The Cat on the 14th Floor

Elena had been watching him for three months through the fiber optic cable, a ghost in his living room, paid by his wife to confirm what she already knew. Marcus was indeed sleeping with the junior associate. Elena had the footage, the timestamps, the invoice almost ready to send.

But then there was the cat.

Barnaby — a ragged orange tom with one ear — would stare directly at the camera lens, those yellow eyes boring through fiber and distance, as if he knew Elena was there. Some nights, when Marcus was out with his mistress, Barnaby would sit by the camera, purring into the silence, and Elena found herself talking to him through the microphone she'd disabled weeks ago.

"You'd like him better if he fed you, wouldn't you?"

She'd been divorced since 2014. Her apartment held a bed, a desk, surveillance equipment worth more than her car, and a sick ficus. She'd forgotten what it felt like to be chosen by anything.

Tonight, Marcus was drunk. He'd called his wife, left a voicemail Elena would transcribe later. Then he'd curled on the sofa, weeping, and Barnaby had climbed onto his chest, kneading deliberately through the expensive shirt. Marcus had buried his face in orange fur, gripping that sorry creature like a lifeline.

Elena's finger hovered over the screenshot button. Evidence.

Instead, she found herself weeping too, silent in her monitoring chair, jealous of a goddamn cat.

She closed the feed. Packed her equipment. The divorce would happen — she'd send enough, just not everything. Sometimes you didn't need to see everything to know the truth. Some betrayals didn't require proof, only witness.

Barnaby blinked at the black screen. Elena wondered if he'd miss her voice.