The Palm Reader's cables

The cat was the first to know. Bastet, their sphinx-like Bombay with eyes like polished obsidian, stopped sleeping at the foot of their bed three weeks ago. Instead, she took to sitting outside the home office door, emitting low, guttural warnings whenever Elena approached.

That should have been enough.

But Elena was thirty-four and tired, and Marcus had been working late again—third time this week. The startup was launching, he said. The product needed refinement. She'd heard these variations for two years, since the promotion that moved them from Chicago to a downtown apartment with a view of the city's financial sphinx, the boardroom tower where mercenaries in suits traded futures.

She found the HDMI cable first, disconnected from Marcus's secondary monitor and trailing behind the desk. Following its path led her to a small device she'd never noticed before—black, no larger than a matchbox, wedged between the router and the wall.

A spy camera. Not in their home, but transmitting *from* somewhere else.

Her palm trembled as she reached for his laptop. The password hadn't changed—their wedding anniversary, the date she'd jokingly told him was too obvious. Inside, a folder labeled "Source Materials" contained weeks of footage: conference rooms, whiteboards, a man in a suit pointing at proprietary schematics.

Corporate espionage. Marcus was filming the competition.

The bathroom mirror caught her reflection—pale in the harsh fluorescent light, pressing her palm against the glass as if willing herself not to shatter. She'd met Marcus at a corporate retreat. He'd said he worked in logistics.

The cat screamed from the hallway.

Marcus's key scraped in the lock. Elena had seconds. She reconnected the cable, closed the laptop, and sat on their bed, Bastet finally jumping onto her lap, purring now that the truth was out.

"Hey," Marcus called from the living room. "Big day tomorrow. Might need to work late again."

Elena stroked the cat's fur, feeling the weight of what came next. "I know," she said, and for the first time in their marriage, she wasn't talking about his schedule.

The sphinx had asked its riddle, and somehow, they'd both lost.