The Cable Guy's Last Secret

Elena sat in her parked car, rain drumming against the windshield, watching the house across the street. She'd been following him for three weeks—ever since the corporate audit flagged the unusual expense reports. Not that she was a real spy. Just an internal investigator, hired to uncover embezzlement at a tech conglomerate where Marcus worked as a senior engineer. But the longer she watched, the more this felt less like corporate due diligence and more like a personal unraveling.

The cable guy's van parked in Marcus's driveway at 8:17 AM every Wednesday. Always the same company. Always the same driver—dark hair, baseball cap pulled low, methodical in his movements. Elena photographed him every time. On week four, she noticed something: the cable guy never carried equipment. Just a clipboard and a small black bag.

That night, she broke into Marcus's home office while he was out. She found what she was looking for taped beneath his desk drawer: not financial records, but photographs. Hundreds of them. Each showing the same cable guy in different locations—at a café, entering an apartment building, standing outside a school. They were dated back six years.

The final photo showed Marcus himself, standing beside the cable guy, both wearing baseball jerseys, arms draped over each other's shoulders like brothers. Elena recognized the stadium behind them. She'd been there with her father, back when she still believed in happy endings. Back before she understood how easily people could become strangers to each other, how thoroughly someone could hide inside plain sight.

She thought of the Sphinx—riddle wrapped in mystery, devouring those who couldn't solve its puzzle. Marcus wasn't embezzling. He was hunting. Or maybe being hunted. The cable guy wasn't installing anything. He was leaving messages, coordinates, instructions. Corporate espionage? Blackmail? Something older and more personal?

Elena returned to her car and typed a single name into the database the cable company used for employee records. The screen flashed: NO MATCH. She should've felt satisfied. Another case closed. But instead she sat there until dawn, watching Marcus's bedroom window light up, wondering what happened when you finally solved the riddle and realized you'd been asking the wrong question all along.