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

A man in a baseball cap and jacket was striding towards her on the path.

"Please." Emma tried to stop him. "Please. I need help."

The man veered past her and kept going.

"Someone. Please." Emma was breathless with terror. She had to force herself to stay standing. Her legs were like water. She couldn't think straight. What should she do? Someone had to help her; she couldn't, she couldn't think about anything.

A large middle-aged lady, laden with plastic shopping bags, slowed down to have a look.

"What's going on here?" the lady asked.

Emma almost threw herself at her.

"Please. Oh, please. Someone's taken my baby."

"Who's taken your baby?"

"The woman, she . . . Did you see them? A woman and a little boy? Did you pass them on your way up here?"

"I don't . . ." The woman hesitated. Around her, more people were stopping. People were talking, mostly in foreign languages, she couldn't understand what they were saying. One or two English phrases came through:

"Who's taken a baby?"

"That thin girl with the torn coat."

"Is that blood on her face?"

"My child has been kidnapped." Emma couldn't believe it. Why were they all just standing there? She grabbed the ­middle-aged woman by the front of her jumper.

"Call the police!" she yelled at her. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

The woman recoiled, her mouth a rectangle: What have I got myself into? Someone else said in a sharp voice to Emma: "Hey, hey, no need for that."

Emma let go of the woman. She sprinted down the street in the opposite direction from which the woman had come, trusting her that if she'd seen Ritchie on her way up she'd have said. Her breath sounded thin and whistly. Only a tiny amount of air was coming in each time. Oh God, don't black out. Oh, please, let her not black out now, there wasn't time, she had to find him before he got too far away. She was trying to look everywhere at once, at the lighted windows, the darker corners and side roads, straining to see Ritchie's tufty little head and blue fleece in all the colors and the gloom. Had Antonia's husband come? Had the two of them bundled Ritchie off together? Did Antonia even have a husband? Or a child? Or was she just some nutter who . . . Oh Jesus.

Ice.

Maybe Ritchie wasn't with Antonia at all. Maybe Antonia had got bored, and walked out of the café and left him, and someone else, some person Emma couldn't even begin to imagine, had seen him there on his own and come in and taken him.

The street disappeared. The road came and went in flashes, like the strobes at a nightclub. Then she was pushing past people, shoving them violently out of her way. She was flying down the street, spinning down side roads at random, then sprinting back up them again. She didn't know which way she was going, whether she was searching the same places over again or different ones, they all looked the same, the same people and roads and buildings. Had she missed him, gone right past him? Was she flying around in circles, not making any progress at all, while all the time he was getting further and further away?

The flashes were coming faster. She screamed his name all around her, again and again and again.

"Ritchie! Ritchie! Ritchie!"

Then she knelt in the road and shrieked, no words coming out, just sounds. Car horns blared. Through the flashing lights came voices:

"Look at her. She's not well."

"Is it drugs?"

Emma's head was full of noise. There was too much color and movement. She couldn't cope; everything was coming too fast. She couldn't think. Too many things to think about. Too urgent. Too much. She fell forward onto her hands. The road rushed at her face.

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.