Excerpt from Big Time by Ben H. Winters, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The driver guided the SUV through a series of turns. It was getting darker outside, but Allie felt like they were still going south, south and west, skirting Philadelphia. She thought she could make out the tops of the bridges that connected New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

What if they were going into the woods? Weren't there all those hardwood forests in the rural northern part of Maryland, just over the state line? That's what they do, isn't it, when they're going to kill you? Drive you over the state line and into the woods.

Was Allie going to cry again? Was she starting to cry? She moaned softly, tilted her head up, working overtime to keep from crying. Working as hard as she could.

"Please," she said. "Please don't kill me. Are you going to kill me?"

"I am not," the driver said, and Allie gasped at the shock of the woman's voice after the long miles of silence. The voice was cool and flat and uninflected, a voice to match the high black ponytail and the pale thin neck.

"I am not a killer," the driver continued. "I am a delivery person. I pick up a package and deliver it. Killing and death do not come into it, barring some problem or issue." The driver looked into the rearview mirror and made quick, grave eye contact with Allie. Her eyes were large and perfectly green, and Allie — insanely, under the circumstances — looked back at her and thought: God, she is gorgeous.

"Is there going to be some problem or issue?"

"No," said Allie. "No, no, no."

A delivery person, though, what did that mean? Who could have ordered that Allie be ... delivered? She thought again that this had to be one of those horrifying situations you see in the news, some tragic gangland mix‑up where regular people are murdered for no reason at all, and you shake your head and go, Those poor people, except now it was Allie, Allie was those poor people.

Lucas was probably getting home from work at this point, going from room to room in their little house on Myrtle Avenue, starting to freak out, calling, "Honey? Hon?" and thinking, Where is she? Where's the baby?

Oh, no. Oh God. The baby.

Rachel.

At the thought of Rachel, Allie could see her, could smell her, the sweet-soap smell of her scalp. She could feel her tiny wriggling weight.

Allie started to cry.

"Please, ma'am," she said, her voice a ragged quaver. "Miss. Please. Can you just tell me if the baby's okay?"

The driver flicked her eyes up to the rearview mirror again and gave Allie a brief questioning glance, but then she looked back at the road without answering. Allie kept talking.

"Her name is Rachel. She's fourteen months old, and she has this — she drinks a special formula, because she's got a milk allergy, and — it's serious, so —" Allie broke off. The thought of Rachel and her formula set her crying again, big hitching sobs she couldn't hold in.

They had been at the playground on Maslow. Rachel was in the sandbox. The stroller sat parked nearby, with the diaper bag hung on its handles. Allie had taken her shoes off despite the cold because Rachel liked to pack Mommy's toes in little dunes of muddy sand.

Allie was fully sobbing now, her face hot with tears.

"Oh my God, wait, though, you have to tell him," she said to the driver. She leaned forward against the seat belt. Her upper arms ached from being tied. Why hadn't she thought of this already? Why hadn't it been the first thing she'd said when the lady put her in the car?

"You have to call that man. Please can you just call him?"

"What man?" said the driver sharply.

"The — the man," stammered Allie. There had been two of them. The woman who had taken Allie and an accomplice, a broad-shouldered man in a gray overcoat and heavy black boots. "The man who took my baby."

"What baby?" the driver said, and Allie felt a terrible pain erupt from her chest and she cried out. It was like something was gnashing against itself, deep inside of her, close to her heart. Like bone grinding against bone. Startled, Allie jolted in her seat and her head banged hard against the tempered glass of the rear window.

Excerpted from Big Time by Ben H. Winters. Copyright © 2024 by Ben H. Winters. Excerpted by permission of Mulholland. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.