The Riddle of Rain

The sphinx had been watching from the garden wall for three hundred years, but Elena felt it had never truly seen her until tonight.

Rain slicked the pavement as she pulled the brim of her hat lower, following the man she'd married eleven years ago. Daniel walked with purpose now, none of the slouch he affected at home. She'd found the cable in his study earlier - a sophisticated data-transfer line that didn't belong to their home security system, tucked inside a false-bottom drawer she'd only discovered by accident.

Now he was meeting someone in the shadow of the old cathedral.

"You're running late," a woman's voice cut through the rain. "They're getting suspicious."

Elena's chest tightened. Not an affair - something worse.

"I know." Daniel's voice was flat. "My wife found the cable. I had to move everything."

"Is she...?"

"No. She thinks I'm having an affair. Better that way." He laughed bitterly. "Let her think I'm weak rather than what I really am."

Elena stepped back, breath shallow. She'd spent their entire marriage thinking she was the spy in their relationship - watching his moods, cataloging his lies, gathering evidence like a case file. But she was wrong. He was the spy. Corporate espionage, selling government secrets, something dangerous enough that he'd rather she believed he was unfaithful.

The sphinx's riddle echoed in her mind: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? The answer was man - but the real riddle was how little she truly knew the person sleeping beside her.

She'd been running toward truth for years, never realizing she was running away from safety.

Elena turned and walked in the opposite direction, leaving her husband to his secrets. Some sphinxes never revealed their answers, and some marriages were mysteries best left unsolved.