Let it go to voice mail

Set to vibrate, her phone skipped across the bar top, crashing into the stem of her wine glass. Her boss Sam was calling again. Without picking up the phone, Pauley turned it off, ignoring the blinking voicemail alert.

Downing the last swallow of her Merlot, Pauley searched for Ross, the new bartender. He wasn’t the regular Tuesday night guy, and he seemed out-of-place in the noisy bar. Shoving the goblet toward him, Pauley was about to ask for another drink when he sat a highball glass in front of her.

“Compliments of the gentleman,” tipping his head toward the right, Ross indicated an overweight man in a badly fitting brown suit, raising his own glass in a salute.

She scooped up the glass, and threw back the amber liquid in a single gulp. Spinning off her stool, Pauley wended her way toward the hotel lobby and away from her unwelcome suitor trouble. Just before she passed through the bar entrance, Pauley noticed an immaculately dressed brunette in black Armani.

Suddenly brought to her knees by an excruciating headache, Ross was inexplicably at her side, lifting her to her feet. Wrapping his arm around her waist, Ross half carried her toward the lobby elevators. Quickly losing control of her arms, Pauley tried desperately to unholster her handgun.

“You should have answered your phone, and you may have avoided dying,” he hissed in her ear as he punched the up button.

Just as the doors were closing, the woman in black stepped into the elevator with them.

“You look like you have your hands full, what floor?” Millicent asked without looking back at Pauley and her assassin.

Not letting go of Pauley, Ross silently reached around Millicent to push the button for Floor 12.

He didn’t notice Millicent was wearing black gloves, or the small bore needle she slipped between his exposed ribs.

She deftly took Pauley from him as he slid to the floor.

“You really should answer your phone.”

Trifecta, a weekly one-word prompt, challenges writers to use that word in its third definition form, using no less than 33 words or no more than 333. The week’s prompt is: Trouble [noun \ˈtrə-bəl\] 3: an instance of trouble

This is a two part piece submitted by Lance and me. You can find his installment, Part II, at Remedy.

Millicent and Pauley are both female assassins. Millicent, a force of nature created by Lance, is an expert with poisons. He describes her as having “dark hair with chocolate brown eyes….tall, curvy, impeccably dressed and accessorized.” She is the Cinnamon Girl.

Pauley, a sniper, is more the girl next door with deadly aim, and a reluctant conscience.