The Weight of Watching

Mara had been a spy for seventeen years when she learned the hardest truth of her profession: the person you lie to longest is always yourself.

She sat by the apartment complex pool at midnight, clutching a glass of whiskey that had long since gone warm. The cat—a ragged calico she'd secretly named Ilsa—jumped onto the adjacent lounge chair, watching her with those judgmental yellow eyes. Mara had spent three months infiltrating a defense contractor, living a fabricated life, falling in love with a mark who believed her name was Sarah. The mission had ended last week. She'd vanished from his life like lightning—sudden, illuminating everything for one bright moment, then gone.

Now her handler was calling again. Another operation. Another identity. Another person to deceive, bed, betray.

The office had started a betting pool on her retirement. They said she was the best because she didn't feel enough to hesitate. They were wrong. She felt everything. That was the problem.

The cat bumped its head against her hand, and Mara realized she was crying. She'd borne this weight for so long she'd forgotten what it felt like to be anyone but whoever someone else needed her to be.

Her phone vibrated on the table. The mission offer.

Mara looked at the pool's dark water, at the cat that had somehow become her only honest relationship, at the phone that could erase her again. She thought about David—that was his real name, she'd looked it up—and wondered if he'd ever stopped wondering what happened to Sarah.

She stood up, left her phone on the table, and walked toward her apartment. The cat followed.

"You're the only one who knows me," she whispered to it. "And even you only know the version of me that feeds you."

Some betrayals, she decided, were worth surviving. The rest she would simply have to bear.