Returning to Eden Read online

  Returning to Eden

  Acts of Valor, Book 1

  Rebecca Hartt

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2019 by Marliss Melton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Cover and eBook design by eBook Prep

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  Published by Rise UP Publications

  www.riseUPpublications.com

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-947833-88-3

  Contents

  Foreword

  Glossary of Military Acronyms

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Before You Go…

  Every Secret Thing

  Also by Rebecca Hartt

  About the Author

  For all the devoted readers who have followed me into this new genre, especially Penny and Deborah, and for all the new readers just discovering me—welcome! It is my sincerest wish that you will lose yourself in the pages that follow. I hope this series resonates with you as it does with me.

  Foreword

  Most authors can easily name their favorite stories. Over a decade ago, under a different name and in a different era of my life, I wrote several books that have continued to live in my imagination. Yet, those books left out an element I believe to be crucial to the reality of their characters. Navy SEALs face peril on a daily basis. With injury and death always threatening, it makes sense to me that special operators rely on a higher power to give them courage. They must have faith in God’s protection—or, at the very least, the assurance of an afterlife. With this conclusion in mind, I have breathed life into the bones of my most heart-touching stories. I present to you the Acts of Valor series by Rebecca Hartt.

  Glossary of Military Acronyms

  CO – Commanding Officer

  XO – Executive Officer

  OIC – Officer in Charge

  NVG’s – Night Vision Goggles

  NCIS – Naval Criminal Investigative Service

  BUDs – Basic Underwater and Demolition/SEAL Training

  NWU – Navy Working Uniform

  PTSD – Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

  REM – rapid-eye movement

  Prologue

  Without warning, a bullet strafed the concrete floor of the warehouse not twenty feet in front of Jonah, shattering the quiet of the sleeping fishing village of Carenero, Venezuela.

  His first instinct was to dive for cover behind the crate he’d just pried open. Picturing the dozens of rounds for AK 47s packed inside, hiding next to the crate wasn’t the safest option. Then again, almost everything in this warehouse—guns, grenades, rocket launchers—was flammable.

  Heart pounding, Jonah dropped to the cool floor and elbow-crawled toward one of the many steel pillars holding up the catwalks and the tin roof. Putting his back against it, he tabbed his mike before the officer in charge had a chance to and hissed, “Sit rep.”

  “Two shooters.” Sniper Saul Wade’s situational report was as nonchalant as if they were out quail hunting. “Up in the crosswalks, northeast wall.”

  Jonah located the wall in question and, sure enough, two tangos armed with assault rifles crouched up there taking pot shots at them. With surprise, he realized they must have been there all along. His SEAL squad had broken the lock on the door on that same side of the warehouse. They’d fanned out, moving around for the past thirty minutes trying to find the four boxes full of chemical weapons, which per their intelligence, ought to have been right next to the door they’d entered.

  No one had come into the warehouse after them. Ergo, the shooters had arrived there first.

  Rat, tat, tat, tat!

  Another barrage of bullets verified Saul’s report, echoing in the vast, metal warehouse. In his earpiece, Jonah overheard the OIC, Jimmy Lowery, utter an exclamation of dismay.

  “We need to retreat.” Lowery stated the obvious with a wobble in his voice.

  Jonah cursed in silence. The op had gone from bad to worse. Lowery’s nervousness betrayed his lengthy absence from the field. As executive officer of the entire squadron, he manned a desk more often than he took part in assaults.

  “Reaper and Mr. T, break to the east exit,” Lowery instructed Saul and Theo. “Jaguar and I will be right behind you,” he added, referring to Jonah by his codename. “Meet you at the—”

  White noise hissed suddenly in Jonah’s earpiece. What the…?

  Fiddling with the wire, he slid to a standing position, hugging the pillar to maintain his cover. His coms could not have given out at a worse time. Luckily, Lowery had managed to spit out most of the directions. They were to rendezvous at the rally point, which was a ditch located halfway between the warehouse and their insertion point on the shore.

  “XO, can you hear me?” Jonah tested his mike as he listened to Saul throw up a wall of fire so Theo could sprint to the exit. The unmistakable blam-blam-blam of Theo’s submachine gun signaled Saul’s turn to move. Moonlight flooded the warehouse briefly as both men slipped out the exit on the east side together.

  Figuring Lowery was talking to him and getting no reply, Jonah crept around the safe side of the pillar to look for him. The silhouette of a man swung suddenly around the pillar. Jonah reared back but the butt of the man’s rifle still made stunning impact with his left cheek and sent his NVGs flying. Blood flooded into Jonah’s mouth as he staggered backward, tripped over a dolly, and crashed onto his back, smacking his skull. Darkness ambushed him. He clung to consciousness, trying to digest what was happening.

  A pair of rough hands seized him. Blood poured down his throat, choking him. Too concussed to fight back, Jonah submitted helplessly as his attacker flipped him over then grappled his arms behind his back, securing them with a nylon zip-tie that cinched his wrists together.

  What’s happened? Jonah’s guttural protests sounded like they were coming from someone else. He tried to form words, but speaking was beyond his capabilities. What’s wrong with me?

  His attacker did the same thing to his ankles, immobilizing him. Finished, the man clambered off him and hurried away.

  Jonah listened to his stealthy retreat. He lay with his face in a pool of blood—his own. Then, over the ringing in his ears, he heard s
trange men speaking in hushed voices. Speaking English.

  Friendlies, he thought. They were speaking English. But then he heard a wicked chuckle. Someone said, “Let’s blow this place.”

  The hairs on the nape of Jonah’s neck prickled. Dear God, he was going die here if he didn’t take action. Move. Get out.

  He didn’t even know where he was. Why can’t I remember?

  Contorting his spine, Jonah managed to grab, with oddly clumsy fingers, the Gerber blade concealed under his pant leg. With difficulty, he sliced through the zip-tie around his ankles, then angled the blade the other way and freed his wrists.

  It took every ounce of concentration to come to his knees and put the blade away. He spat something out of his mouth—a tooth. Craning his aching head, he pondered where he might find an escape. Then he crawled, staying on hands and knees to keep out of sight while weaving like a rabid raccoon through a maze of stored goods. The sound of voices faded. At last, he came to a door. To his relief, it opened when he pushed it.

  Help me get away, God.

  It was possibly the first sincere prayer Jonah had uttered to his Maker. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe. He’d just relied on his own strength to always get through. God had better things to do than to help someone like him. I want to live.

  As quietly as possible, he slipped outside, dragging himself on his elbows as far as his uncooperative muscles let him. Finally, the darkness tunneling his vision overtook him completely, and he collapsed onto the sandy soil.

  Chapter 1

  Eden immersed herself in the bath so that only her eyes and nose cleared the layer of bubbles. Her aching muscles softened in the hot water. Relaxing, she let herself go limp. Through half-closed eyes, she stared past the frothy bubbles at the framed photo where it stood behind a line of dancing tea candles. Bittersweet emotion stormed her as she stared into her late husband’s eyes.

  Even from a distance of a few feet, Jonah’s eyes mesmerized her, just as they had when the two of them first met. Most men with nutmeg-brown hair had hazel or brown eyes. Jonah’s were light green with a gold starburst at the center. Both the color of his eyes and his ability to see in the dark had given him his codename, Jaguar, which also happened to be the make of the car he drove. His gaze was uncannily direct, making her squirm whenever he’d stared at her, which had been quite often in the beginning. However, by the time he’d disappeared, only two years into their marriage, he’d scarcely given her the time of day. He’d been too wrapped up in being a SEAL and saving the world.

  Eden blew the encroaching suds away from her mouth, sending a bubble into the air. It drifted a moment and then disintegrated.

  “Like my love for you,” she murmured, addressing the man in the picture.

  He’d disappeared a year and a month ago. The Navy wouldn’t tell her where he’d been or the circumstances surrounding his disappearance. All they’d told her was there had been an accident—an explosion, and Jonah hadn’t exited the building in time to escape it.

  SEALs will never leave a man behind, so his teammates had gone back for him as soon as it was safe. The only remains they had found was a tooth, Jonah’s upper left canine. The Navy had immediately declared him MIA, missing-in-action. They’d expressed the hope that he’d been captured, but Eden doubted that. SEALs were trained to avoid capture, and Jonah, provided he hadn’t been injured, would have taken his life before he let the enemy take him.

  As time went on with no ransom note, no video boasting the captivity of a US special operator, the Navy began to sing a different tune. Then last week, a young officer had appeared on Eden’s doorstep, bearing an invitation to Jonah’s memorial.

  The Navy had finally declared her husband dead. She’d been issued a death certificate. She’d reached out to his life insurance providers. Yet, even with thirteen months in which to consider the likelihood that Jonah was gone, it had still come as a shock to be handed a tightly folded flag at his memorial.

  Ironically, on the heels of Eden’s shock had come relief. She would never have to walk on eggshells again, the way she did whenever Jonah was around. She wouldn’t have to give up the job that gave her so much satisfaction because he’d refused to let her work. She would raise her fourteen-year-old alone, as she should have done in the first place. With Jonah’s life insurance money in the bank, their financial situation could not have looked more secure.

  For the first time in a long time, the future was hers to enjoy.

  With the benefit of hindsight, she had admitted to Nina Aydin, her best friend, that marriage to Jonah had been a mistake. She’d thought she needed him to redeem herself in her parents’ eyes. She’d wanted her daughter, Miriam, to have a father. And, yes, she’d been over-the-moon in love with him. She had thought having a handsome, capable warrior for a husband would fulfill her. In fact, marrying him had left her lonelier than ever. Jonah, with his drive to save the world, hadn’t had time for a wife, let alone a stepdaughter.

  Less than a year into their marriage, the man who should have been her knight in shining armor had practically forgotten her. Two years in, he was dead.

  Now, it was finally over.

  Nina, who was divorced herself, had applauded Eden’s self-actualization. They had both agreed it was time to put the past behind her and to stand on her own two feet. She hadn’t needed Jonah Mills to make her whole. She’d done just fine this past year on her own. Better than fine. And yet…

  Even with her ears underwater, Eden could hear the words of the Natalie Cole song coming from her cell phone on the sink. “Unforgettable, that’s what you are…” A thread of longing stitched through her.

  She still missed him from time to time. Closing her eyes, she remembered the feel of his hands on her, his lips. His touch, his kisses had never failed to sweep her off her feet. His quick wit had always made her laugh. His intelligence had roused her respect.

  “Unforgettable, in every way…”

  He would never again call her back to him as he did time and time again, after each mission or deployment—with the inviting quirk of his mouth or the flash of his catlike eyes. She was free to go, to live her own life.

  Emptying her lungs in a long sigh, Eden released her lingering regret and sank completely underwater to wet her hair. Only when her lungs strained for air did she surface. Sitting up, she reached for the shampoo.

  The landline phone rang in another part of the house, reminding her to cancel the service. Jonah had activated it for security purposes. Yet with every incoming call being from a telemarketer, what was the point in keeping it? The ringing stopped as Miriam answered, and Eden clicked her tongue in annoyance. Couldn’t she let the machine pick up?

  With arms that shook with fatigue, Eden lathered her hair. She’d taught two body sculpting classes and a high intensity cardio class that day. She would need to soak in this tub for half an hour if she wanted to lift her arms above her head tomorrow.

  “Mom!” The bathroom door slammed open startling her as Miriam marched in unannounced. “It’s for you,” she said, holding out the landline phone.

  In the light of the candles, her daughter’s face looked waxen. Or maybe her complexion was all washed out from the dye job she’d just given herself.

  Mauve? “Oh, Miriam, your hair!” Eden cried.

  “It’s urgent,” her fourteen-year-old insisted.

  The size of Miriam’s brandy-colored eyes sent a shaft of concern through Eden. Taking the phone, she leaned out over the edge of the tub so as not to drop it in the water.

  “This is Eden Mills.”

  “Mrs. Mills, this is Commander Schmidt over at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center,” announced a man with a note of apology. “Traumatology,” he added.

  Eden lifted her gaze to her daughter’s shocked face. This had to be about Miriam. She’d acted out again, had to be.

  “Ma’am, I’m calling to let you know we’ve got your husband here. It’s a remarkable story, actually. He was picked up in the Gulf by a fishin
g vessel and used their radio to hail the US Coast Guard. They collected him via helo and flew him to Portsmouth this morning…”

  The commander kept talking, but Eden couldn’t hear him over the ringing in her ears. She hadn’t heard much, in fact, after the word husband.

  “I’m sorry.” She cut him off. “I think you’ve made a mistake. My husband’s dead.”

  “He’s not dead, ma’am. He’s been positively IDed as Lieutenant Jonah Michael Mills. He says he was imprisoned in Venezuela, and he managed to escape last week.”

  It could not be Jonah. Eden’s mind flashed to the flag she’d received at his memorial.

  “How…how can you be sure?”

  “I understand this is coming as a shock.” The commander’s voice softened. “But you can rest assured we IDed him thoroughly before making this call. His commander has already been in to see him. All that’s left is for his family to do the same. He is alive, ma’am, and in pretty fair condition, considering what he’s been through.”

  Eden swallowed convulsively. Her first impulse was to cling to the freedom she’d been relishing mere seconds earlier. Guilt immediately pricked her. If Jonah was alive, this was nothing short of a miracle!

  “I’m sure you’ll want to get down here right away,” the commander prompted.

  “Of course,” she said, all thought of her overworked muscles fleeing her head.