Jack Wilder - The Missionary

Wren nodded. “I’ve never been on a plane before. Taking off was kind of fun, but this is…scary. What if we crash?” She fished her cross from beneath her shirt, rubbing it between her thumb and index finger.

“We won’t.” There was a soft bump, and Stone squeezed her hand. “See? We’re already down.”

“You’ve probably flown a lot, huh?”

He laughed at that. “Babe, you have no idea. Big old airliners like this are nothing. Try sitting in the back seat of an F-22 making a night landing on a carrier during a thunderstorm. That’s scary. Jumping out of a Hercules at 100,000 feet up is scary. That’s what you call a HALO jump. High-altitude, low-opening. You’ve got to wear special gear, an oxygen mask and an altimeter and a whole bunch of other shi—stuff, along with your regular combat gear. You’re up so high you’re basically in space. You can see the whole earth beneath you, and it’s so cold your spit would freeze the moment it left your mouth. You jump out, and you’re free-falling for minutes. Not seconds, like a normal jump. Literally you’re in the air, falling at hundreds of miles per hour, for minutes . Then the ‘chute opens, and your whole body jerks. It hurts, because you’ve gone from rocketing earthward at two hundred miles per hour to a full-stop, in an instant. You have to time your chute just right, too. Too soon, and you’ll basically free-fall, since the ‘chute isn’t big enough to let you drift. Too late, and you’ll splat on the ground.”

Wren’s eyes were wide. “You did that? A HALO jump?”

“Dozens of times.”

“Were you scared?”

“Every single time. The first time, I peed myself. No lie. I actually wet my pants. The guys ragged on me for months about that, but then, they all did too, their first time.” He grinned, remembering the way Benny had teased him, only to reveal later that he’d done the same thing.

“What do you do when you’re afraid? How do you deal with it?”

Stone shrugged. “Well, for us, spec-ops guys, I mean, you’re trained to deal with it. Basic training teaches you to keep going no matter what. BUD/S training takes it that much farther. We learn to let the fear have its way, but not stop us. Fear keeps you alert. It keeps you alive. If you’re afraid, you’re still fighting to stay alive. When you stop feeling fear, you’ve stopped caring whether you live or die. And that’s when you make mistakes.” They were taxiing across the tarmac, and Stone was rambling in order to keep the memories of Manila at bay. “You just do what you have to do.”

“What’s the most afraid you’ve ever been?”

Stone looked at her. “You really want to know what happened, don’t you?”

Wren wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Am I making you mad?”

“No, not mad. I just…I don’t want you to…look, it’s not a pleasant thing. You’re a sweet, innocent girl. You don’t really understand what you’re asking about.”

“We’re back to that, are we?” Wren said, sounding irritated. “I’m not as innocent as you think. And I want to know because I want to know you. I want you to trust me. I want…I want you to think of me as more than just a ‘sweet, innocent girl.’”

Stone groaned. “Wren, that’s not a good idea. Not with me.”

She stared at him, clearly angry again. The flight attendant announced the gate information, local time, the usual post-landing welcoming spiel. When the doors were opened, Wren lurched out of her seat, grabbed her carry-on from the overhead compartment and stormed off the plane, losing herself in the cluster of disembarking students. Stone let her go, hating the glimmer of tears he’d seen in her eyes.

Once off the plane and through baggage claim, he felt the wave of heat and humidity roll over him. The sun was high and hot, the sky the bluest blue. The smell came next, the familiar burn of Manila.

His stomach roiled, the churning of buried fear, the knowledge of approaching danger.

5

~ Now ~

She had to fight it. It was coming, it was going to happen, and soon. She’d rather die than endure that. As he clomped down the creaking wooden steps, Wren realized with a bolt of horrified awareness, that she very literally would rather die than let him—or anyone else—rape her.

He knelt in front of her, a cruel smile on his lips. “I got prends come to see you. Pretty American girl, not look like no American girl. Dese prends, dey come see. Maybe, dey want try you. Yes? I make a good deal.” He grabbed her upper lip and twisted it so hard she couldn’t stop the yelp of pain and the start of tears. “You keep shut up, I don’t let them try you before buy you. You like dat? No, I don’t tink so. You keep shut your stupid mout, dey look, dey touch, but dey not gonna fuck you.” He hissed the vile, vulgar word, spitting vitriol, making the ‘f’ sound almost a ‘p’, but not quite: ppffuck.

He smacked her none-too-gently, hard enough to make her ears ring and the cross around her neck swing free and dangle in the darkness. Then he left.

And that was when Wren understood, fully, that he wasn’t just an opportunistic animal. He’d hit her, but he hadn’t damaged her. He’d forced drugs on her, but he hadn’t raped her, or let anyone else do so. He was saving her, keeping her intact. Keeping a product in prime condition so he could reap a maximum profit.

Wren was young and sheltered, and she knew she was naive in some ways, especially when it came to men, but she was far from stupid. She wasn’t a virgin, but the few experiences she’d had only served to emphasize how awful things were going to get.

Unless a miracle happened. Unless someone saved her.

Someone like Stone.

Even tied up, in pain, drug-fogged and addled, terrified and alone, she shivered at the thought of Stone Pressfield. Huge, hard, mysterious, and difficult, Stone was…everything a girl could want. Six-foot-four, a body Adonis would be jealous of, close-cropped dark blond hair and deep brown, almost black eyes. But he was out of reach. He’d made it clear he wasn’t interested. Not like that, at least. He’d made it clear she wasn’t enough for him.

That didn’t stop her, in the darkness of a dirty, bug-infested, smelly hole in the ground prison cell, from wishing for him, from hoping and praying that he would come for her.

As she fell into an exhausted, frightened doze, Wren let herself imagine Stone bursting through the trap door and rescuing her.

It was small comfort, but it was something.

6

~ One week earlier ~

It was as if he was drawn to her by some strange magnetic force. For the last two and a half weeks, Stone had run himself ragged, scouting locations before the missions team arrived, operating as security while they did their futile, dangerous work in the slums and the red light district, talking to prostitutes and paying them to spend time in the hostel, feeding them, offering them Bible tracts and prayer and smiles and promises of freedom from prostitution.

And all the while, Wren had stayed on the edges of his awareness. Crouching beside a frail nineteen year old Taiwanese girl who’d been a prostitute since the age of six, smiling as she mixed poorly accented Filipino phrases with too-loud English. Playing checkers with a ten year old girl who’d been sold by her own parents. Serving food and bottles of water, never shrinking away from bad smells or harsh, distrustful glares. Stone would stand a few feet away from Wren, watching for the pimps and dealers who signaled trouble, and he would find himself unable to keep his eyes off her. Her ink-black hair would fall across her eyes, and she would brush it away with her graceful fingers. Her tank-top would ride up, revealing a sliver of dark skin, and she would tug it down absently. Sweat would run down her forehead, and she would wipe it away carelessly. Stone couldn’t not watch her. She was beautiful—and always, always kind. She never ran out of patience, and she was always the last one to stop working. The first one to volunteer.