She sat on the table top by the side of the grill contemplating her maturation as a human being.

A month ago, would Tasìa have left Leeza in the backseat of the woman's Volvo, pulled out of the QuickMart parking lot in the Lamborghini and assume the woman would be fine without so much as a fleeting thought towards Leeza's well-being down the road on Tasìa's next adventure?

Sinclair came to mind once more. Loose end, or a moral failing on her part?

She had seen the nuclear fireball of the IMCQ going up on virtualized footage from a surrounding fleet of helicopters.

Loose end, or moral failing?

Why not both?

Tasìa considered all of this as she chewed a cut of steak whose juices ran down the side of her mouth.

She glanced over to her guest who set more formally with her ample butt planted on a picnic bench.

There were extenuating circumstances beyond merely assuaging a guilty conscious.

One, she wasn't going anywhere at the moment to actively venture while the PalmEx was sorting and indexing for her. Two, she was hungry, and the Quick Mart Picnic and Patio service was convenient. Granted, with the five biofuel converter towers spread out around the Quick Mart, and utility devices rigged above on girded assemblies, it wasn't quite a picnic vista but it definitely had it's own charm about it.

Third, and most importantly, her intuition told her by the way Leeza's coworkers behaved there was something deeply fucked up with Leeza's situation. It was a clusterfuck and clusterfucks were the strange attractors of human social interaction.

Leeza had been silent throughout their dinner. After Tasìa told her she had been fired, and walked the former executive through what occurred at the VEAA HQ in her absence, Leeza ate her meal slowly, sipped her beer in half gulps, and looked at Tasìa curiously while she bit her lip bottom like she wanted to ask something.

"Go ahead, spill it," Tasìa coaxed her.

"Elle Camino truly thought you were me?"

Tasìa shrugged.

"Not once did she let on otherwise. Some people are just bad with faces. It could be that she was exhausted and ready to go home. I can merely speculate. I didn't fool that one dude Hector for even a second though."

"Yeah . . . for some reason he likes me."

Tasìa glanced at Leeza with a studious squint as she swallowed the meat down with a swig of beer.

For some reason, huh?

"It's a real mystery," Tasìa muttered as she cut off another piece. She had not touched the shiitake mushrooms or the cheesy chipa bread.

Odd for the later, given how much she loved starches.

Leeza chuckled. Tasìa looked up to see what that was about. There was a smile on her face.

"That was pleasantly sarcastic. Yeah, I guess I do know even if I don't understand men very well. I mean, I was once married to one. That didn't go very well. Not my first choice."

Leeza fell silent. Tasìa wondered if she was going to disentangle all of that she just said but Tasìa hoped that she wouldn't. There was quite a bit of biography hinted at that the little thief had no interest in.

To Tasìa's relief, Leeza finally took time to dig into her meal with steady consumption, and for several minutes as she ate, she darted side glances at Tasìa.

The little rogue could not make heads or tails of what it meant.

"Is there something else," Tasìa asked.

"Yeah..," Leeza was very reluctant to divulge what she was thinking but with effort she spurt it out.

"When I was under the influence of the tranquilizer, I recall my bum being squeezed and then slapped. Did you do that?"

Tasìa's eyes went wide. She had done both without a second thought towards the propriety of her actions.

"It's not that," Leeza continued. "You see, as you can imagine, I have had a very rough day of it. I could use some physical company. You very much fit in the range of what I like."

Not my first choice, the words came back to her now in their proper context. Ohhhhh.

Leeza gestured excitedly, "I have an amazing set of accoutrements at my home.

It took Tasìa a moment to see how her world had just flipped. She certainly wasn't expecting that sort of invitation coming from someone she stabbed in the butt with a tranq dart.

"I am certainly flattered, but I apologize. The smack and squeeze were simply out of jealousy due to you having a masterpiece compared to my tiny little muscle butt. Also, I was getting an assessment of how deep the puncture went before I left you there on your own."

Leeza appeared crest fallen. As if her lousy day just got even more so.

"Look," Tasìa began, "I just found out this very month that I have not a shred of girl curiosity in me. I mean, I've had girl crushes before, one even got me blindsided where I wound up in prison, but even then I knew my physiological interest in this person was limited."

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Tasìa, when she stopped speaking, wasn't sure if Leeza was still listening. Her eyes were set cool, looking away from Tasìa before she finally glanced up.

"What happened this month," Leeza asked, curiously.

Tasìa decided to skip over her love life with Beauregard, and the romantic thrupling with Demona's virtual avatar that grew to include haptic receivers so Beau and Demona could connect by touch.

Explaining all of that would only complicate things. Instead, she went straight to the incident with Alisha.

"I have a friend. Both of her arms were set in casts, so... I have been taking care of her."

Leeza's forehead creased and she grinned wide.

"Taking care of her needs, you mean?"

"Well, for the first two days I was merely playing nurse, making sure to keep her hygienic and clean, and then my friend starts complaining she was feeling a certain way all the time but couldn't do anything about it."

Leeza frowned.

"It must have been terrible for her."

"Yeah, I really felt for her. I thought I was ready to break through my own personal boundaries to help a friend out. So I get my own accoutrement, a Sportive Magician, if you are familiar with them?"

Leeza nodded attentively with accompanying hand jive.

"I have a Seismic Sorcerer Geomancer at my home. So I am quite familiar with the brand. Please continue."

"So, I'm holding the device in place but at the same time minimizing my involvement that being my mental commitment beyond holding it in place. After a few minutes, my friend cracks up laughing, she bursts out laughing, really. She says, 'I've never seen anyone look so uncomfortable as you do right now. I could not possibly in good conscience make you go any further.'"

Leeza frowned.

"You're poor friend."

"Oh, don't fret on for her sake. The story ends happily enough for her. I have another friend who is a professional therapist. She took care of that problem. Believe me, much more satisfactorily than I ever could."

Leeza's turned to the side; she did a little calculation.

"I now suddenly have a lot of free time on my hand. Do you think your friends could help me?"

Tasìa shrugged.

"I don't see why not. But you'll have to seek them out in Asunción. Probably easier to pick up someone in a club here. This is Vida Escondida, after all."

Leeza shook her head.

"I suppose you are right."

She grew silent and a bit sullen. Her wrist were back ended to one another with her fingers hanging like willow branches. The very awkwardness of Leeza's pose compelled Tasìa to ask her, "why were you fired?"

The former executive chuckled. Apple shaped cheeks firmed up hard. She took a gulp from the beer in her hand.

"You really don't know?" Leeza asked.

"Pretend I just got back in town a few hours ago after being gone for most of a year and I have not caught up on anything as of yet."

Leeza's eyes hardened and her hands swiped to the sides, grabbing at her slacks.

"I assumed everyone knew, even some of those people over there are giving me dirty looks at this very moment. I am a murder suspect."

A thrill pumped through Tasìa's heart, and she nearly lost her breath.

Could it be Leeza?

Senora Donada looked crossed, and she cleared her tightened throat.

"Well," Leeza continued, befuddled. "I certainly wasn't expecting that. That look when I just now told you, you lifted up like a bird about to take flight. You gasped and you even smiled. A slight, lopsided half smile, but still."

Tasìa shook her head.

"Apologies. It's just that I knew something was off about the guard's behavior back at the VEAA HQ. What you just told me confirms that I am not going crazy. Something really was afoot."

Leeza nodded. "It's all right."

Except that it wasn't by a long shot.

"So what happened? Did you do it?"

Leeza removed the pin that set her hair up in a bob and she lowered her eyes behind her freed-up hair but the long strands eventually fell to the side.

"My lawyers instructed me not to talk about it. I haven't been arrested; they think I can beat this."

Tasìa decided to laugh it off.

"Well poo. Our conversation was getting interesting."

Leeza wasn't buying it. Her suspicions were up.

"I suppose so."

"So... what next," Tasìa asked. "Now you are unemployed?"

"The first thing I need to do is find some companionship. It has all been very lonely of late. Next, after that, I don't know."

Leeza rocked in place a moment before she spoke again.

"Hey, thanks for the dinner. It's probably the best apology I have ever gotten from anybody."

After finishing her bottle of beer, Leeza began to walk away but stopped and turned around. Out of her belt pocket she produced a BlueSteal Flex business card.

"Hey, we should hang out sometime. I have a certain feeling about you. By the way, didn't catch your name?"

"Tasìa," she blurted out before seeking a cover identity. Didn't matter, really. Except for in the field security checks, they never did any good in Vida Escondida, anyway.

Leeza's eyes calculated to the side.

"Tasìa? The one with a huge bounty on her head? The one that used to operate out of Vida Escondida? That Tasìa?"

Tasìa dug out her own Blue Steel Flex card and passed it forward.

"The one and the same!"

Leeza chuckled. "Damn. We really should hang out."

"So long as no bounty hunters are involved, I'm game."

To that, Leeza grinned and bowed her head. The executive walked away with a little sass in her shay.

Tasìa grinned when she heard a familiar sound of boots coming towards her then she looked the other way. She looked back again as Leeza disappeared in her car.

"Hello, Elise. Grab a beer, sit down."

"Is that your candidate for Demona Heloïste's body snatcher project?"

Tasìa shrugged. "I still don't have her device in working condition. I doubt if Demona would object though. Did you get a good look at her?"

Elise sat down. "Oh yeah." As she twisted off the bottle cap, her expression grew more serious. "Hey, listen. What went down. We had our agreement. Birddog betrayed us both. She set everything in motion with organizing a second attempt at a break-in to lure you into a corner so her people could snatch you up."

Tasìa eyed her.

"What about my people? My crew."

Elise nodded.

"The ones that went missing? Yeah, that was me. Shit hombres through and through. They had their own plans to stick it to you. They thought you were bad mojo. The weirdness of the Quadra follows you like a cloud they said on the tapes Birddog caught of their plotting. She had me listen.

"When I went after them, Fiona took the opportunity to have her people go after you."

Tasìa reached for Elise's hand.

"It's water under the bridge. Only now after listening to you do I understand what I got myself into. It's funny. When I was taken in to custody, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. I no longer had to manage that crew. If I escaped, I could disappear again, and never worry about juggling their conflicting interests. Even though I felt that way, I never gave them the blame they deserved."

Elise squeezed her grip.

"Water under the bridge. Hey, Tasìa, let's call it a night. Come back to my set up. Get some sleep."

Tasìa shook her head.

"Can't. I have at least one task ahead of me tonight."

"Four-thirty in the morning?"

"Yup. Hey, Elise. I know you hate diabolist more than anything. Are you hanging around Vida Escondida to stop me from reviving Demona? You seem knowledgeable of what I am up to."

Elise chuckled.

"I do. Especially diabolist who can effect world events. But no I'm not here to stop you. The people I answer to want you to succeed. As to why, I couldn't tell you. I just work the field."

Tasìa held her arms tight.

"One last thing. Those people that Birddog worked for, do they have two wolves as part of their symbol?"

Elise nodded.

"Not only that but they ran the IMCQ when you were there. When I had Kutuzov cornered, they provided him with sanctuary. Does that help you piece it all together, Sweety?"

Tasìa returned her nod, curtly. "You've been a big help."

With that, Elise turned and walked away. "I'll see you around, Tasìa. "