The Dead Don't Watch

The dead don't watch. That's what Elena kept telling herself as she sat in her car, third night in a row, parked outside the suburban colonial with the manicured lawn and the window boxes filled with geraniums that nobody watered. She was supposed to be the best — a corporate spy who could extract secrets without leaving footprints. But lately, she'd been moving through her assignments like a zombie, hollowed out by years of living other people's lies.

Her target Marcus came to the window, silhouetted against warm light. He was the reason she'd taken this job. The reason she'd let her handler talk her into one last score before retirement. Marcus, who'd loved her and left her five years ago when he discovered she'd been hired by his competitors. Now he was consulting for the firm she was supposed to undermine, and she was supposed to destroy him all over again.

Her phone buzzed. Handler. She ignored it.

A scratching sound came from the backseat. Barnaby, her elderly golden retriever, whimpered in his sleep, chasing something in dog dreams. Beside him, Salem — a cat she'd rescued during a stakeout in Detroit — watched her with those unblinking yellow eyes that always seemed to know too much. They were the only living things who didn't question what she'd become. The only ones who'd never asked her why she'd chosen a life of betrayals.

Elena's finger hovered over her surveillance camera, ready to capture whatever damaging intel Marcus might reveal through that lit window. Instead, she watched him feed his own dog. Watched him laugh at something on television. Watched him live the life they might have had if she hadn't been who she was.

"You're dead inside," her handler had told her last week. "That's what makes you good at this. The dead don't feel."

But she did feel. She felt everything. That was the problem.

Elena started the car. Barnaby woke, tail thumping against the seat. Salem curled into a ball, purring like a small, satisfied engine. She drove away from the house with the geraniums that nobody watered, away from the man she still loved, away from the job that had turned her into something that walked and watched but didn't truly live.

Tomorrow she'd find another line of work. Tomorrow she'd tell Marcus everything. Tonight, she was just a woman with a dog and a cat, finally choosing to feel alive again.