The auctioneer called my number like a wine vintage.

"Lot Thirty-One. Twenty-five. Columbia graduate. Art provenance investigator." He paused for effect. "An evening of private conversation and companionship, including dinner at the winner's residence."

Private conversation. Right. Everyone in this room knew what they were actually buying.

I stood on the platform in a borrowed Valentino, black, slit to mid-thigh. My mother's pendant sat cool against my collarbone. Forty-something people in curved rows of velvet chairs, champagne catching light, faces half-hidden in the low light.

What nobody here knew was why I'd applied.

Inside my clutch was a photograph, folded so many times the crease was splitting the image. My mother, Mara Vale, leaning into a man. Head on his shoulder. His hand low on her back. On the back, in her handwriting: ASHWORTH.

She disappeared when I was three. Twenty-two years, no body, no trail. Three years of my own investigating brought me here. The man in that photograph was somewhere in this room.

"Do I hear ten thousand?"

A paddle rose in the third row. Then another in the fifth.

"Fifteen."

"Twenty."

I kept my eyes forward. Don't engage individual bidders, the coordinator had said. You are the experience. I stood still and let them project.

"Thirty thousand."

"Forty."

The back row hadn't moved. Silver hair. Hands resting on the chair arms. He hadn't shifted once since the bidding started.

"Fifty thousand."

Two paddles left. A woman with jade earrings in the third row, and the shape in the back. I couldn't see his face, but I'd been studying photographs of him for three years.

My pulse kicked.

Edmund Ashworth.

"Seventy thousand."

The woman hesitated. The back row didn't.

"One hundred thousand dollars."

His voice was low, unhurried. Heads turned. The woman put her paddle down.

The auctioneer didn't ask if he was sure.

"Sold. Lot Thirty-One, to the gentleman in the rear."

Polite applause. I stepped down from the platform and followed the coordinator through a side door into a hallway lined with paintings worth more than my apartment building.

She touched my elbow. "Mr. Ashworth's suite is at the end of the hall." She lowered her voice. "The safeword is Eclipse."

"I know."

She smiled at me. I smiled back.

The hallway was longer than it looked. At the far end, a single door.

The door was heavy, dark wood, with a brass handle worn smooth. I knocked once.

"Come in."

His voice was deeper in person. I'd listened to recordings of him at gallery openings, charity panels. None of them sounded like this up close.

I opened the door.

The room was dim. Three lamps, all warm. Leather sofa. Whiskey on the side table, a glass poured that nobody had touched. The whole place smelled like old leather and cedar.

Ashworth stood by the far wall. Silver hair, cut short. Taller than I expected from photographs. Charcoal suit, no tie, collar open. He didn't reach for a drink. He didn't smile. His hands hung at his sides, completely still. Not tense. Just waiting.

He was studying me, but not the way I expected from a man who'd just paid a hundred grand for my evening.

"Miss Vale."

Not Lot Thirty-One. My name.

I let the door close behind me. "You know who I am."

"I knew who you were before you submitted your application."

That hit harder than the hundred thousand. He'd seen the name Vale on my application and still raised his paddle. Six figures for an evening with his dead lover's daughter.

He gestured to the sofa. "Sit, if you'd like. Or stand. The room is yours for the evening."

I sat down. Not because he told me to. My legs were shaking and I'd rather sit on purpose than fall down in front of him.

He stayed standing. Close enough to talk quietly. Far enough that I couldn't smell him. I crossed my legs. His gaze didn't drop.

"The safeword is Eclipse," he said. "It ends everything."

"I know."