The Seventh Inning Stretch

The rain started in the fourth inning, a relentless drumming against the stadium roof that Marcus found fitting. He'd been sitting in section 214, seat 7, for three hours now, nursing the same flat beer, watching a **baseball** game he couldn't care less about. The Brewers were down by four, and so was he.

She was supposed to meet him here. That was the arrangement—first Wednesday of every month, section 214, seventh inning stretch, if the intelligence was solid. But the seat beside him remained empty, occupied only by a condensation-stained cup holder.

Marcus checked his phone again. No message. No signal.

**Water** dripped from the brim of his cap onto his nose. He hadn't always been this person—sitting in rainy stadiums, waiting for women who used code names, living half a life in the shadows. There was a time when he'd been a junior analyst with a mortgage and a wife who'd left him because he was "emotionally unavailable." She hadn't known the half of it.

He'd become a **spy** by accident. A wrong email opened, a clearance granted, a door that should have stayed locked. Now sixteen years had passed, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd done something that wasn't classified, compartmentalized, or need-to-know.

The beer vendor came by. "Another?" The man asked.

Marcus shook his head. His reflection in the vendor's sunglasses showed a man his father would have been disappointed by—soft around the middle, hollow around the eyes, selling his life to an agency that would disavow him before the paperwork dried.

The crowd roared. A home run. Marcus didn't look up.

Then she was there. Sliding into seat 8, smelling of expensive perfume and trouble. She was older than the last time he'd seen her, streaks of gray in her dark hair, something weary around her eyes.

"They know," she said, not looking at him. "About Prague. About everyone."

Marcus felt the stadium tilt. "How?"

"Does it matter?" She turned to him finally, and he saw the same fear he felt reflected in her face. They were just two people in a crowd of thousands, watching men play a child's game, while everything they'd built burned.

"What do we do?" he asked.

She reached for his hand, her fingers cold. "We enjoy the seventh inning stretch," she said. "And then we run."

The organ music swelled. The crowd stood. Marcus stood with them, holding a stranger's hand, watching the rain fall on a game that would never finish, and for the first time in sixteen years, he didn't know which way was safe.