The Riddle in Her Palm

The iPhone lay in her palm like a guilty thing, its screen glowing with messages she couldn't quite bring herself to delete. Elena had become a sphinx lately — inscrutable, ancient in her silences, her eyes holding riddles he was too tired to solve.

"Are you going to tell me?" Marcus asked, not really wanting the answer.

She'd been working late at the firm, something about corporate espionage. A client suspected someone was planting moles in their R&D department. The irony wasn't lost on him — his wife, the corporate spy hunter, while he sat at home wondering who she was really texting at midnight.

The fox, they'd called her in law school. Clever, adaptable, always one step ahead. He'd loved that about her once. Now it just made him lonely.

"It's not what you think," she said finally, her thumb hovering over the screen. "The client — he's been watching me. Following me."

Marcus felt the blood drain from his face. "What?"

"He thinks I'm the spy. Or he wants me to be." She laughed, a hollow sound. "I met him yesterday. He had photos of me, Marcus. Photos of us. He knows where we live."

The room suddenly felt very small. Marcus had suspected infidelity. He hadn't suspected danger.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to involve you." She looked at him then, and the sphinx cracked open just enough to show the fear underneath. "But now I have to make a choice. Work with him, or — "

"Or what?"

"Or disappear."

She set the iPhone on the counter between them. The screen lit up again with an incoming message, but neither of them moved to read it.

Marcus took her hand, felt the tension in her palm, the way she'd been carrying this alone for weeks. "We'll figure it out," he said, even though he wasn't sure he believed it. "Whatever you need to do."

The fox smiled then, grateful and terrified all at once. Outside, something moved in the darkness of their garden — nothing, surely nothing — but for the first time in years, Marcus felt hunted too.