Nadia's POV
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When I get home, Marcus is already there.
That's the first thing that's wrong.
He works until six o'clock. It's four forty-three. He is sitting on the couch with his phone face down on the cushion next to him and his hands around a mug. He looks like a man who has been home long enough to make tea and relax. He looks up when I walk in, and his smile comes right on time, which is how I know it's not real. Real smiles are a little late. It takes them half a second to get from the feeling to the face. Marcus's smile is instant; it's already there, like he put it together before I opened the door.
"Hey," he says. "You got home early."
I say, "Slow shift," which is a lie. Since I came back, it was the longest shift I've had. But lying to Marcus stopped costing me anything about forty-eight hours ago.
I go to the kitchen to make dinner and watch him through the open space between the two rooms. He picks up his phone twice and puts it down without unlocking it. He is waiting for something to happen. He doesn't want me to see him check it.
I cut up vegetables and keep track of everything.
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He stands in the kitchen doorway while I cook. Not very formal. Simple. The way a man stands when he has nothing on his mind. "How's Felix?" he asks.
I keep looking at the cutting board. "Okay. Busy."
"You two have been hanging out more lately?"
I look up. His face is open and friendly. I say, "We work together." "We're always together."
"Right." He shakes his head. Drinks some tea. "Is there anyone new at the hospital?" Patients and staff?
And there you have it.
This man has been my husband for two years. I know what a survey is and what small talk is. This is a poll. He is going through a list in his head and checking things off, but the list has nothing to do with my day. The list is about whether I have talked to someone he is looking for.
Someone he has been told to find.
"No, not really," I say. "Same people, same issues." I smile at him from behind. "Why?"
He shrugs his shoulders. "Just asking." He goes back to the couch.
My ability is like a stone that has been dropped into still water; it sits cold and flat in my chest.
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Dinner lasts the longest forty minutes of my life.
He asks four more questions that sound like small talk. If I've been taking different routes to get to places lately. If I have a new gym schedule because he saw that I was up early. If I've been getting enough sleep because I look tired.
I get every single one right. Not clear enough to give anything. Specific enough to sound true. I learned this from watching Jessa do it to me for eighteen months before I figured out what she was doing. The hardest lessons are the ones that help the most.
He washes the dishes after dinner, and I sit at the table and look at the back of his head while I think about the folder Kieran talked about. ASSET STATUS: PRIORITY ONE. I think about the word "informant" and what it means that Marcus has been in this program for months. I think about how many dinners just like this one we had in my last life while he quietly told people I didn't know were there.
When he turns around, I smile.
He grins back.
We're both putting on a show for one person.
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He goes to sleep at ten thirty.
I can tell because his breathing changes. It gets slower and deeper, and the way it sounds lets me know he's really gone and not just pretending. I still wait twenty more minutes. Then I stand up.
There's a jacket hanging by the front door. I search through the pockets like I would search through a trauma patient's things: carefully, thoroughly, and putting everything back where I found it. In his left pocket, he has his keys, a stick of gum, and a folded piece of paper with an address for a parking garage that I don't know. I take a picture of the address. I put it back.
The right pocket.
A bill.
I slowly open it.
A coffee shop is on the corner of Brent and Eleventh. I've never been there. Marcus has never brought it up. The receipt's timestamp says 7:04 AM.
Seven in the morning.
At seven in the morning, I was on Heron Street. Standing in the cold with Kieran Vale, trading information, and finding out about a government program that has my name on it. And Marcus was four blocks away at seven in the morning, buying coffee at a store we had never been to before.
He wasn't at the gym.
He was put in place.
I take a picture of the receipt. I fold it up the same way I found it and put it back in his pocket. Then I walk to the bedroom, lie down next to my husband in the dark, and stare at the ceiling.
I can't remember the address of the parking garage. I think about what people keep in parking garages and on folded paper in their jacket pockets. I think about Marcus's phone, which was lying face down on the couch all night. I think about the questions he asked at dinner, so careful and so casual, as he went through his list.
He is not just looking at me.
He is giving updates on how things are going.
And every time he does, the person he is reporting to adds my name in red letters to a file.
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The phone on Marcus's nightstand lights up at two in the morning.
He stays asleep. For three seconds, the screen glows, then it goes dark.
I stay still. I count to 100. His breathing stays steady and deep.
I reach across the room in the dark, very slowly, and tilt the phone just enough to see the screen without picking it up.
A message. One line preview that can be seen above the locked screen.
No text from Jessa. This is not a work email. A message from a contact whose name starts with the letter H.
There are four words in the preview.
She talked to him.
My ability wakes up in my chest like an alarm going off all at once. It's not warm or steady; it's blazing and angry.
They know Kieran.
Since this morning, they have known.
And the person who told them is lying eighteen inches away from me with his eyes closed and breathing like a man who has nothing to hide.