Orange Moon Surveillance

The orange moon hung low over the parking garage, the color of warning lights and traffic cones, of things that demand attention. Elena checked her watch again. 2:47 AM. Her husband thought she was working late at the pharmaceutical company—mergers and acquisitions, she'd told him over dinner three years ago, when the lies began as small omissions.

She was working, technically. Just not in mergers. She was a corporate spy, stealing research pipelines, clinical trial data, patent applications. Tonight's target: a cancer treatment that could save millions. The company that hired her would bury it to protect their existing chemotherapy profits.

Running was supposed to clear her head. That's what she told herself when she started lacing up at midnight, chasing sleep through the empty streets of Seattle. But the running had become something else—training, almost. For what, she didn't want to admit.

"You're distant," David had said that morning, reaching across the bed. His hand had lingered on her shoulder, the way it used to when they first met. She'd flinched. "Is it the job?"

She'd almost told him everything. The spying, the guilt, the way she checked their bedroom for cameras before they made love now. But she'd kissed him instead, a distraction technique she'd learned in training.

The orange glow of the garage security lights reflected off the windshield. She'd photographed the documents. She had the evidence on a drive tucked into her sports bra. She could drop it at the secure box downtown, collect her fifty thousand, and keep running—not just through streets, but away from who she was becoming.

Or she could contact a journalist. Burn the operation. Lose the career but maybe, just maybe, sleep again.

Elena started the car. The orange moon followed her home, where David was probably asleep, where the sheets still smelled like the detergent they bought together, before she became someone who sold cures for profit. She put the car in drive, heading toward the secure box.

She'd never run fast enough to escape herself. But tonight, she could stop running in the wrong direction.