AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Prologue
A DO NOT DISTURB tag hangs on the door. The watch on Carol Mesa’s wrist reads one p.m. The fifth floor of the Belmond Hotel has nearly emptied. Checkout was at eleven, and Carol’s roster does not show the guest in the presidential suite as having late checkout.
More than likely, the tag was an oversight, just a missed detail on the way out the door. Carol decides to call down to the front desk, just to be sure. Guests don’t appreciate being caught off guard, and she isn’t particularly fond of it either. After twenty years in hospitality, few things still surprise her, but this isn’t the point. One complaint to management can lower her star rating, and Carol prides herself on quality.
Once, twice, three raps. She knocks at the door. “Housekeeping.”
Carol listens for signs of life in the room. She waits. She looks for the shifting of light, searches for movement beneath the door. Carol sees nothing, hears nothing. At her feet, the complimentary newspaper has been left untouched, serving as further confirmation that its occupant was likely in a hurry to exit and simply forgot to remove the door tag.
She takes a deep breath in and lets it out. Everyone is in a hurry these days, Carol included. She checks her watch, her roster, and then phones the front desk once more. As it is, she doesn’t have much time to put the remaining rooms in shape before the influx of new guests arrive in a few hours. This is why, on the fifth ring, she hangs up and makes the decision to leave the suite for last.
At approximately one-thirty, she calls down to the front desk again. Management is adamant that hospitality report guests who straggle, this way they can charge them. On the third ring, an unfamiliar voice picks up. The trainee assures Carol the room should be empty.
Once again, she knocks on the door. She calls out, “Housekeeping,” according to protocol.
When no response comes, she grabs cleaning supplies from her cart, swipes her fob across the reader on the door, and enters the suite. At first glance, Room 553 is like any of the other dozen rooms she’s serviced already: dark, stuffy, and unkempt.
It isn’t until she’s halfway into the living area of the suite, as she moves to open the curtains, that a shadow causes her to stop in her tracks.
When she jerks back, Carol realizes the shadow is her own. Sighing, she makes the sign of the cross and proceeds into the room, where she yanks open the curtains and floods the room with light.
A few more steps forward and she pauses again. She narrows her gaze, slipping the glasses that hang around her neck onto her face. She wasn’t wrong to be concerned about the sign on the door. Someone is in the bed.
Carol considers that a joke has been pulled on her. She’s seen this before—pillows placed just right, made to look like someone is sleeping under the covers. She calls out. “Sir? Ma’am? Housekeeping.”
However, as she nears the entryway to the bedroom, she quickly realizes it isn’t a joke. Belongings are scattered everywhere, and furniture is overturned. Silently, she curses the universe for putting her in this situation. This is not the first time she’s had to rouse a hungover or jet-lagged guest. Dealing with people is Carol’s least favorite
part of the job. Two nightmarish shifts at the front desk taught her that much. She vowed she’d never go back.
“Housekeeping,” she says once more, this time clearing her throat afterward for added effect. For a second, she debates calling security, or perhaps management, letting them deal with the mess. For the sake of time, and self-sufficiency, she edges toward the balcony, holding her breath. Before she loses her nerve, she peels back the blackout curtains.
As gray light floods in, and the room comes into focus, her hands fly to her open mouth. They manage to stifle the scream. Almost.
There’s no mistaking that something very bad has happened in Room 553.
There’s the body, of course. But there are other clues, as well. Carol Mesa has seen many strange things while cleaning hotel rooms over the years. But never anything like this.
Chapter One
Dr. Max Hastings
BEFORE
“Is it bad?”
“No.”
“Did I hurt you?” she asked. Or maybe she said, “Does it hurt?” I can’t recall which. Either way, it never occurred to me to lie. I shook my head.
“Are you angry with me?”
“No.”
At the time, this was true. There in that hotel room, everything was true. My thoughts weren’t propelling me too far into the future. I wasn’t concerned that her questions might one day become an entity of their own. I wasn’t worried that this interaction might come to mean something very different in time. You see, I wasn’t bothered with needing to understand. I was, to put it another way, standing where my feet were planted.
“Are you sure?”
I’m fairly sure I hadn’t responded. The truth is, I was only half-listening. Warm heat, along with the sting that comes with the breaking of skin, had my attention. Blood beaded at my neck, slowly at first, and then more quickly, finding its way to the surface. I was dabbing at it with a hotel towel, when Laurel reloaded and took aim, firing her next question. Not that I can recall exactly what that question was. I had been thinking about how the hotel staff would wash the blood out. The answer of course, I knew: Baking soda. Mix two parts water and one part baking soda into a paste, apply and let set before scraping off and laundering as usual. Great for organic stains like blood and sweat, as well as materials with a strong smell. White vinegar also worked well: blend vinegar and water and let stained items soak in cold water for up to thirty minutes.
“Max, darling,” Laurel purred. “Talk to me.”
My brow furrowed as I surveyed my neck in the mirror. The bite was turning out to be less conspicuous than I’d hoped. I checked the time. Sweat ran down the length of my spine. It was hot, and I needed a shower. Since the start of summer, Central Texas had endured record-breaking temperatures. That day had been the hottest day so far— stifling, muggy, and suffocating. The heat could be felt even inside of the hotel; it found us in Room 553, like a fever. It was unbearable. Relentless. It permeated through the walls as though it were a part of them. In turn, it became a part of us.
Of course, it didn’t help that Laurel liked to keep the balcony door ajar. She said she appreciated the freedom of being completely there in that room and still having one foot tethered to the outside world.
Eventually, when the bleeding seemed to slow, I turned to her. She was still lying on the ravaged bed, arms propped behind her, her thighs slightly spread. I noticed a thread of semen seeping from the light patch of hair between her legs. Endless legs. She considered me lazily before her gaze moved to the ceiling and then out toward the balcony.
At once, her expression turned pensive. Perhaps she took my silence for anger, but in truth, in so far as I can remember, it was anything but.
To be frank, it had not occurred to me to be mad at Laurel for biting me. That was a part of it, like everything else. And in any case, as I said, I was preoccupied. I was doing what I always did after such encounters: fussing with things, plotting my escape, wondering what was for dinner. I was pondering traffic, and the quickest route out of that room without seeming impolite, ungracious, or worst still, indifferent.
There are a lot of things a woman permits a man to be. Indifferent is not one of them. Anyway, I was too hot, too spent, too completely satisfied to have been indifferent.
Laurel glanced my way and motioned toward the towel I held at my neck. “Do you think your wife will ask?”
I shrugged and turned back to the mirror to reassess the damage.
“Does she ever ask?”
“No.”
