"Can you ever really go home again?"
Reviewed by Rachel Williams
Posted October 10, 2013
Romance Suspense
THE WAY HOME is a companion story in Cindy Gerard's new
One-Eyed Jacks series. Jess Albert has been living
the
lonely life of a military widow since her husband J. R.
(Jeff) was supposedly killed by a roadside bomb in
Afghanistan. Alone for nearly four years now, she is
running her general store business at Lake Kabetogama and
filling her life the best way she can to keep going. She
had been intrigued by Tyler Brown, a former military pilot
that she had met the year before when she provided arms to
the One-Eyed Jacks team. When he re-enters her world,
Jess decides that she's finally ready to move on with her
life.
J. R. Albert, long presumed dead, has been severely wounded
in Afghanistan, and suffering from memory loss. He is being
cared for by a young Afghani woman and her father; hidden
away in their home. Not remembering that he has a wife,
Jeff has become close to Rabia, who has cared for him for a
long time. Rabia, a widow herself, is attracted to Jeff; and
it is not long before their closeness moves their
relationship into an intimate direction. When Jeff learns
that there is an American military encampment not too far
away from Rabia's village; he sends her to make contact with
them and let them know that he is alive and trapped.
In the meantime, Ty's relationship with Jess has grown and
flourished. He is spending more time with her in Minnesota,
and less and less in his home in Florida. Ty is helping her
in her general store; then decides he wants to stay close to
Jess. To that end, he makes plans to start a plane
chartering business to ferry fishermen and tourists. Secure
in Ty's feelings for her, and that he will never leave her
for months on end the way her husband did; Jess succumbs to
love again and agrees to marry him.
Finding that J. R. is actually alive, the One-Eyed Jacks
and the Black Ops, Inc teams organize a joint operation to
bring him home to a wife he didn't even know he had. The
last part of the book is a wild thrill ride as the team's
head into to mount a harrowing operation behind enemy lines
to rescue J. R. But after all he's been through, and loving
Rabia as he does; can he ever really find his way home?
THE WAY HOME is more love story than it is a Special Ops
suspense story. There is the thrill of the operation to
bring J. R. home; but the book is at its heart a love story.
The narrative is told in the points of view of Jess and
Jeff (J. R.), switching back and forth between them. THE
WAY HOME is both poignant and heart-warming, and with a
special dash of the thrill that is the One-Eyed Jacks. It
looks like Cindy Gerard has another winning series here.
SUMMARY
Four years ago Jess Albert got the news that her husband
Jeff was killed in action in Afghanistan, and a painful void
entered her life. The more time passed, the more acutely she
felt that emptiness. But when Tyler Brown, former military
hero and all-around alpha male, shows up a year after she'd
last seen him, Jess gradually begins to realize there is one
thing that can make her feel whole again--love. As they're planning their wedding and new life together,
Jess receives shocking news: her husband is alive, under the
care of a young Afghani woman hiding him from the Taliban.
Even as he sees their happily-ever-after slip away, Ty
arranges for the One Eyed Jacks and Black Ops, Inc. teams to
make a daring and dangerous rescue mission to bring Jeff
home. The hardest thing Ty or Jess has ever done is to let
the other go. When Jeff returns to Jess, broken physically and emotionally
and with no memory of their history, they try to heal their
marriage and each other. But as time brings them together
more as friends than lovers, an unexpected development helps
them see the true way home, to the people they love.
ExcerptPROLOGUEAfghanistan July It wasn't the memory he would have chosen — not when he
couldn't even remember his own name — but he knew that he
used to have nightmares about vampires. Hiding under his
bed and in dark closets. Swooping down on their Dracula
wings, sinking their fangs into his neck and sucking out his
blood. How ironic, then, that he'd become a vampire of sorts: a
creature who lived in the night, hid from the light, and
sucked sustenance as though it were blood from a young
Afghani woman who despised him but wouldn't let him die.
She brought him food, water and medicine. And opiates that
she liberally laced in all three. He watched her now through an opiate induced haze,
physically incapacitated and totally dependent on her. He
knew that her name was Rabia and that she could ill afford
the things she brought for him. He also knew that if he were
caught while she harbored the escaped American soldier a
horde of Taliban warlords were searching for, not only would
he be tortured, interrogated and finally executed, so would
she. So he didn't know why she continued to help him, but he had
no option but to accept it. Just as he had no choice but to
believe what she'd told him in heavily accented English
about who he was … because he didn't remember. He didn't
remember being an American soldier, or what had happened to
him, or how he'd escaped from the Taliban and ended up here. The panic and anguish that stalked him whenever the opiates
wore off were as huge and dark as the cave where she hid
him. So he gladly relinquished both to the apathy induced by
the poppy. Apathy was painless. Apathy made it tolerable to
know that weeks, maybe months of his life were gone. His
memories … gone.
Only the vampire dreams remained of who he'd been. And only
the woman kept him alive. He studied her now as she prepared his meal in the dim light
of an oil lamp, in a silence that embodied their uneasy and
unnatural bond as shifting shadows danced along the curved
rock wall and dust swept into the cave on a wind that never
quit blowing. He knew scattered words in Pashtu but didn't
know why he knew them. She had a passing command of English
but rarely chose to use it. More irony that she represented
the one constant in a life that had been reduced to pain,
fear and the vertigo that crippled him even more than the
opiates. And he didn't know whether to thank her for
keeping him alive, or hate her. Moving his head slowly to avoid triggering another vertigo
attack, he pulled the ragged blanket around him against the
chill of the cave floor. Because he was too weak to feed himself, he watched her eyes
as she offered spoonfuls of lukewarm soup. He couldn't see
her features beneath the dark scarf she wore over her head
and wrapped around her neck to cover her face. He could only
see those eyes, onyx black, winter cold and void of any
emotion but weary disdain. It had been the same thing every day for twenty-three days.
He'd used a small pebble to scratch a mark on the rock wall
every day since he'd regained consciousness. She would
appear wearing dark, baggy trousers beneath an encompassing
scarf or burqa that covered her from head to knees
completely hiding her body beneath yards of coarse, draping
cotton. The scent of the summer heat and the scorch of the
sun that she brought with her were reminders that a world
existed outside this cave. A world that wasn't dank and
dark and cold. A world that was hostile and foreign and
where, she assured him, he was not safe. For twenty-three days she had been the only soul he'd seen
and she had yet to look him directly in the eye. He
wouldn't recognize her if he saw her on the street. Not
that he would ever leave here. If the pain and the vertigo
didn't keep him flat on his back, the ankle shackle that
chained him to the rock wall would. And then there was the
poppy. Who knew how deeply he'd been dragged down that
rabbit hole? Some days — the lucid ones, when he couldn't fight the
fear
— he would lie here shivering and wish for death.
When pain
ripped through his head, when the dizziness became so
crippling it reduced him to lying rigidly still, hugging the
rock floor in a desperate and futile attempt to stop the
nausea, that's when despair crushed him. And he would beg
her to let him die. Always, she refused. She continued to risk all to make
certain he stayed alive and he had no idea why.
He knew only that every time she appeared on quiet feet and
condemning silence, he felt both shame and gratitude because
she hadn't forgotten him — the way he'd forgotten
everything
but the need to leave this place that even God had forsaken
and find his way back home. If only he knew where home was.
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