The Missionary by Jack Wilder Read Free Book Online Page A

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.  
    How could he not be attracted to her? But it wouldn’t—couldn’t—go anywhere past that.  
    Not when he still had nightmares of bullet-riddled bodies, and memories of pulling the trigger that sent those bullets. He woke up sweating and terrified most nights, reliving and remembering. Wren didn’t deserve that.  
    So, he kept to himself, watched the students, and watched the streets. Followed behind the group as they made their way to dinner, guarded the bathrooms while they took showers. Kept his hand near the cheap but functional 9mm pistol he’d gotten ahold of within hours of wheels-down.  
    He was starting to think his intuition had been wrong. The trip was days from completion and nothing bad had happened. Less than a week to go, and the students would be boarding a plane for the States. Which meant Wren would be safe. He prayed the next five days would go quickly. Yet, the feeling persisted. The troubled, gnawing sense of unease in his belly.  
    He refused to let anyone from the group leave the hostel without him, and without at least four other people. He slept with his pistol under his pillow, as lightly as if he was in the field with his unit again.  
    When he didn’t dream of the raid in Manila, he dreamed of Wren, of the hopeful gleam in her eyes when she’d told him she wished he would see her as someone other than a sweet, innocent girl.  

    *   *   *

    Friday. Less than forty-eight hours before their flight out of Manila. They’d spent the last twelve hours going out in groups of six, Stone as escort and tour-guide, seeing sights and having fun, unwinding