PROTEGE
G.A. Scheinoha
“Never get personally involved.” Her handler’s words floated up out of the mists of distant training, secrets of seduction. . . and assassination, saying more with a coy glance than any words, destroying a foe with common objects, such as those which lay on the dressing table in front of her.
Fortunately, this time it wouldn’t be as complicated as plunging a wispy strand of wire from an uncoiled hair curler through an eardrum, piercing brain tissue. She slipped a neatly manicured hand into the dressing table drawer, the other tracing to a tear already burning at the corner of her eye. Through the haze, she saw the bluish clump of metal.
Just a day earlier, she’d sat in this very chair, wrapped in the luxury of the moment, the velour robe softly hugging the still damp, though gently scented curves of her supple body. The tawny mane of hair was tucked away inside a spiral of towel. The V neck of her robe fell open to the bare, rising slopes of womanhood, a weapon as deadly as any she’d ever wielded. The pen in her hand, slender, delicate as everything else in the boudoir, etched a simple missive.
Later the same evening, he would unfold the note and read it one last time before stuffing the scrap of linen stationery into the garbage disposal and flipping the switch.
She worked the slide on the automatic pistol, sighted down the blade sight. With oil can ease, she disassembled the handgun, carefully inspected firing pin, lubricated the action and reassembled the weapon. She had hoped it wouldn’t come down to this.
Her ears caught the crunch of a footstep on the gravel outside. It seemed hours but was mere minutes stretched into an awful eternity, that she stood, looked out the window, waited for a sign. Then it came.
