Table Of ContentFINDING 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.
