Free Mosaic Mayhem (Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mini-Mystery) by Lois Winston Page B

garage and move my studio to my dingy, unheated basement. Little did I know at the time that my new tenant, award-winning photo-journalist and possible spy (although he vehemently denies the latter) Zachary Barnes, would segue from renter to lover.
    Zack looks like his DNA cavorted in the gene pools of George Clooney, Pierce Brosnan, Patrick Dempsey, and Antonio Bandares. What he sees in me, I’ll never know, and yet here we are—a couple. I’m not complaining.
    I’d spent most of the summer working a second job every weekend, and I was beyond exhausted. So when Zack invited me to tag along with him while he photographed architect Antoni Gaudi’s Parc Güell for a National Geographic spread, I cashed in some of my comp time and packed a bag.
    We arrived in Barcelona early in the morning, dropped our luggage at a hotel off Plaça de Catalunya, and headed to the park, a fairytale inspired masterpiece that resembled a miniature city. While Zack took a meeting with the director in Torre Rosa, the park’s museum and former Gaudi home, I wandered the enchanting grounds and buildings, snapping photos of the whimsical Hansel and Gretel gatehouses, the Sala Hipostila marketplace with its multi-domed ceiling, and the main terrace, ringed with an intricately decorated serpentine bench—all embellished with Gaudi’s trademark mosaics. I planned to use the photos as part of a feature on mosaic art for a future issue of American Woman , the magazine where I worked.
    Afterwards, I set off on one of the many trails weaving through nearly forty acres of steep hillside in order to enjoy some of the spectacular views of the city spread out below. I was in a secluded area with no one else around when a bear of a man with a short dark beard that did little to hide his acne scarred cheeks stepped from the wooded area onto the path in front of me. Like so many other men on the streets of Barcelona, he wore a red and gold soccer jersey, but unlike all the others, this guy accessorized his outfit with a deadly weapon.
    A gasp froze in my throat.
    He might as well have been speaking Swahili for all the good my Sesame Street Spanish did me. Zack had warned me that pickpockets trolled the streets of Barcelona, preying on hapless tourists. He hadn’t mentioned anything about armed gunmen, but common sense told me I was being robbed.
    “Take it,” I said, dropping my handbag at his feet. But this was no robbery. He didn’t scoop up my bag and run. Instead, he grabbed both the bag and my arm.
    With the gun jabbing me in the ribs, he wrapped his other arm tightly around my shoulders and forced me back down the path and across the courtyard filled with oblivious tourists who ignored me as I tried to make eye contact and silently mouthed, “Help me.”
    As he led me through the main gates onto the street, several self-defense options came to mind—stamping my heel into his instep, twisting my body to knee him in the groin, screaming at the top of my lungs. Preferably all three at once. The gun barrel poking my midsection forced me to discount all of them, even after he marched me down a deserted alley, zip-tied my hands behind my back, placed a sack over my head, and shoved me into the back of a mud-spattered black panel truck.
    Better alive and kidnapped than bleeding out on the street, I figured. But why me? I had no money, no political connections that might figure into the Catalan separatist movement. Had he wanted to rape or murder me, he could have pulled me into the woods back at the park. No one would have seen or heard anything. I don’t know whether it was intuition or past experience, but something told me I didn’t need to fear for my life.
    After a bruise-inducing ride around sharp turns, the truck finally came to a stop a few minutes later. My abductor hauled me out and dragged me up a flight of steps into a building. When he yanked the sack off my head, I found myself standing in front of an ornately carved massive desk in a room