The Spy in Lane 4

Elena had been swimming laps for forty-five minutes when she noticed him in the adjacent lane. The man with the expensive watch, doing a languorous breaststroke, keeping pace with her far too precisely. She'd spent three years in corporate espionage, and she knew surveillance when it swam beside her.

She'd come to the pool to escape. Her current assignment—a tech company in Seattle—was wearing thin. Her boss, a man who embodied every worst impulse of a bull market, kept demanding results she couldn't deliver. "Sink them," he'd say, pouring another drink. "Make them bleed."

Now here she was, literally swimming in circles.

The man touched the wall at the same time she did. He pulled off his goggles. Dark eyes, familiar jawline. Elena's stomach did something unpleasant.

"You're following me," she said, water streaming down her face.

"Always." Marcus smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. They'd been something, once, before she chose this life. "Your employer knows. The fiber optic cable you tapped last month? They traced it."

The pool seemed very cold suddenly.

"I'm getting out," she said, but he caught her wrist underwater.

"They're not going to fire you, El. They're going to make you an example."

She thought about her apartment, the go-bag under her bed, the way she'd been swimming harder and faster lately, trying to outrun something she couldn't name. Existential dread, or just the accumulated weight of too many lies.

"What do you want?" she whispered.

"Come back to real life." His thumb traced the scar on her forearm. "There's still time."

She thought about the surveillance photos in her car, the cable modem she'd bugged, the bull-headed way she'd pursued this career even after it stopped making sense. She was thirty-five and tired of swimming in circles.

"Help me," she said, and it felt like the first honest thing she'd spoken in years.

Marcus pulled her close in the chlorine-scented water. "I've been waiting to hear that."