Stolen in the Night Read Free Page A

bear for him to be mad at her. She had to make
     him understand. Her voice was pleading. “Dad, I had to do what he said. He told me
     to keep quiet after he left, or…”
    “What, Tess?” he cried. “What?”
    Tess hung her head. Her voice was a whisper. “Or he was going to kill her.”

CHAPTER 2
    Twenty Years Later
    “ E rny,” Tess called out, standing hands on hips in the doorway of her son’s room, which
     looked like it had been sacked and pillaged. “Answer me when I speak to you.”
    Erny, a wiry ten-year-old with shiny black eyes, brown skin, and uncombed, curly black
     hair, clambered up the stairs of the town house. “The taxi’s here,” he announced.
    “What happened to your room?” Tess demanded.
    “I was packing,” he explained. “Come on, Ma, we have to go.”
    Tess shook her head and then closed the door on the catastrophe that was Erny’s bedroom.
     “When we get back, you’re going to have to clean that mess up.”
    Erny was jiggling with pent-up energy. “I will, I will. Come on, we’ll miss the plane.”
    “We’re not going to miss the plane,” Tess said calmly, although she felt half-sick
     and her stomach was in a knot. “Where’s your bag?”
    “Downstairs.”
    “Okay, put your sweatshirt on and tell the taxi driver to wait. I’ll be right there.”
    Erny descended the staircase two steps at a time. Tess took a last look in her bedroom.
     Her gaze fell on the framed photo on her bureau top. It was a snapshot of a blonde
     girl with braces and sweet, dreamy blue eyes, intently brushing out her long hair.
     Her shadow loomed large behind her in the lantern light. Tess kissed her own index
     finger and gently pressed her fingertip to the cheek of the girl in the photo. Then
     she turned away, pulled out the handle on her bag, and rolled the suitcase to the
     top of the stairs. She picked it up and carried it down. Erny was leaning out the
     front door, pleading for the taxi driver to wait for them.
    Their cat, Sosa, named after one of the baseball players Erny idolized, peered out
     at them from under the living room sofa. “Say good-bye to Sosa,” said Tess. “He’s
     under the couch.”
    As Tess pulled her jacket from the hall closet, she heard Erny flopping down on the
     living room rug, crooning to Sosa and promising him that he would be well cared for
     by Erny’s best friend, Jonah. Jonah was the son of Tess’s best friend, Becca, and
     Becca’s husband, Wade Maitland. The Maitlands lived three blocks away from them in
     their Georgetown neighborhood. Wade was an executive producer on Tess’s documentary
     team and Tess was the one who had introduced him to her childhood friend, Rebecca.
     They fell in love almost at once, and ever since Tess was always credited with being
     a matchmaker. The two women loved the fact that their sons got along so well. It gave
     their old friendship a brand-new dimension. It was good, Tess thought, to have friends
     like that to rely on. Especially for this trip, when she felt unusually fragile and
     worried.
    “Everything will be fine,” Tess called out to Erny. She repeated those words to herself
     silently, like a mantra. As if by insisting on it, she could convince herself that
     this was just an ordinary trip to see her family. Everything will be fine.
    Tess checked herself in the hallway mirror. Her shiny, brunette hair parted naturally
     a little off center and fell to her shoulders around her oval face and dark brown
     eyes. She had a creamy complexion, high, healthy color, and deep, comma-shaped dimples
     in each cheek that showed at the slightest hint of a smile. A friend once told her
     that men made monkeys of themselves trying to make Tess laugh just so they could see
     those dimples. Tess had denied it, but she suspected it was true. Today, as was her
     habit, she wore a minimum of makeup. She inspected her outfit, wondering if her silk
     shirt and tweed hacking jacket would be warm enough for late October in New