Lot Zero

At an ultra-exclusive island auction, the most important object has no place in the official catalogue. Warrant Zero controls something vastly more valuable than the treasures everyone is invited to admire. Several crews have arrived with their own reasons for wanting it and their own ideas about how to take it. The auction is the setting. The unlisted lot is the real business.

The first heist appears to work. The planning, the risk and the effort seem to have produced the result the thieves came for. Then the prize proves to be a forgery. Worse, the genuine warrant was taken before they even arrived. A successful theft has left them holding the wrong object and facing the possibility that someone else understood the game before they began playing.

Leaving empty-handed is not an attractive option. What follows is a second theft, assembled from the consequences of the first rather than the comfort of a prepared plan. Rival criminals are still interested. State interests complicate an already crowded contest. And a wildcard thief may have a clearer view of the situation than anyone who thought they were running it.

The target has changed hands, but its value has not diminished. Every participant must reconsider what the others know, what they have actually obtained and how far they are prepared to go. Expertise helps, although expertise built for the original job may be of limited comfort now. Success depends on adapting faster than people whose profession is taking advantage of someone else's mistake.

Lot Zero is a caper about the theft after the theft: the one nobody planned, against opponents who have already demonstrated that they can steal the prize first. On an island full of people intent on possession, the hardest thing to acquire may be an accurate understanding of who currently has it.