Seventh Inning Stretch

The cat scratched at the door again — a persistent, demanding rhythm that matched the pounding in Elena's chest. She ignored it, just as she'd been ignoring everything for the past three weeks. Since the recruitment. Since the betrayal.

The baseball game on her television screen blurred into streaks of green and white, the announcer's voice droning about pitch counts and ERA statistics. She should have been watching. Should have been extracting the encryption keys from the prototype while her coworkers at OmniTech slept unsuspecting. That's what a spy did. That's what the five million dollars demanded.

But the cat — Oliver — had developed some kind of sixth sense. He'd taken to sitting outside her home office door, yowling at 3 AM when the insomnia and guilt kept her staring at the ceiling. As if he knew she was becoming someone else. Someone who sold out colleagues who trusted her. Who'd invited her to their daughters' softball games and summer barbecues.

"You hungry, buddy?" she whispered, but her voice cracked.

Oliver stopped scratching. Silent judgment.

On screen, a batter connected with a fastball. The crowd roared. Elena remembered her father taking her to baseball games as a child, explaining how the statistics told stories. How a player's slump wasn't just bad luck — it was something in the mechanics, something fixable if you looked hard enough.

Her current slump was moral, not mechanical. And the fix was simple. She knew it was.

Her phone buzzed. *Progress?*

The baseball game faded to commercial. Elena stood, her joints stiff from sitting too long, and walked to her home office door. Oliver looked up at her with amber eyes that seemed to hold ancient wisdom about loyalty and belonging.

"Sorry, buddy," she said, tears finally coming. "Dinner's late tonight."

She opened the door. Then she picked up her phone and typed: *I can't do this. Coming clean tomorrow.*

The cat began to purr, finally satisfied.