Taken Read Free Page A

bed. He intended to enjoy all three as soon as possible.
    He walked across the room to throw open the windows. He was surprised to find the blinds open. The cleaning service must have forgotten to close them. He’d hired a service to come in once a month while he was gone to keep the dust under control. They’d obviously done a good job. The air didn’t smell nearly as musty as he’d anticipated, but he opened a window just the same, 10
    Barbara Freethy
    allowing the cool March breezes to blow through the room.
    He’d chosen this small house because it overlooked the Marina Green, the bay, the Marin Headlands, and most important, the Golden Gate Bridge. Bridges were his passion. He was an admitted junkie. His living room walls were covered with photographs of his favorite bridges, a few he’d had a hand in building. There was something about the massive structures that made his blood stir. He’d decided to become an engineer before he graduated from high school, and he’d gone after that career with single-minded determination. It hadn’t been easy. He’d had a lot of other distractions and responsibilities, which he’d acquired when his father had run out on the family, but that was water under the proverbial bridge, he thought with a small smile. He had the life he wanted now. That was all that mattered.
    Turning away from the view, he caught sight of his telephone answering machine. The red light was blink-ing. He pushed the button on the machine and listened as the first message played back. A woman’s voice came out of the speaker.
    “Nick, it’s Kayla. Where are you? Please call me as soon as you can.”
    Kayla? Who the hell was Kayla? The machine beeped.
    “Nick, it’s Kayla again. I don’t know what to do. The security guard found your coat and your wedding ring in a men’s room at the hotel. I’m really worried. If you wanted out, you should have told me. Please call me.”
    His coat and his wedding ring? He sure as hell didn’t have a wedding ring. She obviously had the wrong number and the wrong Nick.
    “Me again,” she said, her voice filled with panic. “I TA K E N
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    don’t know why I keep calling, except I don’t know what else to do. The police say they can’t help me because there’s no evidence anything happened to you. They think you ran out on me. I guess that’s what you did.
    Don’t you think you owe me at least an explanation? I love you, Nick.” Her voice caught on a sob. “I thought you loved me, too. It was your idea to get married so fast.”
    Nick shut off the machine, reluctant to hear more of her desperate pleas. He felt as if he had stepped into the middle of someone else’s life, and his relief at being home was tempered by the sense that something was very wrong.
    As he looked around the room, his uneasiness grew.
    Small things began to stand out: the celebrity magazines on the coffee table, the wilted roses in a vase by the window, the empty coffee mug on a side table, the throw blanket that he usually kept on his bed now resting on the arm of his brown leather couch.
    Unsettled, Nick walked into the kitchen and found a box of Lucky Charms on the counter, the kind of sugared cereal he’d never eaten in his life. In the refrigerator there was a half-open bottle of chardonnay and a carton of milk that had expired a month ago. His stomach began to churn as he considered the possibilities. Obviously someone had been in his home. The only people who had keys were his mother and the cleaning service. His mother would never leave sour milk in the refrigerator.
    His nerves began to tingle. The air was filled with vague scents he couldn’t quite place — a man’s cologne or a woman’s perfume? The silence felt thick and tense.
    He turned around, feeling as if someone were standing behind him, but there was no one there.

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    Barbara Freethy
    He picked up the phone and called the cleaning service. “This is Nick Granville,” he told the woman who answered.