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As the Minnesota morning sun filtered through the off-white blinds, she blew on her morning coffee and adjusted the volume on her listening device. The black box’s speakers crackled, the sound grated on her ears. Margie yawned and set the coffee cup down, deciding to give it a few more minutes to cool before attempting a sip.
Grogginess pulled at her. She hated sleeping in new places and since she’d only been in town a few short weeks, she considered Point Breeze still new to her. Since joining the Agency, she’d spent more times in the field than at her high-rise apartment in Washington, D.C.
There were voices under the speaker’s loud crackling. She didn’t want to miss the conversation discussed in the apartment below hers. She’d already lost yesterday because the antiquated government device had been on the fritz all day. She’d spent hours on the phone with technical support, who in the end, couldn’t help her. By five in the morning, and after a late-night visit to the local superstore for tools, she’d finally fixed it herself.
Frustrated with the device, the missed day and the early morning frost on her window (side note: she would never move to Minnesota), Margie slapped the side of the device so hard her palm stung. The crackling finally stopped and the distinctive voices of the occupants in the apartment below hers came through once again.
She’d grown to recognize those voices. The women, Nisha and Tasha, seemed nice and fun. They were the type of women she would’ve befriended in different circumstances. Since surveilling them, she’d often caught herself talking out loud in response to their conversations.
Tasha, the woman who actually lived in the apartment, owned an upscale boutique downtown on Main Street. Margie had gone inside when she’d known Tasha wasn’t working to look around.
Nisha didn’t live in the building but was a staple at Tasha’s house. With her own key, she came and went as she pleased. A quick search through an official government database, available at Margie’s disposal, showed that Nisha worked as an executive secretary at her adoptive father’s law firm.
Her father, now deceased, had been one of those television lawyers specializing in medical malpractice. With offices set up all over the country, he’d been mega-rich. According to news outlets, his death, two years ago, had been unexpected. Fortunately, for Nisha and her adoptive mother, he’d left an ironclad will and a lot of money.
Why Nisha still worked was a mystery to Margie. If her dad had left her enough money to ensure she’d never had to work again, she wouldn’t. But Margie didn’t know her father and she’d had to scrape and scratch to pull herself out of poverty and make something of herself.
Once the static finally ceased, she could hear the conversation easily. Tasha and Nisha chatted with Phate, one of Margie’s targets. Margie instantly recognized the cadence of his voice. His accent clearly wasn’t American but she had no idea of the origin. She’d run his voice through the database, and came up empty. The closest accent she could find that matched his accent was Iranian.
Hm, had Tasha and Phate made up? When had this happened? Margie tilted her head in thought. Yesterday, while her listening device was down?
Crap. She’d missed his groveling.
Before her listening device had stopped working, Tasha and Phate had been on the outs. They’d gone on a date, had sex—which Margie wasn’t happy to admit had been caught on her tape recorder—then Phate had gone on another date, with someone else. There’d been a big argument right in the middle of the downstairs hallway. It had been the most excitement Margie had experienced since moving to this slow town. If she’d had popcorn, she would’ve been popping it. That had been some good drama.
Margie pushed the button on the tape recorder and nudged it closer to the listening device. She’d been recording their conversations since moving in and so far, she had hours and hours of their chattering. She’d given up trying to listen to her three targets separately. Whenever the men were alone, they talked in that strange language of theirs. But even so, she had hours of them talking as well. When the guys back at the Agency got a hold of the tapes, she was sure they would be giddy trying to learn their language.
Mostly, everything she found out about the men, was from Tasha and Nisha. So far, nothing of importance was learned. Tasha liked Phate but he’d done her wrong. Nisha liked Kien but their date had been a dud. The only target she had virtually no information on yet was Solgre.
Brrriiiiing.
Margie picked up her government issued satellite cellphone. Displayed across the front of the bulky phone wasTeam Leader. She accepted the call.
“Agent Santana speaking.”
“Agent. Advise on our alien situation.” The voice on the other end was curt and gruff. Her Team Leader was a man of few words.
She’d been assigned to his team since joining the Agency. All she knew of him was that he was a Caucasian man in his late sixties. Medium height and build. His gray hair was cut low and there was bald spot in the middle of his head. His small eyes made his nose seem bulbus, but it was probably of normal size. His lips were thin and always seemed cracked. When he spoke, spit gathered at the corners of them. His face was marred with deep wrinkles. She’d never seen him in anything other than a suit, even in summer months.
Her Team Leader had a presence about him that screamed, “I know how to make you disappear.”
She feared him. And she also wanted to be him when she grew up.
“Nothing to report of importance yet. Just observing and gathering evidence on the target’s habits.”
“And?”
“They have a very active dating life.”
“Hm.”
“Hm, indeed.”
“Are you certain these three are our targets? Why would alien comes to Earth to...date?”
Margie paused, but only for a few seconds to think about her answer. The surveillance footage from the area where the unidentified foreign object would have landed had shown these three men bumbling their way through town. Which had definitely made them stand out, and their actions had also given the local townspeople something to talk about. Through closed caption television footage, she’d been able to follow the trio to Point Breeze. She was sure these were the aliens the government sought. Her gut told her so.
Her gut also told her there also might be another probable cause for three unknowns to end up in a small Minnesota town—sightseeing, touring America, visiting family, etc. All of which she needed to investigate first. Because if she were to sound the whistle before a full investigation and these threeweren’tthe targets, she could kiss any promotion in the foreseeable future goodbye. She’d made that mistake before and a repeat of it would be career ending for her.
