The Last Question

The margarita was the color of a bruised sunset. Orange, salt-crusted, melting faster than her marriage. Elena sat at the resort pool, watching businessmen with loosened ties shout into phones, wondering when she'd become the kind of person who considered corporate retreats a legitimate expense category.

"You look like someone solving a sphinx's riddle," said a woman beside her. Elena hadn't noticed her approach—dark hair, sharp suit, eyes that had already calculated everything worth knowing.

"Just reviewing the merger documents," Elena lied.

"The merger that's going to cost three hundred jobs in Ohio?"

Elena's fingers tightened around her glass. "How did you—"

"I'm Maya. Corporate espionage consultant, currently unaffiliated." She smiled without warmth. "Your CEO hired my firm last month to assess vulnerability. We found you."

The pool's surface rippled in the artificial breeze. In the reflection, Elena saw a woman who'd spent twenty years climbing ladders that only led down.

"What do you want?"

"To offer you what your firm paid me fifty thousand to find: leverage." Maya slid a flash drive across the table. "Evidence your company hid safety violations. Use it to negotiate better for those workers, or keep climbing."

"Why help me?"

"Because my mother was one of those three hundred jobs you're trying to decide about. Maya, Ohio. She drank herself to death after the last merger." She stood. "Clock's ticking, Elena. The sphinx eats those who can't answer."

Elena watched her walk away, the orange light lengthening across the water. Some questions, she realized, weren't meant to be answered alone. She reached for the drive.