Written for MLMM Monday Wordle.
Our 12 prompt words appear below
Here’s where the prompt took me.
modern, change, steep, twice, list, ring,
leaf, beast, yet, mace, fob, and hole
Jackson DeWitt read the file twice, memorized and then destroyed it before boarding the overnight train to Prague. Twelve names. Twelve traitors. One missing drive no bigger than a key fob.
The operation had seemed straightforward …. until it wasn’t.
He moved through the dining car with the ease of a man who belonged everywhere and nowhere, a martini …. shaken, not stirred …. in hand, his eyes cataloguing every face. The modern locomotive carved through the steep mountainous route at a perilous clip, the dark gorge below swallowing the moonlight.
Then he felt it …. the familiar cold hardness of a gun barrel pressed against his spine.
Not yet, he told himself. Not yet.
“Don’t even breathe,” a woman’s voice murmured, “or the next stop is your last.”
He recognized her …. Seraphina Ring, third name on the list. She could change her hair color but not her essence: arrogant, predictable, and sometimes careless.
In one motion, Jackson dropped his martini glass, spun left, and caught her wrist. The pistol discharged into the ceiling. Passengers screamed. He drove her backward through a service door into the luggage compartment, where crates and shadows engulfed them.
She fought like a beast …. an elbow to his jaw, a knee seeking to do serious damage. She’d even palmed a small mace canister from her belt; he barely dodged the spray.
But Jackson had been trained in fifteen countries and outsmarted in none.
He pinned her against a steamer trunk as the train screamed through a tunnel, plunging them into total darkness. When the light returned, a single gold leaf emblem on her jacket collar glistened brightly. It confirmed everything he suspected: Seraphina Ring was part of the Falcon Syndicate.
He zip-tied her wrists, pocketed the fob drive from her coat, and radioed London.
“One hole in the network officially closed,” he said calmly.
NAR©2026
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This is “Sucker Train Blues” by Velvet Revolver
Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.
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