The man in the baseball cap

Elena watched him across the pool, the water rippling around her waist as she treaded in the shallow end. David wore his faded blue baseball cap pulled low, the way he always did when he was thinking hard about something. Or hiding something.

Three weeks ago, she'd found the burner phone in his coat pocket. The messages were coded, but the pattern was clear: meet times, drop locations, the kind of language that screamed corporate espionage. Her husband of seven years was a spy.

The pool party was her sister's idea. "Get out of the house, stop obsessing," Sarah had said. But Elena couldn't stop thinking about the file she'd discovered on his laptop—everything about her company's new encryption software. David worked for their biggest competitor.

"You joining us, El?" Sarah called from the deck, margarita in hand.

"In a minute." Elena watched David talking to her brother-in-law about their son's upcoming baseball tournament. He looked like any other suburban father, khakis stretched across his thighs, that stupid hat hiding eyes that had looked at her with such tenderness last night.

That was the worst part. He still loved her. She could feel it in the way he touched her, the way he made coffee exactly how she liked it. He'd betrayed her professionally, maybe destroyed everything she'd spent fifteen years building, but he hadn't stopped loving her.

Or maybe that was just another layer of the operation.

David glanced at her then, and for a second, the shadow of his hat lifted enough that their eyes met across the water. He knew she knew. She could see it in the small, sad smile that touched his lips.

Elena made her choice. She'd go to the FBI on Monday. But tonight, tonight she'd swim back to shore, let him wrap her in a towel, and pretend their world hadn't already drowned.

The baseball game was Saturday. She'd go, sit in the stands, cheer for their boy. She'd wear her sunglasses and let him think his secret was still safe, one last weekend before everything changed forever.

David adjusted his hat and turned back to her brother-in-law. Elena dipped beneath the water, holding her breath until her lungs burned, wishing she could stay under forever.