The Missionary (24 page)

“Is what easy? Killing someone?” Stone rubbed his hand on his shorts, feeling the blade in his pocket. “No. It’s never easy. I do what I have to, to keep you and me alive, but it’s never easy.”

“Will you have nightmares about it?”
 

Stone sighed. “I already do, sweetheart.”

“I keep…I keep seeing his eyes. He looked so—so surprised.” Wren’s voice shook. “Every time I blink, I see it. Red…so much blood.”
 

“I wish I could have done that for you, Wren.” He buried his nose in her hair. “I would have. I should have.”

 
Wren didn’t answer, just pressed her face to his chest and breathed, shaky, feeble breaths.
 

Two stops later, they debarked the train, just as a vague announcement went over the PA about a delay in the schedule. Stone clenched his teeth and hustled them through the crowd, weaving to avoid contact with the security guards. He doubted anyone had seen enough to even identify the perpetrator as American, much less describe him, but he was covered in blood from his wounds and the earlier fights. It was best to get clear, just in case.
 

Descending to street level was easier than ascending, fortunately, as Stone could hold the rail and hop down each step. They found themselves on United Nations Avenue, heading west. Sirens howled somewhere far away.
 

He hobbled slowly, glancing behind him at the oncoming traffic, waiting for a taxi. He couldn’t make it on foot to the Embassy. He just couldn’t. The adrenaline was flooding away, leaving him shaky and tired and numb, as well as dizzy from blood loss.
 

An ancient white Toyota slid to a stop in front of them, hailed by Stone’s waving hand. Wren slid in first, and Stone next, lowering himself with a trembling arm.
 

“US Embassy, please.” He barely recognized his own voice.

“Maybe hospital betta?” The cabbie was a young man with long hair and a scraggly beard.
 

“No, just the Embassy.”

“Okay-sure.”
 

Fortunately the cab ride was gentler than the last one, and it was a matter of minutes before the cab bumped to a halt in front of the white stone and black iron gates of the Embassy of the United States of America. Stone dug in his pocket, found it empty.
 

“I don’t—don’t have any Pesos,” he mumbled, feeling himself fading quickly.

Wren shoved a pile of bills over the seat, not bothering to count. “Come on, Stone. I’ve got it covered. Get out for me, okay?”

He was dizzy, weak, but he shoved the door open and hopped away, nearly falling. Wren was there in moments, her skimpy, stolen dress hiked up and baring most of her flesh. “You need some clothes,” he said.

“That’s the last thing I care about right now.” Wren glanced toward the gate. “Will they let us in? I don’t have a passport. I don’t even know where it is. In my purse? That was gone a long time ago. When they first took me, I think.”

“They’ll let us in,” Stone growled.
 

A blue-uniformed guard wielding an assault rifle approached them, young and hard-eyed and intense. “State your business.”

“I’m Lieutenant Stone Pressfield. I’m a retired Navy SEAL. My girlfriend was kidnapped.” Stone couldn’t get all the words out right. “I got her back. We need…we need help. Let us in.” She wasn’t his girlfriend, but it just came out, slipped out.

The guard’s eyes raked up and down Stone’s body, taking in the numerous injuries. “I’d say you need medical attention, sir. You look—”

“I know, dammit!” Stone snapped, reverting to military posture, ramrod straight, glaring down at the young man. “But first, we need to get off the street. I need to brief someone about what happened. Goddamn it, I just—I need to sit down.” He felt himself stumbling, falling.

Wren tried to catch him, but he was too heavy. He felt hard arms go under his armpits, dragging him. He fought to get his feet underneath him, to walk, but darkness was encroaching, weakness and exhaustion and blood-loss and hunger dragging him down. Radios squawked, garbled. He felt himself laid down on a cold floor, and then Wren’s soft, warm hand touched his face.

“Stone? Are you okay?” Her voice was afraid.

He blinked, fluorescent lights overhead blinding him. “I’m okay,” he mumbled. “Just tired. Stay with me, okay? Don’t leave my side, no matter what.” He had to stay awake, had to make sure she was safe. He’d gotten her this far, he couldn’t let go now.
 

But he was so tired, so weak. It hurt, it all hurt. His whole body throbbed like fire.
 

Voices around him, English, both native and accented. He was lifted up, jostled, eliciting a groan, set on a stretcher. “Wren?”

“I’m here. We’ve got an escort of soldiers. They’re taking us to a hospital.” More movement, vehicle doors closing, engines rumbling.

“Americans? Don’t trust anyone.”

“Lieutenant Pressfield.” The voice was gravelly, the voice of someone used to shouting. Stone opened his eyes to see an older American man, lean and weathered. “I’m Commander Daniel Stanton. Your friend Nick alerted us to the situation. We’ve had people looking, but all we’ve found is your…handiwork.
 
You don’t have to worry anymore. We’ll take care of everything from here”

“Commander…Wren lost her passport. She needs medical attention too.”

“It’s all covered, Pressfield. Relax. You brought it in, son. Well done.”
 

The sound of a confident military voice did something to Stone, sent him back. He should salute, but he couldn’t move his arm. “Sir.”

“I’ll debrief you after you’ve been looked at, but I have to know. Did you ever make contact with someone named Cervantes?”
 

Stone fought to keep his eyes open. “Cervantes…he’s dead, sir.”

“You know this for sure?”

Stone met Wren’s eyes. “Yes. 100% positive. I saw him die.”

Commander Stanton leaned back against the ambulance wall. “Good. About time someone offed that fucker.” He glanced at Wren. “Apologies, ma’am.”

Wren’s expression didn’t change. “Don’t apologize. I’m the one who killed him.”
 

Stanton’s voice reflected his shock. “You?”

Wren flinched. “Yes. You don’t know…you don’t know what he did to me.”

Stanton’s eyes hardened. “I’ve been tracking him for years, Miss Morgan. I believe I can guess what you’ve been through.” He leaned forward. “You don’t have to worry about a thing, from now on. You did the human race a favor, ma’am. I’ll have you two home on a private charter as soon as I can work out the logistics. No press, no mess.”

Stone’s eyes fell shut again, but before he passed out, he felt Wren’s fingers thread through his.
 

“As long as we’re together,” she murmured.

Stone wanted to agree to that, but unconsciousness overtook him.

19

~Two and a half weeks later~

Wren tossed the teal maxi dress onto her dorm room bed in frustration. Nothing fit right. Nothing looked right. Nothing felt right. She’d tried on a dozen outfits, but none of them were right. Her hair wasn’t right. Her makeup wasn’t right.
 

She wasn’t right.

Nothing was right.

She’d been back in her dorm for a week, and she should be relieved, overjoyed, happy, excited. She should feel like she had a new lease on life.
 

She was healthy once more, for the most part. Her ribs only ached a little bit if she moved wrong, her privates were healed. She still felt the chemical need every once in a while, in random spurts. She would wake up from an already fitful sleep feeling the crawling under her skin, the itchy veins and hot-then-cold need for the euphoric drift of the heroin.
 

Nightmares hounded her. She had to have lights on, all the time. She’d tried sleeping with the lights off the first night she’d been home. She’d spent the first few days back Stateside with her parents, and she’d woken up screaming, thrashing, sobbing. The darkness had been alive. Waiting. Hungry. The darkness had been waiting to take her back, to drag her into the hole with the scratching, crawling things and the beatings and the needles.
 

She hadn’t been able to sleep again that night at all. Even with the light on, she hadn’t been able to sleep. Even after being taken to the doctor and prescribed sleeping pills, she couldn’t find any rest. The sleeping pills were worse, really. They would trap her in the nightmares, keep her under so she couldn’t escape them by waking up. She’d be trapped in that black pit, waiting to be punched and kicked, waiting for the needle in her vein. She would start to drift off, and then she would jerk awake, hand clapped over her forearm, huddled against the headboard.
 

Her parents hadn’t known how to cope, how to help. Therapy, talking through it, only forced her to relive the horror. She’d stopped going, against her parents’ insistence. So, she’d taken a bus back to her dorm room, to hide. The start of the semester helped, nominally. Going to classes let her pretend she was fine. She could forget while listening to an anthropology lecture, or while doing calculus.

It hadn’t been an easy transition back home. There had been news stories, interview requests—which she’d turned down—reunions with her friends and family. She’d spent days in the hospital in Manila, and then more in a hospital Stateside. Psychological evaluations, police reports. Follow-up appointments with her family’s doctor. Visits from just about everyone from LifeBride. Apologies from Nick and Pastor Len and the staff. She accepted the apologies, but didn’t think she’d be going back to LifeBridge any time soon.
 

She’d had visits from just about everyone.

Except the one person she wanted to see: Stone.
 

She hadn’t seen or heard from Stone since they’d parted at the airport. He’d hugged her, kissed her, promised he come see her, and now a week had passed, and she hadn’t heard a word.

Until today. He’d called her, asked her if she wanted to have dinner with him. Like, on a date. It seemed strange, unnecessary. They’d witnessed death together. They’d run for their lives together. They’d had mind-blowing sex together. And now he wanted to sit in some noisy restaurant and chat about…what? The weather? Sports? The latest episode of
The Big Bang Theory
?

He knew where she lived; why hadn’t he come to see her? Did he regret sleeping with her? Did he just want to forget everything?

Wren shuddered, let the blouse she’d just pulled off the hanger slip through her fingers as she slumped to the floor, choking on sobs that wouldn’t come out. She gasped, dry-heaving as the sobs caught in her throat. She hadn’t cried. Not once. Not alone, not in therapy, not with her Mom. She wasn’t okay, and she knew it, but she couldn’t cry. She wished she could. She felt the sobs pent up inside her, pressure building within like a shaken bottle of soda with the lid screwed on tight.
 

A soft knock on her door startled her, but she couldn’t get to her feet. She tried, but she couldn’t. Everything was spinning, but she was weighed down by the hundred tons of nightmare-memories and lack of sleep and shock she couldn’t deal with. And she missed Stone—she missed him so bad she couldn’t breathe. He’d rescued her and fought for her and killed for her and bled for her and comforted her without having to speak and he was gone, he wasn’t here and she missed him.

She was huddled on the floor of her bedroom, in the corner by her dresser, wearing nothing but a pair of barely-there lacy panties.

And then he was in front of her, huge and warm and comforting.

“Someone let me in when I told them I was picking you up,” he said by way of explanation. “Hey. Talk to me, babe.”

Wren didn’t have any words. She blinked, peered up at him, saw his tan face and rugged features, close-cropped dark blond hair, soft brown eyes tender with compassion.
 

“I—” What was she supposed to say?
 

Stone seemed to understand. He scooped her up, one arm beneath her knees, the other around her shoulders, and lifted her as if she weighed nothing. He favored his leg a little, but that was the only sign of having two bullet holes in his body. He slid onto the bed, his long legs crumpling her discarded clothes.
 

He smelled clean, like soap and faint, spicy cologne. His shirt smelled like fabric softener, warm and soft
.
She burrowed against his hard chest, wrapped her arms around his neck and held on.

“I can’t—can’t sleep. Can’t eat. I still feel the craving for that drug. I can’t even say the word. Heroin. Part of me wants,
needs
the heroin, and it’s eating me up inside. Not all the time. The dreams. Stone, the dreams…they—they’re inside me. Like, I held it together when I was going through it. I just wanted to live, to not be sold. You rescued me. Saved me. Stayed with me. And now I’m back home and it’s all wrong. I’m wrong. It’s like I’m not here.” She was speaking in a stumbling rush, the words suddenly pouring out, because it was Stone, and he
knew
. “I’m not here. Does that sound crazy? Like I got left behind, somehow. Part of me is still over there. Still in Manila, in that hole, that fucking black hole with the bugs and the drugs and the darkness and
him
, Cervantes, hitting me. Holding me down and sticking that needle into me. I’m still there, and this…this body,
this
me is some other Wren. Who am I, now, Stone? How am I supposed to be here? Those other girls? What happens to them? They don’t get to go home. They didn’t have Stone to rescue them.”

Stone grimaced. “That’s what I have nightmares about. Those other girls. After that first mission, the one that went wrong? It was Cervantes then, too. The innocent girls, no more than children. They haunted my dreams for…months. And now they’re back, with different faces. The same faces. I see Lisa, too. Over and over again. Lisa Johnson, naked and starving, track marks on her skin, bruises and scabs and matted hair and eyes that said she’d never really be whole again. And I see you, in that room.” His voice was low, a murmur like thunder rolling somewhere beyond a midnight horizon.