, no doubt. The driver took me by the arm and led me into the inky blackness. Once the door was shut behind us and all light had been extinguished, I started to get really scared. Something about the formless dark, the infinite shapes of fear that it could hide, was more frightening than any monster, any flesh-bound terror could be. But just as soon as I had caught my heart in my throat, a thin line of light emerged from in front of me. It grew, swelling into an amber glow that pooled around an inner door. The driver squeezed my arm and prodded me forward. I walked, trancelike, toward the light.

  The sight that greeted me when I came to the door snapped me out of my negative thoughts in an instant. That amber glow emanated from dozens of tall lanterns that filled a space about twice the size of a tennis court. It was a party. Some kind of underground, invite-only party like you only read about after the fact. There was a bar at the far end of the room with two bartenders busy cleaning glasses. Dozens of bottles of what I was sure would be top shelf liquor were on shelves behind them. Around the circumference were couches, dark leather and deeply cushioned, set up around low tables. In a ring within them were standing tables, the kind you could rest a drink or an elbow on as you mingle and chat over hors d’oeurves. Finally, in the innermost circle, several rows of chairs sat serried around a small, raised platform. The lighting was warm and soft. The whole room seemed completely out of place given the building it was in, but maybe that was the point. If you were going to have an exclusive, invite-only party, and you didn’t want any press or looky-loos to know what was going on, it was a good disguise.

  As I looked around the room, taking in the luxurious furnishings and the well-dressed staff, it occurred to me that there were no other guests there. Was I the first to arrive? Suddenly, despite the warm light and the heat lamps hanging overhead, I felt a chill in the pit of my stomach. My stomach then turned itself into knots as a severely beautiful woman in a dark gray pant suit strode purposefully across the room. Right toward me.

  “Ms. Dupre?”

  I nodded. I felt weak. My neck felt like rubber and I wondered that my head stayed upright.

  “Come with me.” Without waiting for my assent, she turned around and walked toward the back of the room. I hesitated for a moment, but a little push from the driver set me on my way and I followed along in her wake.

  She led me to a narrow corridor that led to a brightly-lit room. It was the opposite of the room I had just left, spare and ugly. Vinyl padded chairs lined the walls. Half were filled with young women in evening gowns. Most had empty, vacant expressions, but others looked as scared as I felt. The severe woman pointed to a chair and, not knowing what else to do, I sat down.

  I opened my mouth to ask her what was going on, but she had already exited the room. I looked around the rest of the women, but nobody would meet my eyes.

  “What is going on here? Why are we all here?” I asked to nobody in particular.

  No response.

  I kept scanning the room, trying to engage one of the others, but no luck. I sank back onto my chair’s hard back and took a deep breath. This was not what I had expected, to say the least. And now, fear of what was to come had burrowed itself deep inside of me, clawing at my intestines with icy hands.

  Nobody talked. I joined the other women and sat in silence for what felt like an hour. The whole time, my heart was beating so fast and hard that I was sure it could be heard around the room. Not that anyone seemed to notice. Eventually, I could hear new noises. The low thudding sound of dozens of feet treading on the concrete floor, the hazy drone of muffled conversations, and then the rhythmic pulse of the baseline of some song I couldn’t pick out. There was a party after all, but it was clear that neither I nor the rest of my voiceless companions would be guests. My mind conjured up all sorts of scenarios about my role in this affair, none of them were very appealing. But when the severe woman returned, she revealed that the truth went well beyond my imagination.

  It was an auction.

  I was going to be paraded up in front of the crowd and sold to the highest bidder.

  “Now, it is important for you to smile, but don’t smile too broadly. You don’t want to look like a grinning fool. A subtle, mysterious look. You want to be alluring, not eager.”

  The other faces in the room wore vacant stares. I wondered if they were drugged, or maybe just desensitized to this madness. I was certain my emotions were written across my face.

  “I will be back in ten minutes. You will come out one at a time, but stay ready. Good luck.”

  Then she left the room again, leaving me here with the resigned and absent.

  My mind raced furiously, trying to make sense of what was happening. Kovalev was selling me off. He never gave any indication of being dissatisfied. If anything, he seemed like he enjoyed keeping me around. Could this be his way of cashing me in? Closing the transaction? Would this finally pay off my father’s debt to him? Kovalev had never been generous, reasonable, or kind, but there had to be some sense of fairness buried in him somewhere. A little spring of hope welled up within me.

  There was no guarantee, though. Even if I had a notarized contract, who was to say that Kovalev would keep his word when it came to it. I stepped down hard on the sliver of hope. Better not to get my hopes up. That way I would be prepared when the worst ended up happening, as it had every day since I decided to give up my freedom to save my father.

  “Natalie! You’re up, dear.”

  I hadn’t heard the severe woman come in, but her voice snapped across the room. A pale, dark-haired girl who kept staring at her feet rose and walked, trance-like, out the door. I took a deep breath to calm my racing heart. My turn would come soon.

  Chapter 7 - Jason

  The woman’s voice in the navigation program guided me to an industrial part of town. It was dark here, far from the bright lights of Las Vegas Boulevard or Fremont Street. The streetlights formed little outcroppings in a vast, black sea. This part of town was only rarely frequented past dark, so the city didn’t deem it worthy of spending the extra money on illumination. I pulled to a stop across the street from the address. I left the car running but turned the lights off, scanning around to see if there was anything that warranted suspicion. All quiet.

  Just as I was about to get out of my car, headlights appeared around the corner. I stayed inside, my hand involuntarily reaching for my pistol. But then a limousine emerged from behind the headlights and I felt my body relax.

  I laughed at myself. I was fairly convinced there was no genuine threat to me or the money, but driving by yourself from a pitch-black desert to rows of abandoned warehouses on the wrong side of town, it can play tricks on your mind.

  A man in a finely-tailored suit stepped out of the limo and walked toward the entrance. I hopped out, slung the duffel bag over my shoulder, and followed.

  “You don’t look much like a guest, buddy,” one of the two stone-faced doormen said to me, stepping in front of the door to block my path.

  “I’m not. Just have to drop something off to one of the guests.” I offered my mos
t reassuring smile. I didn’t recognize these two, which meant they didn’t work for Kovalev. If this was someone else’s party, I was pretty sure Kovalev wouldn’t want me flashing his money about, not after all the trouble to keep things quiet up to this point.

  “Nobody gets in who isn’t on the list,” the guard intoned. His companion stood beside him, sphinxlike, staring at me.

  “I don’t need to ‘get in’. I just need to step in for a moment and deliver something. Then I will leave, I promise.”

  The two statues looked at each other.

  “Give me the bag. I will make sure it gets to whoever you need to give it to.”

  I gave a short, derisive laugh.

  “No chance. Now, look. I am going to go deliver my package, then I will leave. But I am going inside.”

  The two men tensed, squaring up, and readying themselves for violence. I was hoping they wouldn’t call my bluff. I didn’t want to start a fight right outside a party while holding a bag with three-quarters of a million dollars in it. For a moment, it looked like a fight was coming whether I wanted it or not. I took a step back to settle into a better stance, but before anyone could do more than loom and posture, I heard a voice call out from beyond the open door.

  “Jason? Jason Phillips?” A short, wiry man bounced out of the building and into the low light outside. I recognized him in an instant. Staff Sergeant Collins was one of the hardest men I had ever known. He was with Delta Force and we had spent some time together in various hotspots. It often happened that spec ops guys from different branches were standoffish, maintaining petty rivalries, but Collins had no patience for that bullshit. We got along instantly. We had talked regularly for a while, but after I got out, we lost touch. I was sure glad to see him now.

  Even though he seemed half the size of the behemoths guarding the door, they each took a step to the side to give him space to pass. I didn’t blame them. I had seen Sergeant Collins in action.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Jason?”

  “I could ask you the same. When did you get out?”

  “Oh, it’s been a bit.” He looked me over appraisingly. “Working private security?”

  “That’s one way to put it,” I said wryly.

  “Hah,” he barked a laugh. “Not a lot of regular jobs that compare, eh? Nothing that scratches that itch.” He reached up and slapped me on the shoulder. “Now step aside, you louts, Jason here is to be afforded every courtesy.” He looked back at me and nodded to the door. “Come on in.”

  The two guards stepped aside. The one who had been talking shot me a dirty look, but only after he was sure that Collins was past. I smiled back at him.

  Collins led me into a low-lit room just to the side of the main corridor. There was a bank of monitors showing a lavish party. Dozens of men in dark suits milled about, taking cocktails and finger foods off trays held by scantily-clad young women. Pretty tame for Vegas, really.

  “So, as you have no doubt surmised, I am in charge of security for this little party. What are you doing here, Jason?” Collins had settled into a swiveling office chair and was regarding me carefully. I could tell that, despite our past friendship and the show outside the building, Collins was taking his job seriously.

  “Like I told the guys out front, I’m just dropping something off.”

  “What, and to whom?”

  “Can’t say the what, but it is for Dimitri Kovalev.”

  Collins kept his face composed, but I could read the slightest tightening around his eyes.

  “That’s who you are working for?”

  “For the moment.” I shrugged.

  Collins let out a long sigh.

  “Be careful. I hear a lot of bad stuff about that guy.”

  I scoffed. “After the shit we’ve been through? You think I’m going to be intimidated by some Vegas tough guy? Look, it’s a job. I don’t love it and I don’t like him, but he pays well and I’m good at it. Look, it’s not forever. I just need to get enough money together to set myself up somewhere in the Caribbean and then I’m leaving everything behind. Besides, it’s not like you are making such an honest living.”

  “Fair enough.” He chuckled. “Hey, I’m not telling you what to do, you make your own choices. I’m just saying – don’t underestimate him.”

  I nodded to him, more to move the conversation along than to actually assent. I glanced over at the security monitors. The main room was covered from multiple angles in high resolution. One of the monitors showed a different room. A small room with no furnishings except the chairs lining the walls. And the girls in evening gowns sitting in them.

  “What are those girls in a room all by themselves for?”

  Collins gave a little groan.

  “That’s what the party is about. It’s a live auction. The girls go for a few days or a week with the high bidder. The prices these guys pay are ridiculous.” He shook his head. “I don’t get it. There are plenty of escorts that will go for way less than what they spend here, and a lot of them are just as pretty. But I guess they like waving their dicks in front of each other.”

  It was curious, but understandable. A lot of the guys in there were rich, powerful. They probably bought women all the time; there was no thrill or excitement in it. But in an auction, where they could compete against each other to show how rich or clever they were, it added a little something to an otherwise banal process. It didn’t make it any less disturbing. Spend enough time in the Vegas underworld and you get to see all kinds of things you wish you hadn’t, but I never got used to the way some women got treated. But what was I going to do about it?

  I looked over the girls in the waiting room. It was true, they were all very attractive. At least from what I could see in a small, black and white monitor. Then I saw her.

  The girl from the apartment building.

  Kovalev’s girl.

  What the hell was she doing here, going up on the auction block?

  “Hey, you see that girl, long dark hair, sitting on the left side?”

  “Yea,” Collins replied.

  “Do you know who she is?”

  He reached under the desk and pulled out a binder and began flipping through. It had pages and pages of headshots and biographies. He went through half before stopping.

  “Ok, here we go.” He looked up at me. “We do background on all the women who come through here. The guests, too, to be honest. Don’t want any surprises, know what I mean?”

  I didn’t respond. Instead, I turned my eyes back to the page he held open. He got the point.

  “Let’s see. Claire Dupre. Twenty-six years old. Mother’s deceased. No siblings. Father is still around, bit of a degenerate. Went to college at UNLV. Never lived outside of Nevada.” He scanned the page again. “That’s it. All I got on her. Why, you want to make a bid?”

  That’s when it hit me. I did want to bid. And I was going to win.

  Chapter 8 - Claire

  Girls continued to leave the room and not come back. Every time the severe woman came back in, my heart went into my throat. I didn’t want my turn to come, but at the same time I wanted it to be over. The waiting without knowing, that was the hardest part. I tried to listen to what was going on outside, trying to get some sense of what to expect, but all I could make out was the muffled voice of an emcee and the occasional rumble of a crowd of people exclaiming at once. Not reassuring sounds.

  “Claire, you’re up.”

  The severe woman’s voice cracked like ice on a frozen lake. Ice that was cracking just under my feet. I stood up as straight as I could, pulled my shoulders back, and tried to effect a change of attitude through posture. It helped.

  “Very nice. Keep your chin up and your tits out. You’ll do fine.”

  She tried to smile in what I assumed was an encouraging manner, but it only ended up looking menacing. I could feel myself slump internally. But I kept my back straight as I followed her out of the waiting room and down the hallway.

  In an instant
I was on the stage in the middle of the room, my eyes blinded with spotlights hitting me from every angle. I could feel the heat on my skin. In the back of my head, I hoped that I wouldn’t start to sweat. Although why I was so concerned about what this group of people thought of me, I wasn’t sure.

  “Gentlemen, I have received a private bid for this lot,” the emcee’s voice boomed out of overhead speakers. “And I believe the bidder intends to avoid any doubt. The bid is one hundred thousand dollars.”

  A hush followed. I hadn’t heard what the other girls had gone for, but I knew I was certainly not expecting someone to pay that much for me. Especially without any bidding!

  “Do I hear any other bids?”

  Silence.

  “Going once. Going twice. Sold! To the gentleman who prefers to remain anonymous.”

  Someone took my arm and escorted me off the stage and down a different hallway. I was in a daze. After all of that waiting and expectation, it was all over so quickly. I couldn’t believe it. One hundred thousand! Surely, that would be enough to satisfy Kovalev. I could almost smell my freedom already. All it would take would be a few nights with whatever creep had put out so much money. After what I had already been through, this would be a breeze.

  I was escorted all the way to another waiting room, this one considerable more luxurious. Overstuffed chairs and couches replaced the cheap vinyl, and the floor was covered in a thick carpet. The lighting, from a handful of standing lamps, was warm and inviting. The room was empty. Once I had been deposited here, whoever had brought me disappeared and closed the door. I stood here for a few moments, unsure of what I was supposed to do next. After what felt like hours sitting on that hard chair, the couch looked very inviting. I was about to flop down on it, careless of the impact on my dress, when the door opened again.