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  ROOM 553: A Psychological Thriller

  Britney King

  WWW.BRITNEYKING.COM

  Copyright

  ROOM 553 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, images, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author's intellectual property. No part of this publication may be used, shared or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact http://britneyking.com/contact/

  Thank you for your support of the author's rights.

  Hot Banana Press

  Cover Design by Britney King LLC

  Cover Image by Britney King LLC

  Photo by Lalesh Aldarwish

  Copy Editing by Librum Artis Editorial Service

  Proofread by Proofreading by the Page

  Copyright © 2019 by Britney King LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  First Edition: 2019

  ISBN 13: 9781073687985

  britneyking.com

  For Monica, who makes random women appear. You’re better than superwoman.

  Contents

  ROOM 553

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Epilogue

  A note from Britney

  Also by Britney King

  Sneak Peek: The Social Affair

  The Social Affair

  Prologue

  ROOM 553

  Britney King

  “The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

  Foreword

  Take my advice, if you’re reading this: Quit while you’re ahead. Put it down. Walk away. A few chapters in and you’ll wish you had. It won’t be long now. Save yourself. It’s not too late. Get out while you can.

  Surely, there is something better you could be doing. Why bother with this? You could just as easily be scrolling social media. Netflix and binge, or Netflix and chill—whatever the cool kids are calling it these days—you could do that. Treat yourself to a latte. Call your mom. Mow your lawn. Take one of those master classes on the internet. You know, the ones taught by celebrities? I hear they’re good.

  You could make something out of yourself.

  It’s not like you’re getting any younger.

  What happens here is just going to piss you off. Trust me, it only goes downhill from there.

  Really. If you can do anything else, do that.

  This is not a joke. It’s not some reverse psychology gimmick. What you’re getting is a terrible story about a highly educated, very stupid man. A terrible, pretty much true-life story about people you’d never want to meet. If you decide to continue on, do so at your own risk.

  But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  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.”

  “Oh…Max.” She sighed heavily. “You have the most beautiful shoulders I’ve ever seen.”

  My gaze locked on hers in the mirror. I’m certain I smiled.

  “What will you say if she does?”

  “That I nicked myself while shaving.”

  Her questions hardly mattered. We were speaking lazily, as one does after making love, bodies spent, minds slightly drunk. This is not to say I would consider what we’d just done making love. With Laurel, what happened between those walls was carnal, primal. Sex without restriction. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  I lived a different life in that room. In all of them, actually. Living was easy. It was no secret that Room 553 was my favorite. I always requested it, saying it was on account of the balcony. Laurel, on occasion, liked to tease me about this. She said a room was a room was a room.

  Not to me it wasn’t.

  Perhaps because it was the first, perhaps because it started with an argument. The kind without words. The kind Laurel and I had a knack for.

  It was an afterthought that wasn’t. That room had a certain flavor, as did what took place within it. She was different there. Freer, if it was possible—truthfully, Laurel was free just about anywhere.

  Meeting in hotel rooms had been her idea. It was nothing personal, she said. This way there would be no memories. No expectations that might have us daydreaming about places or things that might have been. She would never have to remember me in her home, she said, or her in mine, or anywhere where things seemed to really matter. The only space she cared to occupy was my mind, she said. For her, that was enough.

  “Do you love me, Max?”

  Sometimes, though, she liked to test me.

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t know?”

  My eyes grazed over her body. Was it love? I don’t know. I only know I felt at ease. There was a certain kind of satisfaction in seeing your sweat mixed with that of your lover’s, something about not knowing whose was whose, what was what, where you began and she ended. If only for the moment.

  Thoughts like those had been going on in my mind.

  “Could you see yourself with me?”

  I barely registered her words. So, I really can’t recall what I said. It didn’t help that she was already in the process of luring me back into the bed, both with her eyes and her naked body, her spread legs, her siren’s song.

  How could I have known that I would relive this scene— conjure this exact moment—hundreds, maybe even thousands of times afterward, and each time from a different angle, from another point of view. For weeks I would struggle to recall the details, and not always of my own free will. More often, others would demand it of me.

  Chapter Two

  Laurel Dunaway

  Journal Entry

  I used to think people who kept journals were pretentious. That was before. I suppose you could say things have evolved. Or rather, I have evolved. Memory is a tricky thing. It’s all about perception, and you have to be careful. Perception can be wrong.

  It’s scary how life has a way of showing you that everything you believed to be true might actually, in essence, be false. The second your life exceeds your wildest dreams, the knife appears at your back.

  First, he told me a lie. And then, more lies. A shit-ton of lies. But that wasn’t the problem. Lies are normal, when you’re a womanizer. The problem was that it was the wrong kind of lie. That’s why I have to keep track of them. Hence this journal. br />
  Usually, a person’s lies conceal something, and/or protect the person.

  Sometimes, a person’s lies do both. But not these lies. They didn’t do either one. They did the opposite. They exposed him.

  He might have thought they’d protect him. They didn’t. The lies made things more dangerous. Not just dangerous for him—dangerous for me, too. Which made me wonder if it was an accidental lie. Maybe it was a spur-of-the-moment kind of lie. Maybe it was a lie based on opportunity. A lie of omission. Maybe he lied out of guilt. Or shame. Or insecurity. It’s hard to say.

  Then, after he lied once, he had to lie again. And the second and third and fourth and the tenth lies were told for the usual reasons. To conceal the first lie. To keep his balls in the air. Maybe that’s what it was. Maybe that’s why he lied.

  Whatever the reason, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. He could have told the truth. Even a tiny truth. He made his bed. He needed to lie in it. Now, it was my turn. It was my move. My chance to advance on the chessboard. But first, I wanted to understand why. I wanted to understand the decision behind the lies. You consider the action of a lie and you take a step back.