The Papaya Incident

The hotel pool shimmered like liquid mercury under the Dominican sun, its surface disturbed only by the occasional lone swimmer—corporate middle managers seeking refuge from the quarterly review. Elena sat at the edge, her legs submerged in the turquoise water, watching papaya juice drip onto her white linen dress. She'd stopped caring about stains three days ago, when she'd found the cable taped beneath the baseboard of their hotel suite.

She was a corporate spy now, she supposed. Or the victim of one. It depended on your definition.

"You're going to prune," David said, approaching with two rum drinks. His tie was already loosened, his forearms that particular shade of sunburned that suggested he'd fallen asleep in a lounge chair while she paced their room, dismantling lamps and lifting paintings to find the hidden camera she was certain existed. "You've been in the sun for two hours."

"I'm not worried about sun, David." She accepted the drink without looking at him. "I'm worried about why there's a monitoring cable running from the bedside lamp to the ventilation system."

He paused, the ice in his glass clinking. "The what?"

She laughed—a short, dry sound. "Oh, now we pretend? I should have known something was wrong when you booked this trip. You, who considers a microwaved burrito fine dining, suddenly choosing an all-inclusive resort? When was the last time you ate fresh papaya, David? When was the last time you noticed anything about me at all?"

He set his drink down on the concrete with deliberate care. "The cable is for the hotel's internet system. I'm working on a merger. I needed secure bandwidth."

"A merger."

"With a competitor. Elena, I'm trying to secure our future."

She stood up, water cascading from her calves, and faced him. The man she'd married seven years ago seemed to ripple before her—part husband, part stranger, part something she couldn't name yet. The man she'd loved, the man who might be using her, the man she was beginning to suspect she'd never truly known at all.

"You're not securing anything," she said quietly. "You're conducting corporate espionage through our honeymoon. And I don't know which is worse—that you did it, or that you thought I wouldn't notice."