Page 41 of Phate's Mate: The Thelli Logs

Tasha looped her arm with Nisha’s. “She’ll keep quiet about this. We both will.”

Nishahumphed.

“Tasha, I don’t know what the future holds for me or for us, but these past few days have been a living nightmare, knowing I hurt you and I broke your trust. If you’ll let me, I’ll spend my remaining days on Earth making it up to you.”

This was going to hurt. It surely was. But it would be good.

“Okay.”

* * *

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOUcan’t fix it remotely?” Agent Margie Santana said into her satellite cellphone. She’d been on the phone with IT for almost an hour trying to get some help in fixing the listening device. Nothing they’d suggested worked.

“You’ll have to fix it yourself,” the IT lady said.

“And how am I supposed to do that?” Margie pinched the bridge of her nose. Her eyes hurt. Her head hurt. Everything hurt.

“Do you still have the manual provided with it?”

Margie thought about it. She remembered the tattered directions in the case. “Yes.”

“There you go!”

Margie erupted from her seat at the kitchen table. “What do you mean? I don’t know how to fix this thing. I’ll need tools and...and...other stuff.”

“I guess you better head on over to the Walmart.”

Margie. Seethed.

She would be spending her evening fixing outdated equipment. Hopefully, she wasn’t missing anything important going on downstairs.

Chapter Fifteen

Margie sat at her kitchentable, well, the table that’d came with the furnished apartment she rented for the unforeseeable future. The morning was peaceful. The only noises came from the vent. A soft whirring from the heating unit and the occasional car horn from an irate early morning commuter.

The heat was cranked high, so she could lounge around the one-bedroom apartment in a t-shirt and short pajama set. One leg was curled under her butt. The oversized fluffy socks protected her foot against the unforgiving wood of the tacky dining chair. She had no say in the apartment or the furnishings inside. Everything had been handled by Homeland Security, or rather the secret government Agency that employed her.

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