The Last Witness

The fan above our bed rotated with a sluggish rhythm, barely stirring the humid air. Elena lay with her back to me, her **palm** pressed against the mattress, the fingers slightly curled. I knew that hand better than my own—every line, every scar, every way it would grip my shoulder during nightmares.

"You've been quiet," she said, not turning around.

"Just thinking about the case." I forced a laugh. "The corporate **spy** thing. It's getting old, El. Following people who are already being followed by their own companies. It's Surveillance Inception."

She rolled over. Her eyes held that same thousand-yard stare she'd carried since Mumbai. "That's not what's bothering you and you know it."

I couldn't tell her. Couldn't tell her that the man I'd been tracking for three weeks—some mid-level executive who'd allegedly been selling trade secrets—had been me. The firm had hired me to investigate myself, a kafkaesque loop that made my head throb. I'd been living this double life for so long that I'd started to feel like a **zombie** moving through the world, consuming other people's truths while my own rotted inside.

"I can't **bear** it anymore," I whispered, the words slipping out before I could stop them.

"What?"

The vulnerability in her voice undid me. I reached for her hand, interlacing our fingers. The ceiling fan seemed to stop.

"They hired me to investigate you, El. They think you're the leak."

The silence that followed stretched thin and terrible. Then she laughed—a dry, humorless sound that made the hair on my arms stand up.

"Oh, Marcus," she said, pulling away. "I know."

"You... know?"

"I'm not the spy, you idiot. I'm the handler. And you just failed your final test."

She sat up, and in the wash of moonlight through the curtains, she didn't look like my wife at all. She looked like someone I'd never met, someone who'd been hiding in plain sight for seven years.

"The firm doesn't exist, Marcus. Neither does your job. You've been gathering intel on your own colleagues for a private intelligence group this whole time. And you just gave us the last piece we needed."

The fan kept spinning above us, indifferent to the way my entire life was collapsing into itself. Outside, a neighbor's car alarm began to scream.