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All this week, Written Words is publishing excerpts from books by fellow author-members of the Jet and Lei Crime Kindle worlds. Today, sample Eden Baylee’s second Lei Crime novella featuring Lainey Lee, Seal of a Monk.

By Eden Baylee

Day one in the woods.

Late afternoon.

Heavy footsteps and shouting faded behind her sometime ago, but she kept up the grueling pace. The forest fell silent except for the thrumming in her ears as her legs pounded the ground. Every time she tripped on vines or underbrush, she scrambled up and kept running. Her shoes sank into the damp earth, jagged edges where erosion had split the soil like decaying flesh. The terrain changed quickly and often. No time to adjust her speed. She dared not look behind her.

Distance offered safety.

Tenderness in her right ankle worried her, but the adrenaline pumping through her veins kept her going. Fear trumped logic that told her she had to stop.

Snapping twigs and shoving branches out of the way, her peripheral vision blurred while her surroundings flew by. She blinked back tears and her face stung. Several minutes later, her legs turned to stone pillars. Her lungs were on fire. On the verge of collapse, she slowed down but swerved abruptly to avoid running into a low-hanging branch.

A dry gasp forced out a sudden, sharp cough when she stopped. She clamped her hands over her mouth while the sound echoed like an explosion around her. A flurry of activity hit her senses. Her own heartbeat thumped in her head along with a cacophony above her. She glared up at an open patch of sky to see a flock of yellow birds funnel upward like a tornado. They chirped loudly in unison as if admonishing her for destroying their peace.

She struggled to regain her breath, rolled her aching shoulders to expand her lungs. Ahh … she forgot about the fifty-pound weight on her back. She released the hip belt and dropped the pack to the ground. Relief. While running, she considered unbuckling the sack and discarding it. Crazed as she was at the time, she couldn’t do it. It would’ve been suicide.

Squatted beside her bag, her almond-shaped eyes flittered back and forth for any movement nearby. Scampering sounds came from behind trees like kids playing hide-and-seek. Were they small animals? Or large ones? Every strange noise alerted her to danger, and there were so many she had never heard.

Crouched down, a different perspective met her view, all of it foreign to her—dense, tropical forest with no clear path, no posted signs. The boughs of conifers loomed over her like giant arms. Were they pines? She couldn’t be sure, never paid much attention to plant life in the city.

She was in deep trouble.

About Seal of a Monk

The ancient jungles of Kauai provide the perfect setting for self-discovery. 

Despite the terror she experienced on her last trip, Lainey Lee returns to Hawaii to manage a silent meditation course on the Coconut Coast. Twenty-five women are under her care for ten days in a beautiful and remote location. Lainey expects to find inner peace, but four days into the course, one of the meditators disappears without a trace. 

Did the girl leave of her own free will, or was she lured away by a strange cult? Lainey is frantic to answer these questions. As her desperation grows, she finds help from an unexpected source—a retired Navy SEAL named Maximillian Scott. 

Now, Lainey has two mysteries to solve: what happened to the missing girl and the case of her own heart. Can she ever trust a man again? 

About the author

Eden Baylee left a twenty-year banking career to write and is now a full-time author of multiple genres.

She has written three collections of erotic novellas and flash fiction—Spring into Summer, Fall into Winter, and Hot Flash, along with contributing to the anthologies: Allegories of the Tarot, Indie Authors Naked, and Triptychs.

In 2014, she launched the first novel of her trilogy with Dr. Kate Hampton—a psychological mystery/suspense called Stranger at Sunset. In addition to working on her next novel, Eden created Lainey Lee for the Lei Crime Series, a feisty divorcée who finds adventure and romance in Hawaii. Her novellas for the series—A Snake in Paradise and SEAL of a Monk can be found on Kindle Worlds.

An introvert by nature and an extrovert by design, Eden is most comfortable at home with her laptop surrounded by books. She is an online Scrabble junkie and a social media enthusiast, but she really needs to get out more often! Connect to her via all her networks. She loves talking to readers! 

To receive alerts of Eden’s new releases and special offers, please sign up to her mailing list and follow her on Amazon.

Additionally, you can engage with her on her blog, and find her active on Twitter @edenbaylee and Facebook.