The following preview of What They’re Hiding is copyright (c) 2026 by Wesley Winters. You can purchase this ebook via Godless.com, starting November 6, 2026. The paperback is also available on Amazon, with additional options to come.
Chapter 1
July – Pigeon Forge, TN
From the parking lot, he watched them go inside, talking and laughing and flirting. The bar’s island theme included large Tiki, sand-covered floors, and bamboo architecture. The lights were bright and there were tables with colorful umbrellas scattered outside as well, along the sides and rear of the noisy building. It appeared to be a very busy night full of individuals that didn’t look a day over 21. He wondered just how many of them were actually legal drinkers and not just college freshman taking advantage of the summer crowds and demand.
After spending the afternoon exploring the area, he had grown tired and more than a little annoyed with the amount of people everywhere. His lips were parched and he was hungry. He hoped this place would serve a good burger because he had beef on the brain. He wanted it juicy and a little bloody. Some potato wedges also sounded good, but mostly he wanted a hard drink to go with his meat.
Work had been slow for too long. He was in the area to chase some leads for bigger pay days than what he’d collected in recent months. The cost of rent was only climbing higher, along with everything else. To continue his lifestyle—which stretched him over several hundred miles—he needed more jobs per month than he used to. It was a frustrating pill to swallow but he was doing his best to adjust. He hated crowds like this, but Pigeon Forge was packed to the gills with opportunity, and he couldn’t be as picky these days. He needed to find at least one mark for the night before the big job he had planned later in the week.
Across from him, a group of girls were climbing out of a custom hot pink Expedition as he took another drag from his last cigarette. The girls were attractive enough, especially the brunette. And they already looked tipsy, as if they had been drinking in advance. He observed their license plate, saw that they’d come from out of state, and deduced that they were on vacation like many others. Inside, he would look for them.
But first, food. He pushed himself away from the lamp post, flicked his cigarette into the sandy gravel, and headed toward the large, oak doors set beneath a vibrant sign reading Tommy Toad’s Wild Lily Pad.
They were six shots and two drinks in when her friend Angel returned to the table with a pitcher of beer sloshing in one hand and four empty glasses in the other, pressed lip to lip between her fingers. Leanne watched her stumbling approach with bated breath, all the while expecting Angel to slip and fall before ever reaching the rest of the group.
“Why did you get that?” their friend Tara asked as Angel paused beside her crooked chair.
Angel dropped the pitcher onto the table with enough force to splash her friends, and said, “So, we don’t have to keep getting up so much!”
“Yeah, but it’s beer. You don’t mix beer and drinks,” Tara said with a playful sneer.
Leanne laughed at the girls and shook her head as they argued. Beside her, Taylor had placed a hand on Leanne’s lap. She knew what that meant. But tonight, she was only interested in a little one-on-one with a stranger. And not only a stranger, but a male stranger. Taylor would have to get over herself. She’d become pushy since their first experimentation, and Leanne wasn’t even sure if she was bisexual. She didn’t find herself attracted to Taylor or any other woman; she just happened to enjoy someone lapping between her legs. Though Taylor knew how to get her off just right, Leanne wanted the rougher feel of a man. It had been months since her last time.
Taylor nudged her and said, “We should send these two back to their rooms and continue just the two of us.”
Leanne tried not to show her annoyance by forcing an apologetic smile. “We’re just getting started. Right, girls?”
Tara and Angel turned to her with drunken grins and raised their glasses to holler in agreement.
Taylor’s mouth twisted to the side to show she was unhappy. “Party pooper.”
Leanne placated her best friend by squeezing her knee, which she knew Taylor liked. “I’m just not drunk yet,” she lied. Truthfully, she was spinning quite a bit. Drinking wasn’t something she did as often as she used to, which had been part of the appeal of getting away for the weekend—she wanted to loosen up now that she’d finally succeeded in getting her promotion at work.
Though it was dark outside, it was not yet late. As a foursome, Leanne and her friends had spent the day scattered between Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, shopping and visiting various attractions, including Dollywood, a zipline, and an escape room. It was a little odd to her that her friends had booked her birthday weekend at a B&B located on an apple orchard twenty miles outside of the city, but she was having fun. She just needed to find a moment to ditch them and get laid.
As she scanned the bar for a potential partner, she saw that there were several pool tables and arcade machines in an expansion on the far side of the building. She wondered if she could make her way in that direction to meet someone, but then Tara and Angel suddenly stood and stumbled toward one of the tables, all the while laughing and spilling their drinks in hand. Leanne cursed herself for not having acted sooner; now her friends were approaching the attractive guys at the center table she’d laid her eyes on.
“I guess we ought to reel them in,” she said with sincere annoyance.
“No. Let them be,” Taylor said, snatching Leanne by a belt loop as she stood to leave. With a jerk, she yanked Leanne back down into her chair.
With a sigh, Leanne said, “You can be so—”
“So what?” Taylor growled with a mischievous smile. “Just stay with me. Let those two do whatever stupid shit they’re going to do.”
Leanne looked at her other friends and saw them already flirting with the two guys she’d been watching. She cursed under her breath and took a deep breath to settle herself.
“I don’t really want to just sit here and drink,” she finally said.
“There’s no winning with you,” Taylor pouted, tossing up her hands in defeat. “Fine. Just go.”
Leanne felt bad but Taylor always did this to her, and she was getting sick of it. After a moment of hesitation, she stood from the table and said, “Are you coming?”
“Maybe in a minute. I’m going to scope out the bar for a treat.”
Leanne left her and headed toward Tara and Angel. It looked like they were starting a fresh game with the guys, girls versus boys. There was no place for her but at least she wasn’t stuck at the table. When she looked back to see what Taylor was doing, she realized her friend had vanished. She turned to ask Angel who the guys were, but the foursome didn’t seem to notice her as they laughed and joked over the loud music of the bar.
Find someone else, she told herself, taking a final look around for Taylor. No one is paying attention to you. This is your chance to split.
She turned to the double doors on the far wall and headed outside into the humidity and lights of the back patio. There were at least ten others outside also, some smoking, others eating at the small, round tables scattered about. Leanne took a deep breath and headed toward the railing to lean against it as she procured her own cigarette for a drag. She was staring off into the trees with the cigarette between her lips when a figure approached from the right. Assuming it was Taylor, she turned and said, “I wondered where you’d gone.”
But it was a Filipino man. He appeared clean shaven with an athletic build and short hair dyed blonde. His eyes were bright blue and engaging, which was an immediate draw for Leanne. When the guy proceeded to place his elbow against the railing with his body facing her, she saw that his forearms were scarred and tattooed. It looked as if he’d tried covering up a series of knife cuts or perhaps the aftermath of an animal attack.
“Hey, you think I could bum a smoke off you?” he asked her. His voice was not deep, but it was still gravely, like that of a man who spent his nights singing at the bar, all the while drinking and smoking between songs.
Leanne found herself startled in a pleasant way and choked when she tried to respond. “S–sure,” she said as she reached into her back pocket for the deflated pack she had stored there. She smacked the bottom of the box to push out a cigarette for him to take, then leaned herself over the railing once more, waiting to see what the guy did next. When he, too, turned to face the woods and smoke, she did her best not to smile.
“Are you also hiding?” she asked him.
“Always,” he said with a chuckle. “Who’s got you out here?”
“My friends. Well, one in particular. She’s a bit aggressive sometimes when she’s drunk.”
“Aggressive in what sense?”
Leanne shrugged and cast a sideways glance at the man. “She’s always been into me on a romantic level, but I don’t feel the same. And yet…”
“And yet?”
“We’ve fooled around a few times,” Leanne admitted to her own surprise. Amused, she reminded herself that she was drunk and that was kind of the point. “Ever since our first time together, my friend has taken it upon herself to hoard me every time she has a drink,” she continued. “Sometimes, I’m into it. But most of the time I want a… uh, well, a man. And his undivided attention, if you catch my drift.”
The man grinned and nodded along. “I think I’m following you.”
After a beat, she said, “Well, it’s your turn now. Who are you hiding from?”
“Would it scare you if I said it’s the police?” he asked, watching her with a straight face.
Leanne froze, but for only a moment. The man’s seriousness quickly faded into laughter, and she relaxed.
“I’m fucking with you,” he said as he put her cigarette to his lips again. “Had you going, too.”
She smacked his arm and told him to shut up.
“Easy now, killer,” he joked.
For a minute, they smoked in silence with their eyes toward the woods. Then the man straightened, turned to her, and held out his hand, having made up his mind about something. “I’m John,” he said.
Leanne looked from his brilliant blue eyes to his hand, then shook it. “I’m… Kayla,” she lied.
John smiled nice and big. “I’m glad I met you tonight, Kayla.”
Leanne blushed. I’m in so much trouble, she decided.
She had no idea.
They were at his hotel an hour later, her friends none the wiser. Leanne had tried to tell them she was sneaking away for a bit, but the girls were scattered and busy with playmates of their own. She was too drunk to put forth much of an effort to get their attention. She figured she could text them later and let them know where to pick her up once she was done with her fling. Maybe if she’d been more clearheaded, she wouldn’t have left so quickly with a stranger in a strange place. She didn’t know the area or the people. It was careless and she would pay for the mistake.
John was a man of few words. After their introduction, they mostly just drank and smoked outside while looking across the darkness beyond the bar. She had learned little about him in that time. She knew he was in town for a job, but he didn’t say what kind. The fact that he traveled for work interested her; jobs that sent you away usually paid well. Not that she was interested in a relationship with this man or any man, but she still liked knowing John was someone she could probably rely on.
His hotel room was small and basic, but clean. John’s rough hands heightened her sense of excitement as they undressed one another at the foot of the bed. Leanne imagined that she was hooking up with a grave digger or an assassin. Someone that got their hands dirty. Maybe John traveled for work because he was a government agent of some kind. Or maybe he had a specialty in bones or something and was there to exhume the skeleton of a murder victim. Her mind raced with the possibilities.
The sex was animalistic and hungry. Or at least, that’s how she perceived it in her drunken state. When they were finished, she stumbled into the bathroom to take a shower. John said he would join her shortly. Under the fall of hot water, she nearly fell asleep, happily spent and dizzy.
John never joined her, but she hardly noticed. When she finished in the shower, she stepped out and grabbed a hotel towel to dry off while examining herself in the mirror. She knew that if she laid down now, she’d fall fast asleep. But she had to text her friends to pick her up. She was sure they’d have to carry her inside once they got the car back to the apple orchard.
When she exited the bathroom, dressed in wrinkly clothes with a towel wrapped around her hair, she saw that John was going through one of his bags in search of something. She was about to ask him what he was looking for when she noticed her phone was smashed on the floor as if someone had stomped on it with their boot. She cursed and scooped it up, almost falling in the process. John looked over his shoulder at her as she tried to get the device working to no avail.
“Ugh, are you kidding me?” she growled, jabbing her fingers at the touchscreen repeatedly. “What the hell happened to it? Did I drop it when we were getting undressed or something?”
John turned away from his bag and stood. “Yeah, something happened.”
Leanne looked up from her phone at him and saw what he was holding.
A retractable baton.
“I don’t think I can handle that kind of BDSM,” she said, mistaking his intentions.
Later, she would swear she’d never drink again. Drunk Leanne was Stupid Leanne.
“You don’t have much of a choice, sweetheart,” John told her, turning his body to face her.
“Excuse me?”
John lifted the baton and brought it down at an angle, cracking the side of her neck. Leanne gasped from the pain and fell to the floor, bouncing off the corner of the bed on her way down. Before she could scream for help, John was on top of her with a pair of boxer briefs balled up in his hand. He quickly stuffed it into her mouth as she cried from the surmounting pain in her neck.
Then he tore the towel off her head and hit her again with the baton, this time across the side of the skull. For Leanne, everything turned black.
She had no way of knowing how much time had passed when she woke to find her wrists handcuffed to the radiator. Blood was drying down the side of her face and her neck was stiff. She was reminded of the time she twisted it while jumping on a trampoline as a teenager. She was still able to turn it, though, which was a good sign. Maybe the pain would subside after a couple of hours.
John was nowhere to be seen. But he’d taped his underwear inside her mouth to keep her quiet. When she tried to move, she found that her ankles were tied together. The rope was thin and tight against her skin. She wasn’t bleeding yet, but she already had angry marks beneath the binds.
Despite the makeshift gag, she tried screaming. But there was too much pressure from the tape over her mouth and the underwear gagging her. Her eyes darted around the room for anything of use within reach but there was nothing. And she could only stretch her bottom from the radiator about half a foot. She laid her legs out as far as she could but there was nothing she could touch, not even the bed frame.
She was about to take a break—her head still pounding from where the asshole had struck her across the temple—when she saw the lock on the door turn. John stepped inside the room a moment later with a bucket of ice and a soda can, possibly from a machine outside. He saw that she was awake and smiled.
“I thought maybe you’d get up soon. I didn’t hit you very hard.”
She did her best to look at him quizzically.
“You’re asking what I’ve done? And why?”
She nodded.
He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I had fun with you. So, I thought we’d do something to help me better remember you.”
She arched her eyebrow again, her eyes wide and fearful.
John smiled and placed the ice bucket down on the dresser with a TV sitting on top of it. Then he opened his soda can and took a long drink. When he was finished, he licked his lips and said, “Your friends don’t know you’re here. Nor do they know you left with me. Do they?”
She didn’t move her head, but he knew the answer. She could see it in his eyes. Who was this man? What had she gotten herself into?
John—assuming that was even his real name—took another drink before continuing. “This isn’t your hometown. You’re on vacation. You don’t know the area; at least, not well. Maybe you’ve been here before. I don’t know. But I think you’re unaware of your surroundings. And between your drinking and that smack to the side of your head, I’m betting you have no memory of how we got here. Maybe you don’t even know the name of the hotel.” He laughed and shook his head. “You’re all mine, sweetheart. And you know what? I’m here for a week. So, get comfortable. You’ve got some time before I move you out to someplace else. And when I do, don’t bet on your life that you’ll be conscious for it. Hell, you may even be dead by then.”
She didn’t sleep that night, no matter how badly her body wanted to rest. She spent an hour observing John putter around the room, watching TV and playing with his phone, until he finally fell asleep over top of the bed covers. As soon as he began to snore, Leanne pulled her cuffed wrists away from the radiator, testing it. She could only move a few inches. It was not nearly enough to gain any sort of leverage from the wall.
When she moved her legs out from under her, they ached fiercely. She straightened them out in front of her and arched her back, trying and failing not to moan. The crackling of her ankles, knees, and back was audible. If only her legs weren’t tied together, she’d spread them out for further stretching; she needed it.
From the bed, John shifted onto his side, facing her. Frozen, she watched his eyes closely, expecting to see them open and narrow upon her. When they didn’t, she let out a shaky breath and tried pulling her legs apart to test the strength of the rope around her ankles. There was no give. The knots were strong.
Tears threatened to fill her eyes, but she fought them back. It didn’t look like she would be escaping without help. And without the ability to scream, how would she find any? She wondered if John was using the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door to ward off any cleaning attendant that dared try to enter. She could pray for him to forget while out getting food or doing whatever the hell he was doing here in town. Was it possible John was just on vacation like her, and this was just the twisted way he spent it?
No, he’d mentioned a job. He was there to do something specific, but he’d never told her what.
She spent the rest of the night moving against the radiator as best she could to alleviate the pain she was feeling throughout her body. All the while, she imagined the ways that she could be discovered. Maybe her friends would freak out looking for her and beg the manager of the bar to show them the surveillance cameras. Then they’d spot John’s car and have the police track her to the hotel. She imagined the cops kicking down the door, shooting John with a taser, and her being carried out by the strongest man in uniform.
Every time she nearly fell asleep, her brain would send a jerk down her spine to keep her awake. She needed to be alert for whatever John might do, even though she could clearly see that he was sleeping, nice and drunk. When the sun finally rose, she felt like she was going crazy from exhaustion.
John sat up in bed not long after the first ray of light cut through the floor-length curtains over the window. Leanne looked up tiredly at him and waited to see what he would do with her. After several agonizing minutes in which John simply looked around the room in a daze, he finally threw his legs over the bed and stood. Leanne was only two feet away from him. Did he see her? Had he forgotten she was there restrained to his radiator?
Finally, John stumbled past her to the bathroom. She heard him urinating seconds later. When he returned, he looked down at her and grinned. “Hey, you. How’d you sleep?”
Still gagged, she tried screaming at him through the bundle that was John’s underwear sitting halfway down her throat. He nodded calmly when she was finished, and said, “You know, I wasn’t really thinking I’d kidnap you. I mean, I did think of it when I first saw you enter the bar. But I doubted that I would actually do it. I really just wanted to snatch your purse. And like I told you last night, I’m here for a job as it is. A hostage doesn’t really fit into those plans. But I’m committed to the bit now, aren’t I?” He shrugged and walked over to where his suitcase was laying on top of a small, round table. Leanne watched as he stripped naked, pulled out a new set of clothes, and laid them onto the bedside. Then he walked past her, dangling freely, and disappeared back inside the bathroom. She heard the shower running a minute later.
Upon realizing her bladder was fit to burst, she wondered if John would uncuff her long enough to allow her to use the bathroom. She considered the ways she might take advantage of that freedom, however brief, if he were to allow it. She could remove her gag and scream. She could pocket a small weapon or tool. She could flush something that might cause the plumbing to back up and overflow. Then they’d be forced out of the room for repairs, wouldn’t they?
He’ll never let you in the bathroom, she told herself. At least, not unattended.
John’s shower was short. She heard the water cut off only four minutes after it started. She wished she could shower that fast, but it took her ten minutes just to do her hair, if not more. Toweling off was easier for John, too. He came out nearly dry a minute later, once more crossing the room naked, as if he was purposefully swinging his dick in her face to get a rise out of her.
As he dressed, he said, “I’ll be gone for a while. You just sit tight and stew.”
She tried to ask for the bathroom, but the gag continued to muffle her. John looked her way, trying to understand her. As if playing charades, she squirmed on the floor, bouncing a little, to show him that she needed to pee. Eventually, he caught on and nodded with a smile.
“You need the bathroom, don’t you?”
She nodded vigorously.
He made a tsk-tsk sound and said, “Sorry, Kayla-bear. I’m not as stupid as you were hoping. Do what you have to do right there on the floor. I’ll make sure to leave the cleaning lady a fair tip. Don’t worry. If piss is all she has to clean up, she ought to count herself lucky.”
Leanne began to panic at the thought of having to relieve herself on the floor and sit in it.
John ignored her, retrieved his wallet and keys from beside the TV, and headed for the door. He was about to leave when a thought crossed his mind and he paused. For several seconds, he stood there at the door with his back to her. Then he turned, rushed forward, and kicked Leanne square in the chest. She doubled over, gasping for air through the wad of his underwear.
“That was just a warning,” John said, once again turning away from her. “You try anything, my punishments will be far more severe. Accept your fate and keep cool while I’m gone.” With that, he opened the door and quickly stepped outside. One second, he was there, the next he was gone and Leanne was finally alone.
Immediately, she tried yanking herself away from the radiator. If she had to pull it out of the wall or wherever it was attached, she would make it happen one way or another, she told herself as she awkwardly got to her feet. She had just managed to stand with her ankles tied tightly together when the room door swung open and slammed shut behind her. She looked over her shoulder just as John backhanded her. She bounced off the wall and slid down to the floor against the radiator, her face on fire.
“I knew you’d test your luck,” John spat. “It’s like you want me to kill you.” He grabbed her by the hair, lifted her face to his, and smacked her again. She tipped over onto her side with her arms over her head, still cuffed to the top of the radiator. John stood over her, disgusted. “Did you just piss yourself? I guess you really did need to go. Well, if you stop fucking around, maybe I’ll buy you some new panties while I’m out. But before I go, I think it’s best that you’re out, too.”
Leanne rested her sore cheek against the ugly carpet and cried. From the table, John was going through his suitcase, looking for something. When he returned to her, she saw that he was holding a needle and a handkerchief. She didn’t want to know what he was about to pump her with but knew there was nothing she could do about it. Though she instinctively struggled when he grabbed her arm, she was already crawling into the recesses of her mind to hide from the reality of her situation.
The needle slipped into her arm a moment later, filling her with a joyous, dreamy feeling unlike anything she’d ever felt before. A swirling river of darkness washed over seconds later and she melted into the carpet, becoming one with the hotel room.
At least, that’s how it felt to her.
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