The Last Leaf

The spinach was wilted when Elena pulled it from the crisper—limp as a five-day mission gone wrong. She'd been the one to buy it, back when she still believed in fresh starts, in the possibility that this time would be different. This time, she wouldn't be the one watching from across the street, notebook in hand, documenting the movements of people who'd never know her name.

"You're staring again," Marcus said without turning from his coffee. He'd developed a preternatural sense for observation over three years of marriage to someone who'd spent twenty lying for a living.

"Old habits." Elena dumped the spinach into the pan. "Like you don't still check exits when you walk into restaurants."

"I was logistics, not field." He turned then, and she saw it again—that flicker of something in his eyes that she'd first noticed in a Dubai hotel bar, the night she realized she was burning out. That night when she'd broken every rule in the handbook and told a stranger what she actually did for a living.

He'd laughed, ordered another round. "Corporate espionage? That's not being a spy, El. That's just HR with better funding."

She'd married him six months later. She'd told herself it was love, not escape.

The spinach sulked in the pan. She thought about the woman she'd been hired to investigate last week—another leak at another tech giant, another executive with secrets to sell. Elena had taken the job, because what else did she know how to do? She'd sat outside the target's condo for three nights, and on the fourth, she'd packed up her gear and driven home instead.

Marcus's palm rested on the counter near her hand. Their fingers didn't touch, but she could feel the warmth radiating from him, could sense the question he wasn't asking. The woman at the condo had looked like Elena ten years ago—driven, isolated, convinced that every surveillance target was just another puzzle to solve.

"The client's offering a bonus if I wrap it up this week," she said.

Marcus rotated his hand, palm up, an invitation she'd refused a dozen times before. "Or you could make breakfast and tell me about her instead."

The spinach hissed as she dropped the pan into the sink. Steam rose between them, carrying the smell of something that had almost been nourishing once, before it waited too long to be used.