Evidence by the Poolside

The **cat** from next door watched Mara from the balcony as she scrolled through her **iPhone**, the blue light reflecting in her whiskey. Three in the morning, and the tracking software she'd installed last month had finally sent up a flare. David's phone had been at the Marriott downtown for four hours now—not the office, not his mother's, but the Marriott.

She'd recognized the pattern immediately. Same irregular schedule, same encrypted messages that had made her career as a corporate **spy** so lucrative. The irony didn't escape her: she'd taught him everything he knew about operational security, about leaving no digital footprints, about the art of becoming someone else when the job required it. Apparently, he'd been paying attention.

The next day, she sat by her apartment complex's **pool**, watching the water ripple in the afternoon heat. She wasn't surprised when David appeared, his expression carefully neutral. He lowered himself into the lounge chair beside hers, the silence between them heavy with everything they weren't saying.

"You're good," she said, not looking at him. "I'll give you that."

"Mara—"

"Just tell me one thing." She turned finally, met his gaze. "Was it the job? Or something personal?"

He hesitated. A **fox** darted through the landscaping near the pool fence, reddish-brown and quick. Mara watched it vanish into the bushes, thinking how much they were all just animals pretending not to be predators.

"Both," David said quietly. "You know how this works."

She did. She'd just never expected to be on this side of it.

"The Catalina project," she said. "That's what you're selling."

He didn't deny it. She realized then that she'd already known, had probably known for weeks, had chosen not to see what was right in front of her. Some spy she was turning out to be.

"Your turnover," he said, sliding a folded piece of paper across the small table between them. "In return for mine. Fair trade."

Mara picked it up, saw the meeting times and dates written in a handwriting she would have recognized anywhere. Her own handwriting, from three years ago, when she'd been playing both sides and someone—apparently him—had been playing her.

"Fair trade," she agreed, and they both watched the pool water shimmer in the dying light, two professionals who understood that in their world, you could be anyone until you couldn't be anyone anymore.