Excerpt from The Stranger on the Train by Abbie Taylor, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She went to the door and yanked it open. She looked up the street and then down. Cars and buses on the main road. Some shops still open, their lights glistening on the pavement. Music thumping from one of them, an unfamiliar Eastern beat. Groups of bearded men, some wearing round, colored hats. No sign of a woman in a furry jacket pushing a buggy.

A few feet along, the street turned onto another side road. Emma went to it and looked down. Railings along the pavement, three buses in a row. Blocks of flats, a pub.

No woman with a buggy.

Trying hard not to panic, Emma hurried back to the café. This was ridiculous. They must be here! Antonia must have taken Ritchie to some other table, some section of the restaurant Emma hadn't noticed before. She really should have told her first, though. This was definitely the last straw. When she found Ritchie now, she really was just going to take him and go.

But even as she quickly examined every wall of the restaurant, and all around the counter, she knew what she'd known when she'd first walked into the place: that it was just one square room, with the window and door to the street at the front. There were no stairs, and no corner. No tables she hadn't seen. No other section to the café at all.

Emma hurtled down the passage to the toilet. She flung open the door, just in case there was a second toilet in there and she'd missed it. But there was just the one stinking room.

Hands shaking, she ran to the front of the counter.

"Excuse me," she called, her voice high-pitched. "Exc­use me."

The colored plastic strips moved. The man with the stubbly beard poked his head through.

"Did you see them?" Emma asked.

"Who?"

"My son." Emma looked past him, through the colored strips. "Are they in there? Did they go into your kitchen?"

The man began to lift his hands in incomprehension. Emma opened the flap on the counter. She ran to the doorway and shoved her way through the strips. Behind them was a steel kitchen, cluttered with pots and piles of plates and smelling of rotting food. No Ritchie. No Antonia.

"What are you doing?" The man was behind her.

Emma turned on him.

"There was a woman." She struggled to stay calm. "By the window, with my son. Did she take him? Where did they go?"

"I didn't—"

"Did she leave him on his own?" Emma was shouting now. "Did she take him, or did someone else? You must have seen something, are you blind?"

The man backed away, looking alarmed.

"I didn't see nobody," he said. "I don't know where they go."

Emma pushed past him, back to the shop. The old man by the wall was peering up at her. His eyes had a bluish film on the front.

"Did you see them?" Emma begged.

The man just gripped his cup. He was more elderly than she'd thought, shaky and vague. She couldn't tell if he even understood what she was saying.

"Call the police!" she shouted to the man at the counter. "Someone's taken my child."

The two men stared at her.

"Call the police!" Emma screamed at them, and ran out into the street.

There was still no sign. She couldn't even run—she didn't know which way to go. The street blurred; she was dizzy and sick.

"Ritchie," she called. "Ritchie."

Her throat was clicky with fright. She looked up and down again, standing on tiptoe. People everywhere, in coats and scarves and hats, but no one with a baby. Ritchie seemed to have completely vanished. Emma wanted to vomit. She tried to cross the road to the island in the middle, to get a better view of the street on both sides of the café, but there were railings everywhere, blocking her way.

"Ritchie!" she yelled. And then: "Oh God. Please. Somebody help me. My baby's been kidnapped."

Excerpted from The Stranger on the Train by Abbie Taylor. Copyright © 2014 by Abbie Taylor. Excerpted by permission of Atria/Emily Bestler Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.