The Man in Section 7

Mara sat in the hotel lobby bar, nursing her gin and tonic, watching the businessman in section 7 through the reflection of the mirror behind the bottles. He had sandy hair, graying at the temples—familiar, though she couldn't place why. He kept checking his watch. She was supposed to be a corporate spy tonight, hired by his competitors to photograph documents from his briefcase during a moment of carelessness.

Instead, she found herself watching him the way someone watches a person they once loved.

He ordered another drink—something with orange juice that turned his glass amber in the low light. When he lifted it, his hand trembled. She could see the sweat on his palm from where she sat.

The bartender slid a coaster toward her. "You want another?"

Mara hesitated. She had done this work for eight years: seducing secrets out of strangers, photographing passwords from shoulder-surfed positions, becoming whoever someone needed her to be until they needed her to be someone else. She had forgotten what it felt like to want something real.

Then the man looked up and their eyes met. Recognition registered simultaneously.

"Daniel?" she heard herself say.

He stood slowly. "Mara."

Seven years ago, she had left him without explanation. She had just received her first offer from the firm—a way out of her mountain of debt, an exit from a life that felt like it was closing in on her. She had told herself it was only temporary. Just until she got on her feet.

She was still on her feet.

"You're here for the merger," Daniel said, not a question. His voice was different now—harder. "I was warned someone might come."

"Daniel, I—"

"Do you have the pictures?" he asked. "Or do you need me to open the briefcase?"

She saw it then: the resignation, the way his shoulders settled. He had known this was coming. Maybe he had been waiting for it.

Mara stood up. She walked to his table and sat across from him. She took the camera out of her purse and placed it on the table, then slid her card key beside it.

"Room 412," she said. "Meet me in ten minutes."

Daniel's eyebrows rose.

"You can photograph whatever you want," she said. "Then you can decide what to do with it."

"And if I turn you in?"

"Then you turn me in," she said. "But at least one of us will finally make a choice."

He finished his drink in one swallow. When he set the glass down, his palm was flat against the table, fingers spread—grounding himself.

"Ten minutes," he said.

Mara walked to the elevator, heart pounding, for the first time in years not knowing whether she was walking toward a beginning or an end.