The Sphinx at Court Four

Elena crouched by the chain-link fence, Bruno's golden head resting on her knee. The therapy dog whined softly, sensing her tension. Her iphone buzzed again—the third time in ten minutes.

She wasn't supposed to be here. Not at this padel club, not watching Court Four where her husband played every Thursday with HER.

Marcus called it networking. Elena called it something else. Three months of deleted messages, of arriving home with the scent of expensive perfume clinging to his suit, of him guarding his phone like a state secret.

"You're being paranoid," he'd said last night. But Elena knew paranoia. She'd lived it for six years in Vienna, before she'd left the Agency. Sometimes the job didn't leave you. Sometimes you saw patterns where others saw coincidence.

The club's garden featured a concrete sphinx, its winged form partially obscured by bougainvillea. Elena had taken to sitting in its shadow, Bruno at her feet, watching through the fence as Marcus laughed at something the woman said. Their easy intimacy was worse than shouting.

Her phone lit up. Unknown number.

"I have what you need," the text read. "The photos. Meet me at the sphinx in 10. Don't bring the dog."

Elena's stomach twisted. Someone else was watching. A spy? A blackmailer? Or something more pedestrian—Marcus's attorney, anticipating divorce?

She stood, brushing dirt from her dress. Bruno looked up with wounded eyes. "Stay," she whispered, though the command felt like betrayal.

Marcus and the woman were leaving the court now, heads bent together, shoulders touching. They hadn't noticed her in the sphinx's shadow. They never did.

The phone buzzed again. "He's not who you think he is. Neither am I."

Elena walked toward the concrete creature with its human face and lion body, its riddle mouth frozen in an eternal, silent question. She had spent her professional life solving other people's mysteries. Now she had to decide if she wanted the answer to her own.

Behind her, Bruno began to bark.