The guests stood around plucking olives and cheese from the charcuterie. Alfonso seemed invigorated by the coffee or alcohol. Or both. When Conrad and Tyler came back from the solarium, Alfie elbowed Burke.

  “Anything scheduled for the afternoon, Corn Nads?” Alfie said a little too loudly. His eyes shone.

  Burke grimaced at the nickname, but he quickly recomposed himself. The sour expression vanished behind his usual beatific smile.

  “No, nothing until dinner this evening. Just a chance for everyone to rest up after the morning,” Burke replied.

  “How about another round?” Jonathan asked. His eyes darted around to the other guests, trying to garner support.

  “Haven’t you had enough to drink?” Sophie asked, holding her cocktail close to her lips.

  “You know what I mean. Hide and seek.”

  It seemed childish the night before. Annoying, like the guy who brought Monopoly to a get-together with friends. But now, Rozie shivered at the suggestion.

  And the men. Their eagerness tipped over into enthusiasm, eyes a little too wide, darting around hungrily. Dom squeezed her arm. He wore the same look when a football game was about to begin.

  “What do you say? We can stick together.”

  “I was looking forward to getting off my feet for a while.”

  “Oh, come on, sweetie, just a couple of rounds, then you can rest until dinner.” A silken voice said behind her. Rozie spun around to see Sara approaching. The collar of her coverup formed an open V down to the belt tied around her waist, exposing a long ribbon of toned skin. Her breasts swayed with each step. She hadn’t changed before coming in from the pool. Rozie swallowed down her anxiety and glanced at Dom, but fortunately, his focus clung to the crowd, willing a consensus to form.

  Conrad turned his palms up with a smile. “I’m fine with it. The kitchen is off-limits. Chef is already preparing dinner. Any unlocked room is fair game.”

  “Alfie’s it,” Dom said at her shoulder. He pulled Rozie closer and wrapped an arm around her waist. She sighed.

  “Ya’ll have thirty minutes!” Alfonso said as he dashed out of the dining room, boat shoes flapping on the floorboards.

  Rozie stumbled as Dominic pulled her out of the hall. He held her up until she regained her footing. He looked down at her, eyes gleaming.

  The sun had drifted to the other side of the house since she had fled their room. Light poured in through the large stained-glass window in the middle of the main staircase. She half expected to see the image of Jesus behind the pulpit-like railing. Instead, she stared up at a cloaked figure holding up an oblong object with a thick cord wrapped around his wrist. He stood on an undulating surface crafted by the artisans using smaller and smaller pieces of colorful glass. Like a rug or tapestry receding into eternity.

  It dazzled her eyes as Dom pulled her through the beam of light. She blinked away the afterimage as they passed the reception desk toward the first floor of the guest room wing.

  Their footsteps faded to nothing on the carpet. Dom stalked forward without slowing. As they neared the end of the hall, he grabbed a door handle. Locked. He darted to the next. He pushed it open and stepped to the side, ushering Rozie in as she caught up. She saw a dull metal plaque with the number one-fifty-three emblazoned on the surface.

  It surprised Rozie to see a perfectly normal hotel-style room. The same carpet from the hall lined the floor. An unremarkable comforter enveloped a queen-sized bed with a bland, pale wood headboard affixed to the wall. A long desk doubled as a television stand, filling one wall. Rozie flipped on the light in the bathroom. Earthy gray tile covered the floor and climbed the wall inside the stand-up shower, behind full-length sliding glass doors. Judging by the lack of any expression, the room didn’t faze Dom, a mere pause before he wrapped his arms around his wife from behind. His hands crept beneath her cardigan, then beneath the bottom hem of her shirt. The pads of his fingers swept over the skin of her abdomen. Then higher, until his fingertips slid under the edge of her bra. Her heart fluttered.She was confident that the instances of silky fabric over perfect womanly figures were to blame for his energy but grateful that he kept his focus on her.

  The last eight months were hit and miss, and mostly miss. The first trimester was hell. She couldn’t stomach anything nutritious, and she gave up on anything expensive out of fear of watching it circle the toilet bowl a few minutes later. She filled out by the second trimester, leaving her self-conscious and unreceptive. And then, between their jobs, they missed each other’s windows constantly. They went back and forth—emotionally unavailable or too tired. He was getting antsy, but she was just so pregnant. Dom was good-natured about it when she turned him down. A conciliatory massage, maybe more.

  Her skin stung from the bug spray on his face as his lips lit upon her neck. A stale smokiness assailed her nostrils. Digits traced her skin beneath the elastic band of her sweatpants. Lower. She clamped down on a moan.

  “Do you really want Alfie walking in on us?” She said. Rozie hated the words the moment they left her mouth.

  Dom pressed his body against hers, vocalized his lament in his own groan. A minute passed as his hands roamed.

  “Fine. Next time, though,” he said, finally.

  His voice was breathy, and his hands continued to swirl over her skin. He sighed for dramatic effect and peeled himself off of her. His eyes swam for a second as they found their focus on her face. She worried about the chemicals running through his system but settled on feeling grateful that the men all survived their excursion.

  “Please don’t mix alcohol, pot, and firearms again.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  He grunted a laugh, a burst of a sound, as he rubbed his eyes.

  “What do you think?”

  When he opened the cabinet doors, he jutted a head toward the crawlspace inside.

  “Too small. I don’t know how I’ll get in. Or out.”

  Rozie sat on the bed. The mattress felt firm beneath a layer of spongy foam. Her mind went to the lumpy bed in their room with human-shaped indentations. She fell back on top of the covers, arms flung wide.

  “We need one of these new rooms.” She said to Dom’s back. He bent over, studying the cabinet beneath the TV.

  “It’s open in here. Just one long open space.” He dislodged the middle shelf and placed it at the bottom. He stuck his head into the black cavity and then looked back at Rozie. She could see his mind working, calculating her size to the interior of the cabinet.

  “No, Dominic, I’m not crawling in there.”

  He shrugged and bounded to the closet door. He stepped inside, and Rozie heard metal sliding on metal.

  Dom stuck his head through the door. “How about hiding behind some bathrobes?”

  “Beats hiding under the covers.”

  Rozie rolled to her side, allowing momentum to carry her to her feet. Dominic tugged the terry-cloth garments, spreading them open on the hangers, turning them to better conceal the space behind. He let Rozie pass. The closet was wider than its depth. Hangers dangled from two bars on opposite sides. One side was deeper than the other, made to accommodate a suitcase on a luggage rack. Rozie squeezed past her husband and fluffed the bathrobes around herself. Dom stepped back and flipped off the light.

  He caught her expression.

  “Gotta turn out the lights. Can’t just announce that we’re in here.”

  Before she could respond, the door clicked shut, plunging her into darkness. Or so she thought. Dom flipped off the bedroom light, killing the light that leaked in beneath the closet door. Rozie put her back to wall, desperate something solid in the blackness that engulfed her.

  Dom’s feet padded over the carpet. The cabinet door creaked, and her husband bumped around getting into his spot under the TV. The cabinet door creaked shut.

  Rozie fished her phone out of her pocket and tapped on the flashlight. Shadows climbed to the ceiling in the greenish cone of light. The clock read 2:42. It meant nothing—she didn’t know what time Alfonso began his countdown. She counted back and guessed there were still ten minutes to go.

  “Turn out your light!”

  The heavy door muffled Dominic’s voice. She could imagine him peeking out of a crack, awaiting the seeker. She kept the light on but pressed it to her chest.

  Feet pounded down the hallway above. The sound drummed through the rafters and plaster. They slowed. Nearby, in the room above, or next to it, wood creaked. A closet door slammed shut. Rozie flinched at the sound. She heard a giggle. . Silence followed, interrupted by the small thuds of elbows or knees in the small space above. The giggle. A gasp. A moan. Creaking.

  “Dammit, Jon!” Dom yelled from the bedroom.

  Another giggle followed, then silence, until smaller noises resumed. , Rozie thought. She didn’t know Dominic’s friends well enough.

  Feet raced down the hall and back. Another door. But the noises above stopped. Rozie breathed a sigh of relief. The minutes crept on. 3:01. Alfonso must have been searching, probably in this hall with all the racket going on.

  After a few minutes passed, Rozie realized everything had ceased. The sounds above. Everything within the hall. Even her own breathing seemed shrouded in a haze of silence. Instinctively, she pressed her phone’s light into her palm, smothering its meager beam.

  Somewhere overhead, the sun shone down, filtered through gray clouds, into an ancient mansion and its prismatic windows.

  Feet thumped on the carpeted floor in the hall. It resonated through the beams in the floor and up the walls. Another thud, closer now, followed by the creak of the walls, as though the beams bore the passing weight of a staggering drunk. Something slid along the plastered beams, echoing loudly through the walls that surrounded Rozie.

  Feet pattered upstairs. A thud. A door flung open, slamming into the stop that protected the wall. Willow shrieked, and fortunately, Jonathan’s voice carried down indistinctly.

  A series of footsteps bounded closer in the hall. Upstairs, the hotel doors opened, flung wide, voices fluttered down and faded. Silence.

  Rozie swapped hands and planted a thumb over the light. She reached into the darkness and found the doorknob, rotated it, little by little, until the mechanism stopped. Rozie stepped through the robes and pushed against the closet door.

  Gray light, trickling through the edges of the blackout curtain, seeped into the hiding place. She couldn’t see the console that concealed her husband, but she could see the hotel door. The old blackened brass knob jostled. And rotated. Then stopped.

  Rozie’s stomach churned.

  She blinked, and when she opened her eyes, the door cracked open. The knob clacked with a metallic sound as the hand released it.

  Rozie edged forward to peer out, to see if Dom still watched from his hiding place. Even though Dom hid less than ten feet away behind cabinet doors, she felt a chill. Isolation. Fear.

  Rozie pulled the closet door shut again. Her heart thundered down into her hand as she slowly released the knob. She retreated behind the robes. Her knees wobbled, and she nearly fell to the floor. Her hand shot out to the wall with a dull thump. At her own noise, she dropped to the floor. Just outside her hiding place, the front door swung open, bumping against the doorstop. Then, with a long whine of the hinges, it shut again. With animal instinct, her ears turned toward the sound, and she held her breath.

  She felt her pulse rising in her neck. Veins vibrated on her temples, and her hands shook. Deep within the mansion, a male voice bellowed and transformed into laughter.

  Metal clacked—a hand resting on the closet doorknob. Rozie’s skin crawled, hair standing on end. Breathing, snuffling at the edge of the closed door.

  “Shit!” Dom whimpered outside.

  The door creaked open. Rozie saw the gray light from the window splash against the carpeted floor inches from her feet. She froze. She stared at the shadow that broke the stream of light, swaying from side to side. Rough skin scraped against the wood. Just above her eye level, in a gap between the white terrycloth robes, she saw long pale fingers grip the edge of the door. They curled. Yellow nails biting into the solid wood.

  A scream threatened to break through her clenched teeth. She felt eyes peering into the black closet. Watching. Waiting for movement—a sign. She thought. Her muscles burned. Little Lowry flew into a fit, kicking and punching. He landed a blow on her tense diaphragm, and a burst of air escaped her lips. The door flung wide, slamming into the wall. Rozie dropped her phone and clapped her hands over her eyes.

  Feet pounded down the stairs at the end of the hall, mingling with the throb in her ears. The hotel door flew open, and the light from the hall gushed into the room. The hangers screeched apart. Rozie looked up in horror.

  Alfonso Fonseca loomed over the pregnant woman, a stupid, smug grin smeared across his intoxicated face.

  “Gotcha!”

  He vanished as quickly as he had appeared. Rozie collapsed onto the floor of the closet. Fear and tension exploded out of her mouth in a single soulful sob. Alfie thundered about the room. The swish of fabric, the shower door booming as he yanked it open. Then the cabinet doors. Laughter.

  “How’d you get in there, Dom?”

  There was no reply. Dom grunted as he pulled himself out of his hiding place. Alfie bounded back out of the hotel room without another word.

  Rozie lay huddled on the closet floor. Hands clasped against her mouth, she stifled all the other sounds that threatened to come spilling out. She saw the light dim against her shut eyelids, felt Dom standing over her looking down. He dropped to his knees and pulled her onto his lap.

  He said nothing. A thousand questions raced through Rozie’s mind, but she let her husband hold her. She stared unseeing at the beam of light shining up from her phone on the closet floor.