Hide and Seek Summary: Sheridan Anne’s Dark Stalker Romance
Hide and Seek Summary: A Morgue, a Masked Stranger, and a Game With Rules
Forensic pathologist Harper-Rayn Madden works the night shift in Blackstone Hospital’s basement morgue, where the dead keep quieter company than the living.
Then a black rose appears on her autopsy table, and bodies start arriving marked with messages addressed to her by name.
Sheridan Anne’s Hide and Seek: A Dark Stalker Romance pairs that creeping dread with a taboo attraction: Knight Slater, the SWAT team leader who happens to be her step-uncle.
The novel alternates between their two perspectives as Harper tries to work out who is hunting her — and why.
TL;DR: What You Need to Know Before You Hide
- The setup: A forensic pathologist, a masked stalker who leaves roses and carved messages, and a protective SWAT commander she is not supposed to want.
- The form: Dark, explicit stalker romance told in alternating first-person chapters across 43 chapters.
- The pressure: Harper’s grip on reality tightens and loosens as the evidence around her keeps changing shape.
- The turn: A mid-book revelation reframes everything the reader has been shown up to that point.
- The ending: A cliffhanger that opens the door to the sequel, Ready or Not.
Hide and Seek Summary: The Full Story (Spoilers Ahead)
Spoiler warning: this section covers the plot through the final page, including the twist and the cliffhanger.
Harper-Rayn Madden is twenty-seven and prefers corpses to conversation. She works alone overnight in the Blackstone Hospital morgue, surrounded by refrigeration lockers and stainless steel tables.
One night she feels watched. Then she finds a single black rose resting on her autopsy table.
She takes the incident to a family dinner at her mother Mae’s estate, where Mae humiliates her in front of guests over her career, her clothes, and her refusal to play along. Harper leaves early.
Knight Slater follows her out. He is her stepfather Elias’s younger brother, a SWAT team leader, and strictly off-limits by any family logic. He drives her home and, after she admits she is being stalked, gives her his personal number.
The next night shift breaks the pattern. A body arrives carved with “Smile for the camera, kitten” across the chest and Harper-Rayn across the knuckles.
Inside the opened ribcage sits another black rose. Carved into the heart are the words “Tag, you’re it.”
Harper calls Knight and drives to his house through a downpour. Their long-suppressed attraction stops being suppressed, and the taboo boundary between them is crossed.
When they return to the morgue the following evening, the carved corpse has vanished from a sealed refrigeration unit.
A few nights later, violent rattling at the morgue entrance sends Harper into a cold storage locker in panic. She flees to Knight again, and the affair deepens.
Knight pulls hospital security footage to identify the intruder and finds only Vincent, the harmless night janitor, doing routine cleaning.
The stalker escalates anyway. Harper believes he enters her apartment while she is wearing only a towel, strips her, and delivers the rules of his game.
“If you scream. You fail. If you run. You die. But kitten, you will hide, and I will find you.”
She submits to his touch, frightened and aroused by the loss of control.
At a nightclub with her best friend Izzy, Harper senses him watching her dance with two men. In a dark booth she has an explicit encounter with a masked figure she assumes is him.
Two new corpses reach her table — the same two men. Their palms are burned, and carved down their arms is “Pay the fine if you touch what’s mine.”
Knight inspects the bodies and insists he cannot see any of the carved letters Harper is pointing at.
After another family dinner, where her brother Jonah defends her against Mae and walks out, Harper and Knight end up in a locked bathroom together.
Then Monday arrives. Harper finds her friend and casual lover, Laith Mitchell, dead in locker #36 with “MINE” carved into his chest.
She returns to Knight’s bedroom in shock. The masked stalker appears there, taunts her for breaking his rules, pins her to the bed, and carves “MINE” into her ribs.
Knight comes home to blood on his sheets and a wounded Harper. While bandaging her, he notices her wrists show no rope marks despite her account of being bound, and his kitchen knives lie scattered beside shredded blankets.
Days later, the hospital’s replacement janitor, Trystin Black, beats Harper in an alley. She needs emergency surgery for internal bleeding in her liver and spleen.
While she recovers, Knight tells her what his investigation turned up: no police records, no 911 calls, no detective assignments, and no autopsy files for any of the victims she described. Harper accuses him of calling her a liar and orders him out.
To prove herself, she leaves the hospital in her pajamas and drives to the morgue. Locker #36 is empty.
Dr. McKullan, the senior pathologist, tells her that no one named Laith Mitchell was ever brought to the morgue. Harper breaks down in the hallway.
Knight holds her as staff sedate her and place her on a 72-hour psychiatric hold.
In the psychiatric ward, he brings footage and records. The nightclub video shows no masked stalker — Harper approached an ordinary, unmasked man and initiated the encounter herself.
The corpses on her table were standard car crash and gunshot victims, with no carvings. Laith is alive and visits her, confused by flirty texts she sent while believing she was talking to his killer.
The wounds on her ribs are self-inflicted. During a dissociation episode at Knight’s house, Harper took a kitchen knife, shredded the sheets, and carved “MINE” into her own skin while hallucinating the stalker.
Harper accepts the diagnosis and enters psychiatric care. Knight stays. On her release, he packs up her apartment and moves her into his home.
The final pages undo the relief. Walking through the underground parking garage, Harper feels the old chill return.
A tall figure in the exact skull mask and tactical gear from her hallucinations steps out of the shadows. He tells her he is not the man she invented.
“Your stalker wasn’t real. He was a figment of your imagination, made up in that crazy little head of yours… It was too easy to get your notes from the good doctor… You offered up every crazy detail from that messed-up head of yours, and now, there’s nothing stopping me from making those little hallucinations real.”
The novel ends there: her original stalker was a psychotic delusion, and a real predator has stolen her psychiatric files and adopted the nightmare as his own blueprint.
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Characters in Hide and Seek
| Character | Role |
| Harper-Rayn Madden | Twenty-seven-year-old forensic pathologist at Blackstone Hospital’s morgue and the novel’s central narrator. |
| Knight Slater | Leader of Blackstone’s SWAT team, brother of Elias, and Harper’s step-uncle and love interest. |
| Laith Mitchell | Harper’s close friend and casual sexual partner, a lawyer whose apparent death triggers her breakdown. |
| Izzy (Izabelle Grace Davenport) | Harper’s best friend and an aspiring fashion designer. |
| Mae Slater | Harper’s mother, who publicly criticizes her daughter’s career and choices. |
| Elias Slater | Mae’s wealthy husband, Knight’s older brother, and Harper’s stepfather. |
| Jonah | Harper’s older brother, who confronts Mae about her treatment of Harper. |
| Emily | Jonah’s wife, present at the family dinners with their twin daughters. |
| Dr. McKullan | Senior pathologist at Blackstone Morgue and Harper’s professional mentor. |
| Vincent | Night janitor at Blackstone Hospital. |
| Trystin Black | Replacement night janitor who attacks Harper in an alley. |
| Detective Gray | Police detective attached to morgue homicide cases. |
| Ace & Diesel | Members of Knight’s SWAT team. |
| Carly | Hospital security employee who supplies morgue surveillance footage. |
| Dr. Carzy | Psychiatrist who evaluates Harper during her 72-hour hold. |
| Dr. Hart | Surgeon who repairs Harper’s liver and spleen after the alley attack. |
| Amelia (Dr. Levine) | ER doctor at Blackstone Hospital and a close friend of Harper. |
| The Real Masked Stalker | Antagonist who appears in the closing scene after taking Harper’s psychiatric records. |
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Hide and Seek at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Pitch-black stalker romance / dark romantic thriller
- Core Narrative Tropes: Forbidden step-uncle romance, masked stalker, unreliable narrator, protector male lead, dual POV
- Tone & Atmosphere: Claustrophobic, gritty, explicit, tense, psychologically twisting
- Primary Conflict: Harper’s struggle to separate reality from hallucination, alongside the taboo relationship and an external predator
- Pacing Style: Fast, episodic, alternating perspectives with escalating suspense
- Book Structure: 43 numbered chapters plus dedication, content warning, introduction, playlist, and a preview of Ready or Not
- ISBN-13: 979-8347036196
- Pages: 400
- Publisher: Podium Publishing (March 24, 2026)
- Series: Book 1 of 2 in the Hide and Seek series
Quotes from Hide and Seek
“When darkness wants to claim you, do you run or do you step into the light, daring it to catch you?”
“She’s the forbidden fruit, dangling before me, daring me to take a bite, and I’m the fucking viper in the garden, ready to burn it all to hell.”
“If you were to burst into flames, I’ll be right there stepping into the fire with you. If you’re burning, doll, I’m going to burn right along with you.”
“You belong to me. Understand that. You will never be his, no matter how hard he fucks you, how many times he sneaks into your bedroom and makes you come on his fingers. You’re mine.”
“It’s been fun… Don’t be mistaken, kitten. I’ll be back for you. And when I do, it’ll be a game worth dying for.”
“Because I am not him… Your stalker wasn’t real. He was a figment of your imagination, made up in that crazy little head of yours… But I am not him. I bleed just as you will when I finally make you mine.”
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Who Should Read Hide and Seek?
This book suits readers of dark romance who want explicit content, a possessive male lead, and a suspense thread running alongside the relationship. The step-uncle dynamic and the stalker premise place it firmly in taboo territory.
Readers who prefer psychological tension over straightforward romance will find the unreliable-narrator structure central to the plot rather than decorative. Those sensitive to self-harm, graphic violence, or sexual content should check the book’s content warning before starting.
The pacing is fast and episodic, with short chapters alternating between Harper and Knight. The novel is the first in a two-book series and ends unresolved.
