The Missionary Read online

  The Missionary

  Jack Wilder

  Ex-Navy SEAL Stone Pressfield has a bad feeling about the proposed church missions trip to Manila, Philippines. The college-age church group plans to go to Manila and help victims of the sex-trafficking industry. Stone's lingering nightmare memories about the sex-trafficking industry have him warning church leaders that the trip is a bad idea. He knows all too well that it could end in violence, and those involved aren't to be trifled with.

  When beautiful Wren Morgan goes missing, he has a sick feeling that he knows exactly who took her, and for what purpose. The problem is, Wren isn't just any other student. She's someone he's close to, someone he cares about. Now she's in the hands of cruel, evil men, and Stone is the only one who can rescue her before the unthinkable happens.

  The Missionary

  by

  Jack Wilder

  Copyright © 2013 by Jack Wilder

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art copyright © 2013 by Sarah Hansen of Okay Creations.

  All rights reserved.

  1

  ~Now~

  The stench woke her. A thick miasma of rot and garbage and death, laced with something acrid and almost sweet. The next thing she noticed was the heat. And then the pain. Everything hurt.

  Something with too many legs skittered over her foot.

  She couldn’t open her eyes; either that, or she was in a darkened room. Memory was a foggy thing at best. Thought was difficult, her brain sluggish.

  What’s my name?

  Where am I?

  She couldn’t summon the answers to those questions. The pain made it too hard to think. The pain, and the smell. And the heat. She tried to open her eyes again, and this time, she felt like she was successful. She was blinking, her lashes shuttering against her cheek. She turned her head, or tried to. Something went skritch under her scalp, and she felt the tug of her hair catching, so she knew she’d achieved some kind of motion.

  Her fingers wiggled behind her back, pinned underneath her body. She tried to bring them around in front of her, but she couldn’t. She strained, pulled: pain sliced into her wrists. She was bound. Tied by sharp, thin wires of some kind. She scissored her legs, discovering that only her hands were bound. Blink again, strain against the darkness. Nothing. Was she blind?

  She focused on her physical senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound. She could see nothing, not even shadows within shadows. Smell…the stink around her was so clotted she could taste it. Touch? The surface beneath her was uneven and gritty. Dirt perhaps. There were sounds, now that she focused. The distant caw of a seagull, the faint, amorphous din of a city: horns honking, the rumbling of a diesel engine, voices speaking rapidly somewhere above her. She couldn’t understand what was being said, but one voice sounded angry.

  Then there was a sixth sense. Or perhaps it was emotion, or memory.

  Fear.

  Not just the simple too-fast thumping of her heart and clenching of her stomach. No, this was deeper, powerful beyond comprehension. This was pure, unadulterated terror. She couldn’t summon the reason for the terror, but it was there, tainting everything. It was why she didn’t call out, ask for help. She was tied up in the darkness, in pain, and some instinct told her to stay quiet. Avoid attention.

  Don’t be noticed.

  Don’t let him know you’re awake.

  Him?

  She wasn’t sure who him was, but the terror increased to a hammering, nauseating level at even the nebulous idea of him knowing she was awake, seeing her, coming back. He’d caused the pain, she knew that much.

  Then, a flash of memory.

  A hard palm across her mouth, another around her throat, cutting off her ability to breathe, much less make a sound. Being dragged backward, away from her friends. Away from the street. Away from the light, into an alley. She thrashed and fought and tried to scream, to kick, to elbow and bite. Something hard bashed into her skull, skittering stars across her vision. Words rasped harshly in her ear. Not English, but the meaning was clear: SHUT UP. She thrashed harder, and then something sharp jabbed into her bicep. A needle.

  NO.

  She fought it, the coldness snaking like ice through her blood. But fighting was futile. She seemed at once heavy yet light, her body drowsing and drowning until she felt weighted down by irons at her arms, while her mind floated up and away, swirling and skirling and twisting.

  She noticed, dully, absently, as the cracks of blue sky visible through the corrugated roof were replaced by a low ceiling. A door closed, its sliding slam signifying something—a van? She was floating, weightless, unable to move. Unable to want to move.

  A face hovered over her, round features, narrow eyes. Hard, cruel. He grinned, showing cracked and rotten teeth. He spoke, and the sound was distorted. “Not so tup now, American?”

  Not so tup? What did that mean?

  Tough. Not so tough.

  He pushed her face to one side, almost an affectionate nudge to see if she would respond. She couldn’t. She wanted to. She didn’t like him. She didn’t like his touch. She summoned willpower, and when he touched her again, she snapped her teeth at him, trying to bite. It was all she could do, but she missed. He laughed, said something in his language—her hazy, muddy, sludgy brain supplied an answer: Filipino—and then slapped her across the face so hard it rocked her entire body to one side. She couldn’t cry or whimper, but a tear trickled down her cheek.

  Then he hit her again, this time with a closed fist, and all went dark.

  Her mind felt as thick as treacle, but she knew something had happened to her. She’d been kidnapped.

  A surge of panic cut through her like a knife, giving her terrified clarity:

  Wren. Her name was Wren.

  She needed to speak, to say it, to remember. “My name…is…Wren.” Her voice was sandpapery and rough from disuse and thirst. “My name is Wren Morgan.”

  A voice shouted from above, spitting out rapid-fire Filipino. Hinges creaked, and a square of light emerged over her head, illuminating a hard-packed dirt floor, concrete walls. Feet clomped on wooden stairs, dirty feet in green plastic flip-flops. The face from her memory appeared in front of her, smiling.

  “Need more?” He held up a syringe filled with clear liquid. “Yes, I tink you need more.”

  “No…” She tried to scramble away from him, but only managed to kick at the floor with her feet. “Please, no more.”

  He laughed and crouched beside her. She drew deep and forced her body to roll over, nearly dislocating her shoulder in the process. He grabbed her by the hair and jerked her back. He was thin and wiry, but brutally strong. She struggled, knowing what was coming. Fear cleared her mind, and she suddenly remembered everything.

  The mission trip. Manila. Getting lost. Doug and Aaron and Emily. Hands on her, cutting off her scream before it could erupt.

  She fought and fought. But someone else came, held her right forearm in a vise grip, slid the needle into her vein. The plunger went down slowly, inevitably, flushing the euphoric high through her, making her heavy and weightless and warm, making her forget all over again.

  The drug didn’t mask the pain when he kicked her in the ribs.

  Green plastic-sandaled feet tromped up the stairs, and the square of light vanished, leaving Wren lost and alone in the darkness, beyond terrified but unable to remember what she was afraid of.

  2

  ~One month earlier~

  Stone Pressfield didn’t consider himself a musician. Not even close. He knew enough guitar to play simple chord progressions without screwing up, and he had a pretty decent singing voice—deep and smooth—but that was the best that could be said.

  He’d only really ended up on the stage leading the eighty or so
college students in worship because he was the sole staff member with even a modicum of musical skills. To be truthful, he hated leading worship. He hated the attention, all the eyes on him. It wasn’t in his nature. He would have preferred to be in the back of the small, overcrowded sanctuary, running the sound and projector equipment, and the PowerPoint presentation Pastor Nick would use during his message. But Nick was Stone’s buddy from way back, so when the previous worship leader got a paid, full-time offer at a bigger church, he asked Stone to fill in and there was no way to say no. Nick couldn’t carry a tune to save his life.

  LifeBridge, the college-age ministry of Charlottesville Nondenominational Christian Church, was new, and had next to zero staff to speak of. Just Nick, who ran the program, doing the message, picking out the worship songs, and about 80% of everything else. Nick’s wife, Amy, organized the activities and outreach, while Jimmy, a recent college graduate, did the sound and helped stack the chairs at the end of the meeting. And then there was Stone. Four staff members and eighty students. A tad unbalanced, but it was better than having no staff, or no students.

  The kids were there every Sunday night, and they brought friends. They soaked up Nick’s messages and sang with energy. They were eager and honest and passionate, and that was good enough for Stone.

  Letting the last note hang in the air, he offered the students a small smile. This was where he was supposed to say something to them, something wise and Jesus-y and inspiring, the kind of platitudes that came to Nick as easy as breathing did.

  Stone unslung the guitar and stared out at them, his throat clogged with nerves. He could sing without getting nervous, for some reason, but ask him to talk? Yeah…no.

  He had to try, though. “Um. I—”

  Nick stepped up beside him and clapped him on the shoulder. “Our God really is an awesome God, isn’t He?” The students cheered noisily, and Nick joined their applause.

  Stone breathed a sigh of relief as Nick saved him from embarrassing himself. He stepped off the stage and put his guitar back in its hard black case.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t believe, it was just that he always felt stupid when he tried to say things about God. Nick sounded so natural, so right—his words always came out smooth, with a readymade segue into his message.

  When Stone thought about saying stuff like that, he felt like a hypocrite. Like the students would look at him and know he was a fake.

  He wasn’t a fake. He just…sometimes he felt like one. He wasn’t good and holy and whatever, not like Nick. He didn’t have Jimmy’s earnest, eager personality. Nor even Amy’s kind, nurturing nature. He was quiet, stoic. Words didn’t come easily to him. They never had, and they never would.

  Stone Pressfield was a soldier. A warrior. He’d graduated from high school at 17, gotten permission from his dad, and applied for the Navy SEALs. He’d passed the physical screening test with flying colors, aced the ASVAB, earned a SEAL Challenge Contract, and within months of graduation was mucking in the mud in boot camp. By the time he was 21, he was a hardened combat veteran.

  He’d seen and done things no one in the sanctuary could ever comprehend. That was what made him feel like a fake when he was up there leading worship. He wasn’t a worship leader. He wasn’t a pastor. He wasn’t a good Christian. He was a soldier, and he believed because he’d seen the truth. He’d experienced death and felt the presence of God. He’d witnessed miracles. Bullets that should have taken his life, missing without any explanation. Grenades landing at his feet and not exploding. He’d seen the worst in humanity and dealt death to the scum of the earth. He’d also seen true heroism and courage, seen sacrifice and the power of faith. He’d seen the Gospel change lives. He’d seen acts of kindness transform entire villages.

  So yeah, he believed.

  But his was the kind of faith grounded in gritty reality, and it was tempered by an awareness of what went on in the world beyond the narrow field that these kids experienced.

  Kids.

  Most of them were only a few years younger than him. Some, like Jimmy the sound guy, were basically his peers, within two or three years of his age. But Jimmy, at twenty-three, was still a kid. He’d never left Virginia. He’d attended the private Christian school connected to the church where he now volunteered. He’d gone to a Christian college, graduated with a Christian degree. He was so innocent and well intentioned and naïve that Stone almost couldn’t stand him for it. He was a good kid, a great kid. But Jimmy wasn’t even on the same planet as Stone, it sometimes seemed.

  With a sigh, Stone rested his spine against the back wall of the sanctuary, near the doors that led out into the foyer. He crossed his arms over his chest and listened to Nick’s message about being genuine in a world where falsity was king.

  When the message was over, Nick dismissed the students, and they gathered in the foyer and the sanctuary to socialize. Stone watched them, listening in to conversations, and wondering what it was like to be so innocent. He’d never been like that, even as a kid. Not growing up with the parents he did.

  There was one student who always caught his eye. Stone had to make himself think of her as a student, because that was safest. He kept his back to the wall and watched her laugh with her friends, and he had to work hard to keep his thoughts pure.

  Wren Morgan. Short and curvy, thick hair cascading in a loose cloud of raven wing black down her back, dark, happy eyes, tan skin. Wren was a joyful person. She exuded sheer happiness, no matter the situation, and she always, always had a brilliant smile for everyone.

  Wren was the girl who would sit in the back with the awkward new kid and make them feel at home. She would befriend the lonely ones, and she would do it with the kind of easy grace that made it seem like she was the one benefitting. She would volunteer to do the things no one else wanted to, stayed late to help out, showed up early.

  Stone never let himself get too close to her, talk to her too much. It wasn’t smart, or ethical. He was staff, she was a student. Sure, she was only a few years younger than him. Twenty-two, he was pretty sure, to his twenty-six.

  It wasn’t easy, but he kept his distance.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket and he checked it, answering the text from his buddy Sam, who was a Recon on leave in DC. When he shoved the phone back in his jeans pocket, she was approaching him with that delicious sway to her hips.

  Knock it off, Stone. He forced his eyes to her face, and fixed a polite smile on his lips. “Hey Wren. What’s up?”

  She graced him with a smile so genuine and bright that he couldn’t help smiling wider at her. “Hi Stone! I was wondering if you’d help me figure out the chord progression for ‘Mighty to Save’. I just can’t get it right.”

  A few months ago, Wren had asked him to teach her to play guitar, so every Wednesday night they’d sit on the stage together and he’d teach her. She’d grown proficient enough that he couldn’t teach her much else, but every once in awhile she’d still get stuck and ask for his help.

  “Sure. Show me what you’ve got.” He set his case on the floor between them and lifted out his beat-up old Taylor, handed it to her and crossed his arms over his chest again.

  He didn’t miss the way her eyes followed his arms, watched his chest as it flexed. He had to resist the urge to flex again for her. He did his best to keep his gaze where it belonged, on her fingers as she worked the simple guitar chords of the song she was trying to learn. Within minutes he’d identified her problem.

  “Hold up,” he said. “You’ve got the chords right, but your rhythm is wrong. Here, lemme show you.” Bending toward her and taking the guitar, he couldn’t stop his eyes from traveling down the front of her V-neck shirt as she leaned over to hand it to him. He averted his gaze, mentally chewing himself out. She had on a small silver cross necklace, a delicate piece of jewelry with a tiny diamond in the center of the cross. It fell free from her shirt as she leaned forward, and she immediately slipped it back in between her breasts.

  Forcing his atten
tion to the guitar on his lap, Stone showed Wren the correct rhythm, then watched as she played it through a few times.

  “Looks like you’ve got it,” he said. “I should go, though.” He had to get away from her before temptation had him looking at places he had no business looking.

  Wren’s smile faltered for a moment as she tucked the guitar away and locked the clasps. “A bunch of us are going to grab some dessert,” she said, glancing up at him. “You should come. Jimmy will be there, and…you should come.”

  Her eyes held his, and he knew he should say no. But dammit, he didn’t want to. And then he chastised himself for swearing. “I need to hit the gym,” he said. He’d already worked out that day, but it was a good enough excuse. And he’d go again, just so it wasn’t a lie.

  “Oh come on. It’s not like you’re gonna get any less buff if you skip one workout,” she teased.

  Or, at least, her tone was teasing. Her eyes were clearly appreciative though, and Stone found himself reaching behind his head to scratch his shoulder in such a way as to flex his arm. It was stupid, he knew, but he couldn’t help it.

  “I really should just go home,” he said, telling himself as much as her.

  “You never hang out with us,” Wren said, pretending to pout. “Don’t you like milkshakes?”

  He tried not to laugh. “No, I like milkshakes just fine.”

  “Then come have a milkshake with us.”

  He glanced at the now-empty sanctuary, where Jimmy was stacking chairs and rearranging them for the prayer meeting on Wednesday. Nick was gathering his notes and chatting to his wife in low tones, then leaving with Amy holding onto his elbow. The foyer was mostly empty too, as most of the students had either gone home or out with their various groups of friends. A cluster of six cars sat idling with their headlights on. Waiting for Wren, obviously.

  “Fine, I’ll come,” he said. “But I’ve gotta help Jimmy first.”

  “Yay!” Wren stood up, clapping her hands. “I’ll help, that way we can go sooner.”