The Palm Reader

The pool at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc was impossibly blue, the color of a dream you can't quite remember. Elena lay on the chaise, nursing her third gin and tonic, watching the ripples distort the reflection of palm fronds overhead. Her palm was sweating against the cool ceramic of her glass.

She wasn't Elena, of course. Not really. Six months ago, she'd been Sarah from Chicago, but that woman didn't exist anymore. The spy game demanded total erasure. Her handler had given her the new identity, the bank account, the backstory—the tragic widow seeking solace in the French Riviera. It was elegant, really. Widows made excellent spies. No one asked too many questions.

Now she was watching him—Marcus, the target. Tech wunderkind, suspected of selling encryption keys to the highest bidder. He sat three chairs away, typing furiously on a phone that probably cost more than Sarah-from-Chicago's car had. He never looked up. He never noticed the woman in the designer sunglasses reading his emails over his shoulder.

But someone else had noticed Elena.

"Your palm is trembling," a voice said.

Elena jumped. A woman had settled into the chaise beside hers—impossibly tall, impossibly beautiful, with silver hair pulled back in an elegant chignon. She held a glass of champagne like it was a weapon.

"I'm sorry?"

"Your hand." The woman gestured with her own. "The way you grip that glass. You're terrified."

Elena forced a laugh. "Just a little too much sun."

"Hmm." The woman's eyes were calculating, intelligent. "My mother was a palm reader in Marrakesh. She taught me that fear has a texture. Yours feels like... anticipation."

"Is that so?" Elena's heart hammered. She'd been made. It had been six months, and she'd been made by a stranger at a hotel pool.

"I'm Lena," the woman said, extending her hand.

Elena hesitated, then took it. "Elena."

"I know," Lena said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I know you're not a widow, Elena. I know you were hired by Marcus's competitors. And I know you've been sleeping with him for three weeks."

Elena froze. The gin turned to ice in her stomach.

"But what you don't know," Lena continued, taking a sip of champagne, "is that I hired you."

The pool seemed to still. The palm fronds stopped rustling.

"What?"

"Marcus thinks he's so clever," Lena said, a cold smile playing on her lips. "Selling company secrets, planning to leave me with nothing while he runs off with his assistant. But he forgot that I was the one who taught him everything he knows." She leaned closer. "I needed proof. Your recordings will be very useful in the divorce proceedings."

Elena sat back, the game suddenly clear. She wasn't the hunter. She'd never been the hunter.

"Why tell me?"

"Because, dear Elena," Lena said, standing up, "I'm about to make you a very rich woman. And I always pay my debts." She paused. "But if you ever take a job in this town again, I will destroy you."

Lena walked away, her heels clicking on the stone, leaving Elena alone with her gin and the impossible blue pool and the sudden, crushing realization that in this game, there was always someone else watching.