Page 6 of Roulette

The club contact showed up in a pickup truck eighteen minutes later. He was big, red-blond beard, forearms covered in Navy tattoos. He didn’t introduce himself. Just handed Roulette the tires with a nod, glanced at me once, and drove off. Roulette had the old tires off and the new ones mounted before I could form another sentence about helping. His hands moved like they knew the job by feel -- aligning the rim, seating the tire, working the lug nuts back on in a star pattern, tightening each one with even pressure.

When it was done, he lowered the jack and stood back. The car sat level on the driveway, the new rubber black and intact against the gravel. Roulette wiped his hands on a rag he’d pulled from his saddlebag, the fabric streaking dark with grease.

“Someone did this on purpose,” he said.

The words hung between us, simple and irrevocable. I’d known it the moment I saw the cuts. Knowing it and hearing it said aloud were two different things.

“I know.”

He didn’t look away. His eyes held a steadiness that made the fear in my stomach feel small and childish by comparison.

“That’s twice now. House, then this. Not a coincidence.”

I looked away first. At the gravel. At the house. Anywhere but at his face.

He pulled a pen from his jacket, took my hand before I could pull it back, and wrote a string of numbers across the inside of my wrist in blunt, even strokes.

“Anything else happens. Anything feels off, even if you can’t say why. You call that number.” He capped the pen and let my hand go. “Doesn’t matter what time.”

“I don’t even know your last name.”

“Don’t need it. Just need you to call.”

I picked up my bag from the stoop and slung it over my shoulder.

“I’m going to be late for work.”

He gave a brief acknowledgment. I got in the car, started the engine, and backed out of the driveway. The new tires gripped the gravel with a sound that was entirely too ordinary. In the rearview, I saw him swing his leg over the bike and kick it to life. He followed me all the way to the diner, staying half a block back, the sight of his bike a constant in my mirrors until I pulled into the lot behind Patsy’s and killed the ignition.

I sat there for a moment with my hands on the wheel, feeling the vibration fade from the steering column. The cuts had been clean. Precise. Someone had stood in my driveway with a knife and taken their time.

I got out of the car and went inside to start my shift.

* * *

The shift ran long because the dinner rush bled into the late crowd and Dave sent Meredith home early with a migraine. I didn’t clock out until after nine, and by the time I pulled into my driveway the street was dark except for the orange glow of the sodium lights at the far end of the block. My porch light was on -- I’d started leaving it on every night after the first break-in. The bulb cast a weak yellow circle on the stoop, just enough to see the keyhole.

I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. The house held that dense hush of a space left empty for hours. I reached for the wall switch beside the door and clicked it on.

The overhead light flooded the living room. And I saw them.

Muddy boot prints. Deep tread, the pattern clear and intentional, tracking across the hardwood from the back hallway toward the living room and back again. They were still damp in places, the edges of the tread marks dark and glistening under the light. Someone had walked through my house with wet, muddy boots and never bothered to wipe them. They hadn’t even tried to hide it.

I didn’t move for three full seconds. My breath caught somewhere below my ribs and held there. The prints led in a direct line to the couch, where the throw pillow I kept on the left cushion had been moved to the floor. Not tossed. Placed. As if someone had sat down, lifted the pillow, set it there, and then gotten up again without putting it back.

From there, the prints continued to the bookshelf. My grandmother’s photo had been turned over again, the glass pressed against the wood, her smile hidden. Nothing else on the shelf had been touched. Just the photo. Turned over, exactly as it had been the first time.

I didn’t step forward. I stood in the doorway with my bag still hanging from my shoulder and followed the trail with my eyes. Back and forth. Living room to hallway, hallway to living room. Just the bedroom down the hall, the bathroom beside it.

I set my bag down and walked to the back door. The deadbolt was engaged, same as I’d left it. No scratches around the keyhole, no scuffed brass, nothing to suggest force or even effort -- which was somehow worse than finding marks would have been. Whoever this was didn’t need to leave evidence to get in.

The hook latch was still hanging loose, though. I always caught it after I locked the deadbolt -- a habit, a second layer I didn’t fully trust the first to handle alone -- and today it swung free against the frame, exactly the way it would if I’d forgotten it, except I hadn’t. I never forgot it.

Had someone managed to pick the lock? Or had they disabled it some other way, then walked in, tracked mud across my floor, sat on my couch, turned my grandmother’s photo face down, and let themselves back out through a door they’d locked behind them like a courtesy.

Everything exactly where it should be except for the pillow on the floor and the photo on the shelf and the mud on my hardwood.

I pulled out my phone and called Roulette. He picked up on the second ring.