Finding Elodie Read online

  Finding Elodie

  SEAL Team Hawaii, Book 1

  Susan Stoker

  Contents

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Also by Susan Stoker

  About the Author

  Renowned chef Elodie Winters’ dream job, private chef to a powerful family in New York, quickly becomes a nightmare when her employer turns out to be the head of a notorious mob family. Now on the run, she thinks she’s finally safe, having landed in the middle of the Arabian Sea, cook on the Asaka Express cargo ship. When the ship is taken by pirates, she can’t believe her bad luck…but it’s about to take a turn for the better.

  Scott “Mustang” Webber is pulled from his current mission, along with the rest of his SEAL team, to prevent an act of piracy in the Middle East. They’re all surprised when the first person to radio for help is a woman. He soon senses “Rachel Walters” is hiding something, and offers his help. He’s both shocked and pleased when she actually comes looking for him in Hawaii months later. He’d felt a connection with her on that cargo ship…one he’s looking forward to exploring further.

  Keeping Elodie safe in Hawaii turns out to be easy…until it isn’t. Long days in paradise have a way of making one complacent. Now Mustang is working against the clock and the elements themselves, as he faces his greatest mission ever—finding Elodie.

  * * *

  ** Finding Elodie is the 1st book in the SEAL Team Hawaii Series. Each book is a stand-alone, with no cliffhanger endings.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Susan Stoker

  No part of this work may be used, stored, reproduced or transmitted without written permission from the publisher except for brief quotations for review purposes as permitted by law.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Edited by Kelli Collins

  Cover Design by AURA Design Group

  Manufactured in the United States

  Chapter One

  Attention. Attention. This is Captain Conger. The ship is under attack by pirates. This is not a drill. Repeat, not a drill. Do what you can to hide, but do nothing to put yourself or anyone else in danger. The authorities have been notified. If you have access to a radio, and it’s safe to do so, use the emergency frequency to talk to anyone who might be listening and can help. We know this ship better than they do. Hunker down and if you’re the praying sort…pray.

  * * *

  Elodie Winters, known to the crew on the Asaka Express as Rachel Walters—or simply Chef—was moving before the captain had finished his announcement over the loudspeaker. The entire crew had been briefed a few days ago that they were entering the dangerous waters of the Gulf of Aden, near Somalia and Yemen. She’d been scared enough to wear her clothes to bed. But deep down, Elodie hadn’t thought it would truly be a concern.

  The cargo ship she was working on had hoses on the deck that could spray an insane amount of water down on anyone dumb enough to try to approach, and it had been years since she’d heard of any large ship like theirs being taken hostage. She had no idea if the hoses had malfunctioned or how the pirates had gotten onboard.

  But here they were.

  Her heart pounded a million miles an hour as she moved around her room in the bowels of the ship. The engineers and higher-ranking officers had rooms on the upper floors, but Elodie hadn’t minded being lower down in the ship. She liked being near her kitchen.

  When she’d come aboard, she’d been surprised to learn that everyone had their own room; she’d been expecting to share. But then again, there were only twenty-two workers on this ship, unlike cruise ships, which had hundreds of crew and thousands of guests.

  In theory, Elodie knew why pirates attacked the large ships that went through the Gulf of Aden, but the reality seemed impossible. She’d seen the movie on the takeover of the cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, and had been surprised at how easy it seemed to be for the pirates to get aboard. The Asaka Express was about the same size as the Maersk Alabama, but Captain Conger had reassured everyone that the safety measures put into place since that hijacking were much improved.

  It seemed there was room for even more improvement.

  Elodie took time to put on the boots she had by the side of her bed and grabbed her emergency radio. All the employees had been issued one. She could talk to the bridge with it, and access additional frequencies if needed.

  Gripping the radio like a lifeline, she quickly opened her door—and let out a small shriek in fright when she almost ran into someone in the hallway.

  “I was just coming to make sure you were awake,” Manuel said, the terror easy to hear in his tone.

  Elodie was the chief cook onboard. She had one assistant, the second cook. Manuel reported to her and was responsible for the pastries and serving the crew and officers. The rest of the employees hired by the shipping company were engineers and officers. She was the only female onboard, and she’d thought that might be weird at first, but most of the men were respectful and didn’t pay her much attention.

  There was one officer, Valentino, who thought she’d jump at the chance to join him in his bed, and when she’d politely declined, he’d gotten offended. She’d learned to avoid him.

  “Rachel?” Manuel asked, and Elodie shook her head, trying to concentrate on the disaster at hand. “What should we do?”

  “What we’ve been trained to,” she told him. She regretted not choosing a name closer to her own, but then again, she hadn’t exactly had a choice. She’d had to settle for the identity on the fake documents she’d bought.

  The reason why she was using a pseudonym was a concern for another day. Right now, she needed to get somewhere safe, and her room definitely wasn’t. They’d been warned in safety-training sessions that pirates would most likely ransack the individual rooms looking for valuables and money. And the last thing she wanted was to be found. She felt relatively safe amongst the men on the ship, but she had no idea what pirates would do if they found a woman onboard.

  “Go down to the engine room,” Elodie told Manuel.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “I’m headed to the galley. I can fit inside many of the cabinets if I need to. You can’t. Besides, with the vegetable room, the freezers, and cold room, there are plenty of places for me to hole up. We also don’t know how long this will last. You guys will need food if the pirates decide to stay. I can use the dumbwaiter to send food down to the engine room if necessary. It’s safer if we aren’t wandering all over the ship while the pirates are onboard.”

  “But if those pirates are here for very long, they’re gonna come down here. They’re gonna need food and water
too,” Manuel said reasonably.

  Elodie knew he was right, but the place where she felt the safest was her kitchen. Besides, the captain said he’d gotten ahold of the authorities. She didn’t know who he’d managed to contact, but she had confidence that the hijacking wouldn’t last for weeks.

  “They’ll be busy elsewhere for a while,” Elodie told her assistant.

  Manuel looked like he wanted to protest. Wanted to insist she come with him, but the sound of a door closing from the stairwell nearby clanged loudly in the hallway, and Manuel looked over his shoulder, his eyes wide with terror.

  “Go,” Elodie ordered.

  He moved without any more prodding, running in the opposite direction from where they’d heard the noise. Elodie had no idea if the pirates were already running around the ship or how many there might be, but she wasn’t going to stand in the hallway and wait for them to find her.

  She hadn’t come all this way, escaped what she had in New York City, only to fall prey to a random pirate now. Still gripping the radio, she jogged for the stairwell. The engine room was four decks high, and there was an entrance on this level, but the galley was two floors above where her room was located. She needed to move.

  “Manuel will be fine,” she said softly. She’d always had a tendency to talk to herself, had tried to break it, to no avail. Because much of her life had been spent alone, she’d started talking to herself to break the monotony.

  “Walter has this under control,” she muttered as she cautiously opened the stairwell door. The captain had asked everyone to call him by his first name, and while it seemed weird at first, she’d gotten used to it. He was in his early fifties, had gray hair, and was always smiling. He was down-to-earth and treated everyone with the utmost respect. She respected him back and felt safe with him at the helm.

  John and Troy appeared in the stairwell above her and raced past with barely a glance. They were engineers and obviously headed down to the engine room.

  She heard other footsteps heading toward the upper decks and assumed it was officers going to the bridge. Elodie ran as fast as she could to the floor where the galley was located.

  She hadn’t lied to Manuel, there were lots of places to hide in the kitchen complex. She’d already scoped them out, but not because she was afraid of pirates.

  She was scared of Paul Columbus.

  The man had said more than once that the only way out of his employ was in a pine box, and she believed him. She hadn’t known he was the leader of one of the most dangerous mob families in New York when she’d accepted a job as his personal chef. She’d just been excited for the opportunity to get out of the restaurant business. The money had been hard to turn down too.

  At first she’d been utterly clueless as to how the Columbus family made their millions. She was happy to stay in the kitchen, minding her own business, creating delicious food for Paul and his frequent guests. But eventually she was clued in that the man she worked for was beyond evil. He didn’t care who he hurt, as long as he found a way to make money illegally.

  Everything she was surrounded by in his home had been purchased with dirty money, even the food she used to find such satisfaction in preparing.

  Knowing she didn’t have time to reminiscence over all the mistakes she’d made in her life, Elodie entered the officers’ mess room. All the rooms in this part of the ship were connected in one long horizontal line. First was the officers’ mess, then the officers’ pantry, the galley, the crew pantry, and then the crew mess. There was a door in the galley that led to a hallway containing the food storage rooms. There was a general freezer, a fish freezer, three refrigerators, and several pantries for dry food storage.

  She’d scoped out all the cabinets she could fit in, and even how she might be able to get to the elevators and stairwells undetected if she had to. She wouldn’t have the first clue where to hide down in the engine room, which was another reason she wanted to come here. This was where she was comfortable. She knew if the pirates decided to stay for any length of time, they’d make their way to the galley, as Manuel had said. While that made things more dangerous for her, she would also do what she could to make sure their trips to the galley were as short as possible.

  Keeping the radio tucked into a large pocket of her cargo pants, Elodie worked as fast as possible. She moved three bundles of bottled water into the main kitchen area, where they’d easily be seen. Then she took out several boxes of crackers, a few loaves of bread, and bags of potato chips, and strategically placed them around the galley and both crew pantries. Generally, the food was stored in cupboards, secured so the boxes and cans wouldn’t go flying in rough seas. She wanted the food to be readily accessible for the pirates but at the same time, she didn’t want it to look like anything had been left out intentionally. She wanted the pirates to think they’d hit the mother lode with the food in plain sight, and not bother to dig much deeper.

  Elodie ran her arm across her brow. She was sweating and hated not knowing what was happening high above her head in the bridge. Were the pirates onboard? Had they gotten into the bridge? Were they hurting the captain and the other officers?

  And most importantly, what did they want?

  The radio she’d stuffed in her pants squawked, scaring the shit out of Elodie.

  “Holy crap!” she exclaimed, putting one hand over her racing heart and using the other to pull out the radio. The voices were muffled, but she could hear heavily accented males yelling, and Walter trying to placate them.

  Confused about what she was hearing, Elodie stood in the middle of the galley trying to decipher what was going on. It took a minute, but she finally realized that someone had activated a radio up in the bridge, and it was broadcasting everything that was happening to the others onboard.

  Chills raced up her spine as she listened to Walter doing his best to calm the pirates. It was hard to figure out how many there were, but it seemed as if it was more than a handful. Her stomach clenched in fear. The more pirates there were, the easier it would be to control the ship, to leave some up with the captain and the officers on the bridge and send others to prowl the decks, looking for crew and anything of value they could steal. The last thing Elodie needed was to be held for ransom. Her face would be plastered all over the news…which meant Paul Columbus could use his extensive mob network of soldiers and associates to find her.

  “Where is the safe?” one of the pirates asked loudly.

  “Not here. It’s downstairs in one of the chart rooms,” Walter told him.

  “You go, get money.”

  “You can have all the cash we have, then you’ll go,” Walter said.

  “No go,” another man said sternly. “You take ship where we say. Our men come on. You open containers.”

  “That’s…it’s not safe,” Walter stammered.

  “No care. We open. You drive!” the man shouted.

  Then Elodie heard scuffling and more shouting. A gunshot went off—and she held her breath, waiting to hear who, if anyone, had been hurt.

  “Stop! Okay, okay! We’ll open whatever containers you want, but don’t shoot that thing again!” Walter yelled desperately.

  The pirates merely laughed.

  “We shoot when and where we want. We shoot you if you do not give us what we want. No hostages, too hard to get money. But if you don’t do what we say, we kill,” one of the pirates said.

  “You can’t shoot Walter,” Elodie whispered. “We need him to drive this damn thing.”

  As if the captain could hear her, he said, “If you kill me and my officers, this ship will run aground. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is tricky as hell to navigate.”

  “I am fisherman. I can drive boat,” one of the pirates said, unconcerned.

  Elodie snorted. Driving a super ship like this one was way different than the skiffs the pirates were probably used to.

  “We know there are others onboard,” someone else said. “We will find and start killing them if you don’t do what we ask
.”

  “Nobody needs to get hurt,” Walter said quickly. “We’ll do what you want. Just don’t hurt my crew.”

  There were more scuffling noises and the pirates began to talk amongst themselves in a language Elodie couldn’t understand.

  Things were getting out of hand, and she was terrified. But Walter had said he’d called the authorities. Someone would come to help them, wouldn’t they? Didn’t the US Navy have ships in this part of the world? It was unfathomable that these pirates could just steal a huge cargo ship like this one.

  Deciding her best bet for now was to lie low, Elodie exited the galley and went into a dry goods pantry. There was a cabinet at the back of the room she knew she could fit into. She squeezed herself into the cramped space, moving large bags of potatoes and other goods back in front of her. It wouldn’t fool someone if they were really looking for people hiding, but she thought it should be good enough if someone merely opened the door to glance inside.

  She held the radio in her lap and stared down at it. She couldn’t really see in the dark, but the lights on the device calmed her. Mentally, she began making notes on what she was hearing. She didn’t know if they would be of any use, but maybe after they were rescued, she could help recount what had happened.

  Elodie didn’t do drama. She was a chef, for goodness sake. How could one person get into so much trouble in one lifetime? Paul Columbus had already vowed to kill her for refusing to do his bidding, and now she was hiding from pirates on the high seas.