Jack Wilder - The Missionary

“Stone…” She stepped into the room, the same room she’d come from, with the dead men and the drugs, and realized she had gone in a very short circle.

Four rooms, all connected at two walls. Which meant…

“Stupid. Think you get away?” Cervantes, behind her. “I like da dress on you. It fit you much better dan ugly little Liesel. You gonna make me a lotta money, I tink. Come here, or I shoot you, and him.”

Wren was facing away from him, and had the gun in front of her, so she didn’t think he’d seen it yet. Stone was still wiggling, less noticeably though. She could tell he had his hands free, and was reaching for his boot. Something hidden in his boot, she thought. She had to buy time. Stone’s eyes were grim, hard, desperate.

She wanted to tell him she loved him. Maybe it was just the danger speaking, the memory of incredible sex. She didn’t know, or care. He’d come for her, and now she had to give him time to make a play.

She turned around, lifting the gun, planting her feet in a wide triangle, holding the heavy pistol in both hands. She didn’t try to aim it, just pointed the barrel at Cervantes. He looked shocked, his own gun held down at his side.

“Put it down, little bird. You ain’t gonna shoot nobody.” Cervantes slowly lifted his pistol, never taking his eyes from her.

“Shoot him, Wren.” Stone’s voice, low and calm.

“You won’t, Wren .” Cervantes laughed. “Funny, I call you ‘little bird’ all da time, and you really are a little bird. Put it down, I won’t kill him. I sell you to a nice guy.”

That was the wrong thing to say.

BLAM ! Cervantes stumbled backward, a hole in his chest blooming scarlet.

Wren remembered timeless time in a dark hole, needles in her skin. BLAM! Fingers touching and pinching, fists hitting, feet kicking in her ribs. BLAM! Eyes, hungry eyes. Girls, naked and starving and drug-addled. Miguel, with his knife and brutal hands and killer’s eyes. BLAM!BLAMBLAM! She advanced a step, toward Cervantes, who looked stunned, staring at her as multiple holes opened in his chest and poured his blood down his chest. She raised the gun slightly. BLAMBLAMBLAM! She remembered being bartered for, sold, like produce. Hungry, scared, hurt, exhausted, drug-addicted. BLAM! The folding silver knife he liked so much, jammed inside her. BLAM! She pulled the trigger twice, but the gun only fired once, clicking empty on the second pull.

Stone was beside her. “You got him.” He pulled the gun from her hand. “He’s dead, babe.” He hopped closer to her, tossed the empty pistol onto the table.

Wren couldn’t take her eyes from Cervantes, his chest a mess of red. His eyes were glazed and shifting, his mouth working like a fish out of water. “He’s not dead.”

“He will be.”

Nausea hit her like a fist. She’d just killed a man. She’d pulled the trigger, fired bullets into him. “I killed him.” Acid burned her throat, and her stomach rebelled, lurched, and puke jetted from her in wave after wave.

Stone held her as she vomited. When she finally stopped, her stomach still lurching and dry-heaving, he pulled her against his chest. He was balanced on one leg. “I know, babe. You had to. He deserved it. I know that doesn’t really help right now, though.”

She felt tears start, and blinked them away. “I…oh God. Oh God, I killed him.” She looked up at Stone, whose eyes were soft with sympathy. “Does it…how will I ever sleep again?”

Stone pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Time. Therapy, maybe. You’ll have bad dreams, but…with everything you’ve been through, I think that was a given.” He looked down at her, looking her over for fresh injuries. “Are you hurt anywhere? Did he hurt you?”

Wren nodded against his chest. “He…God, oh God. He hurt me. Inside. With the handle of his knife.” She didn’t know how to say it, how to make him understand that the knowledge of what he’d done was almost as bad as the pain of it. “He used that knife, the flippy thing—”

“A balisong. Butterfly knife.” His voice was hesitant, as if he understood what she was getting at but didn’t want to believe it. “What did he do to you?”

She closed her eyes tight, clutched his shirt. “He used it…shoved it in—inside—inside me. It hurts. I think he cut me open, in there.”

“Shit.” He spoke through grinding teeth.

“I know—I know it’s better than being raped, or sold, but…I tried to stop him, I fought him, but he… fuck .” She sobbed, went limp into his arms. “It hurts. I feel it, over and over. That cold hard thing, edges, forced into me. Scraping, cutting. It was closed, but it still…it hurts.”

Stone was silent, his arms tight, almost too tight. Then, he swayed. “I…I gotta stop this bleeding.” He stumbled backward, back into the chair he’d been tied to.

She watched as Stone leaned forward and used his knife to cut away the shirt from one of the dead men, folded the cotton lengthwise into a bandage and wrapped it around his thigh, then tied it in a knot. He cursed under his breath the whole time, a constant stream of florid expressions. Next, he wrapped one of the belts he’d been tied up with around his thigh, over the shirt, and cinched it as tight as it would go, just above the wound. When he had it pulled tight, he slipped the bitter end of the belt between his leg and the leather, leaving a loop through which he passed the end again, creating a makeshift knot. When he was done with this, he was sweating and out of breath.

“We have to move. Get back to the Embassy.”

“But he’s…he’s dead.”

“His goons don’t know that yet. We might still run into trouble. Plus, with Cervantes out of the picture, there’ll be a power vacuum, and a fight to fill it. We don’t want to be around when that shit goes down.”

“Power vacuum?” Wren asked. She felt limp, numb, shocked, unable to process thoughts or emotions.

Stone worked himself to his feet, hopping on his good leg to stay balanced. “He was the big dog in Manila. Now he’s gone, and someone else is going to want to take his place, and it’ll mean an underground war in the process. Don’t worry about it. Our only concern is getting home.”

Wren slid under his arm and took as much of his weight as she could. “Home. I want…I want to go home.” She tried to summon thoughts of home, but nothing came.

She had trouble remembering what her dorm room looked like. Had she ever sat in a classroom, listened to lectures? Sipped coffee and laughed with friends? Gone to sorority parties and had too much cheap beer? She had memories of those things, but they felt more like a movie watched in years past, snapshots and vague notions of things that had happened. It felt like she’d been in Manila forever. Like the person she’d been was gone, and someone else had taken that place. She was still Wren Morgan, still had the same brain and body and soul, but the fabric and substance and content of who she was had been irrevocably altered.

They emerged onto the narrow street in the dim gray of onrushing dawn. Stone peered around, twisting awkwardly to try and find some visual cue as to where they were. He must have seen something he recognized behind them, because he laboriously twisted around and began limping in that direction. He couldn’t put much weight on his leg, but Wren was simply not strong enough to support his weight, so he had to hop.

It would be a long walk back to the Embassy.

18

It seemed almost anticlimactic, in a way. The last several days of chase, hunting for Wren, rescuing her, fleeing Cervantes and his men, only to have it all end with a few bullets in a back room. Now they were adrift in Manila again, alone, and still hurt, still hungry, still exhausted. More so than ever. The question remained, though: were Cervantes’ men still after them? Stone didn’t dare relax his guard, didn’t dare take even a single moment to relax until he knew they were safe.