The Dead Man's Breaststroke

Marcus had been a corporate spy for fifteen years, stealing trade secrets from biotech firms and defense contractors, but nothing had prepared him for his brother's pool party. The chlorine stung his eyes as he pulled himself through the water, each stroke a meditation on how thoroughly he'd become a stranger to his own family.

He'd left his iPhone on a lounge chair—no work calls today, David had insisted—but Marcus kept reaching for phantom notifications in his pocket, his thumb twitching with the muscle memory of surveillance.

"You look like a zombie," his sister-in-law Clara called from the deck, handing him a gin and tonic. "When's the last time you slept?"

Marcus forced a smile, adjusting the fedora he'd bought to hide the gray streaking his temples. "Spent the week in a hotel outside Munich. Time zones."

She couldn't know that the hotel room had been a staging ground for infiltrating a competitor's R&D department, that he'd spent three nights photographing documents through a telephoto lens while their children slept down the hall. The zombie comment cut closer than she realized—he'd been moving through life on autopilot for years, each assignment hollowing him out a little more.

David splashed into the pool beside him, startling Marcus from his thoughts. "Remember when we were kids and you swore you'd never work for Dad's company?"

Marcus treaded water, watching the sunlight dance on the surface. "That was before I knew how much it pays to sell out your principles."

His brother laughed, but Marcus heard the pity beneath it. They both knew their father's pharmaceutical empire had been built on stolen research, on the very kind of espionage Marcus now performed for competitors. The apple hadn't fallen far—it had rolled straight into the family business.

As the afternoon wore on, Marcus found himself envying the people around him. Their petty dramas—who was sleeping with whom, whose startup was failing, who'd gotten too botoxed—seemed so wonderfully small compared to the weight he carried. The corporate secrets, the ruined careers, the marriages destroyed as collateral damage in operations he'd orchestrated.

He swam laps until his muscles burned, trying to exhaust himself enough to sleep without the usual bottle of Ambien. When he finally pulled himself from the pool, dripping and exhausted, Clara pressed a phone into his hand.

"Your assistant called. Something about a Prague contract."

Marcus stared at the screen, another city, another hotel room, another set of secrets to steal. The zombie feeling washed over him again—not the living dead, but something that had forgotten how to live at all.

"I've got to go," he told his brother, though they both knew he was already gone.