Palm Shadows

Elena sliced the papaya with surgical precision, the bright orange flesh glistening in the morning light. At seventy-three, she'd learned that knife skills were transferable—from kitchen to counterintelligence work, though her husband Marcus never knew she'd noticed his disappearances.

"The cat needs feeding," Marcus called from the bedroom, his voice thinner these days, worn down by whatever cough he'd been nursing for three months.

"Already did," she said, scraping seeds into the compost. Their tabby, Artemis, wound around her ankles, purring. Cats knew secrets. They knew who left the house at midnight, who came back smelling like cheap hotel soap.

She'd found the phone in his sock drawer last Tuesday—burner, prepaid, a single contact labeled "Palm." At first she'd thought it was innocent. Palm Springs? A doctor? But the texts had been encrypted, and Elena remembered things. Like how to crack basic ciphers, how her palm had read the future in more CIA safe houses than she cared to remember.

The retirement community in Fort Lauderdale had seemed like paradise when they'd bought the condo. Orange trees in the yard, ocean views, the promise of growing old together. Instead, Marcus had grown distant, his eyes always fixed on something beyond her shoulder.

Now Artemis jumped onto the counter, nosing at the papaya rind.

"You know, don't you?" Elena whispered. "You know he's not sick."

The cat blinked slowly.

Her phone buzzed—the burner she'd bought three days ago, encrypted channel she'd set up just like old times. The message was simple: *Asset confirmed. Palm Sunday extraction. 0400.*

Elena's hands didn't shake. Thirty years of marriage, and he'd never told her the agency had approached him too. Or that he'd said yes. All those late "business trips," the sudden interest in Latin American politics, the way he'd flinch when she touched his palm—reading his future, she'd thought. But she'd been reading his past.

She finished cutting the papaya, arranged it on a plate. Marcus appeared in the doorway, looking older than she'd ever seen him. His palm rested against the frame, and she saw it now—the tremor, the hesitation. He knew she knew.

"Breakfast," she said, and there was something like relief in his eyes. "We need to talk about Sunday."