The Taken Read Online Free PDF

cleared her throat, which had tightened in a painful knot, and took a sip of her cooling tea. “She could tell a story with her photos, or even alter one with a camera angle alone. She was a college dropout, but smart. Edgy, liked to push people’s buttons. And of course, she was a billy, like me.”
    “Billy?” Hitchens asked, glancing at Dennis and back to Kit.
    “Rockabilly,” Dennis answered with a small smile, and Kit flashed back on an image of desert sun glinting off the pomade in his jet hair, ciggies tucked in his shirtsleeve, and creepers crossed at the ankles as he leaned against a ’sixty Starliner. It’d been a while since she’d seen him that way, but she smiled, too.
    “I’ve heard of it.” Hitchens leaned against the wall. His forearms looked like black logs folded across his chest. “You dress up like you’re stuck in the fifties. Took ‘Let’s Do the Time Warp’ literally.”
    “It’s not just music or dress,” Kit explained, though Hitchens’s pinched expression told her she needn’t bother. She gave Dennis a look to let him know she was taking one for the team—rockabilly didn’t fit in any better with life on the force than it did in a federal courtroom. Fortunately, Kit didn’t have to worry about either, as a reporter. “It’s vintage cars, hot rods. Pinup girls. Mid-mod home décor. Cigarettes. It’s a way of living.”
    It was a celebration of the senses, and it married well with Kit’s theory that life was about the details. She was ever aware of what she put on her body, how she wore her hair, how she crafted her cocktails. Despite the effort, or because of it, Kit had only grown more fond of rockabilly after a decade-long involvement. In a world increasingly guided by touch screens, sometimes it seemed nothing touched the mainstream populace at all.
    “It’s a subculture,” Dennis added.
    “A lifestyle,” corrected Kit, again pulling out her gold cigarette case.
    “You can’t smoke in here,” said Hitchens. Dennis looked pained, but nodded. Kit returned the case to her purse, a square, red Lucite clutch that Hitchens now eyed suspiciously, like it was a piece of a puzzle he was still trying to fit.
    “Let me get this straight. Your friend was involved in a subculture that essentially lives in the past? So maybe it was one of these weirdoes who offed her.”
    Dennis stiffened, but didn’t say anything.
    Kit was careful to move nothing but her eyes. “My friends and I get off on American cars, swing music, and nautical-themed tattoos. We’re not murderers.”
    Hitchens huffed. “It still sounds weird.”
    “Probably because it demands more of you than plopping down in a La-Z-Boy, sticking your hand down your pants, and plugging into someone else’s reality.”
    “O-kay,” Dennis said loudly, straightening as quickly as Hitchens. Kit just leaned back and crossed her legs. “So we’ve defined Nicole’s lifestyle as rockabilly. Boyfriends?”
    “Plenty,” Kit answered, then looked at Hitchens. “All weirdoes.”
    “And when did you last see her alive?”
    “Twelve thirty. There’s a café attached to the motel. Just a hash house serving grease and caffeine to overtired truckers. She did a round there to attract our contact’s attention, as agreed, then crossed the gravel lot and went up the motel stairs.”
    She’d dressed in conventional hooker wear, Kit remembered—too short, too low, too tight—and had shot Kit a pained grimace as she fought the skirt for movement, hating that such a junky item of clothing would even touch her body. Not yet knowing she would die in it.
    “She didn’t take her camera with her? We didn’t find one at the scene.”
    “She left it in my car. It’s hard to fit a Nikon D3 in a tube top, and she didn’t want to scare away our source. She took my notebook instead.”
    The cops looked at each other.
    “I could use it back,” Kit tried.
    “Evidence,” Dennis replied, though there was a strange frown marring