The Last Innings

The humidity wrapped around me like a wet wool blanket, soldering my silk blouse to my skin. Condensation pooled on the wrought-iron table where I sat, my untouched gin and tonic sweating through a cardboard coaster. Palm fronds rustled overhead, their shadows stretching across the Olympic-sized swimming pool like elongated fingers.

Three years since I'd left the Agency. Three years of pretending I could become someone else—someone who didn't notice surveillance detection routes, who didn't count exits upon entering any room, who could sit by a resort pool without calculating sightlines and cover.

Old habits died screaming, not whispering.

"You're doing it again," Marcus said, appearing beside me with fresh drinks. His baseball cap was pulled low, shielding eyes that still held remnants of the secrets we'd kept together. "The thing where you vanish into your own head."

"Just thinking," I said, accepting the drink. My palm was sweating where I gripped the glass.

"About?"

About the man in room 412 who'd been watching me for forty-seven minutes. About the way he positioned himself to observe without appearing to observe. About the radio beside him—broadcasting a baseball game, the announcer's voice rising and falling with the rhythm of something designed to mask other sounds.

About how his surveillance technique was identical to mine.

"About how we used to be," I said instead. "Remember Prague?"

Marcus's smile didn't reach his eyes. "I remember plenty. Including why we got out."

"Did we?" I gestured vaguely with my drink. "Really get out?"

He followed my gaze toward the man by the pool. The stranger removed his sunglasses, and recognition hit me like a physical blow—not of him, but of the craft in his posture, the stillness of his hands, the way his eyes tracked movement without appearing to track anything at all.

"That's not a vacationer," Marcus said quietly.

"No," I said. "That's a mirror."

The stranger stood, walked toward the deep end of the pool, and bent to test the water with his hand. A father and young daughter splashed nearby, the girl's laughter bright against the heaviness of the moment.

"What do you want to do?" Marcus asked.

I thought about the file I'd carried for three years. The documents that could dismantle everything we'd built. The truth about who'd actually sent us into Prague, and why.

"I think," I said, setting down my drink, "that I'm done running from what I am."

The water in the pool shimmered, innocent and unknowing. Somewhere in the distance, the baseball game continued its ancient rhythm—pitch, swing, connection. A child's perfect summer game.

Spying wasn't like that. There were no clear teams, no rules, no bottom of the ninth where everything could be fixed. There was only the moment before you moved, and all the moments that came after.

"Then let's go," Marcus said, standing beside me.

We didn't look back at the mirror by the pool. Some reflections, once recognized, can never be unseen.