The letter arrived on a Tuesday, which was wrong. Elena had specified Mondays. She'd been very clear about that when she set up the dead drop three years ago — Mondays only, and only if it's urgent.
She turned the envelope over in her hands. No postmark. No return address. Just her name in handwriting she didn't recognize.
This isn't from Marcus.
She slid her finger under the seal anyway.
Inside: a single photograph. Black and white, slightly grainy — surveillance quality. It showed a man she knew very well standing outside a building she recognized even better. The timestamp in the corner read 14:03, September 9, 2026.
Two days ago.
The problem was that the man in the photograph — Director Callum Reese, her handler, the person who had recruited her out of a Budapest safehouse seven years ago — had reportedly died in a car accident eighteen months ago.
She'd attended the funeral. She'd cried, genuinely, because despite everything, she had trusted him.
Elena sat down on the edge of her bed and looked at the photograph for a long time. Outside, the city moved through its ordinary rhythms. Somewhere below, a child was laughing.
He faked his death. The thought arrived fully formed, cold and complete. And now someone wants me to know.
The question was: who?
And the question beneath that question, the one that made her hands go still: why now?
She flipped the photograph over. On the back, written in the same unfamiliar hand, were five words and an address.
He's been watching you too.
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