Page 7 of Roulette

“Someone was in my house again,” I said. My voice came out hollow. Empty. Facts instead of feeling, because the feeling was too big for words.

A pause. I could hear the soft rumble of an engine in the background, then it cut out.

“Are you still inside?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Don’t touch anything. I’m coming.”

He hung up. I stood in the middle of the living room with my arms wrapped around myself and looked at the boot prints. They were large. Men’s boots. The tread pattern was aggressive -- deep grooves in a zigzag pattern, work boots or hiking shoes, not the smooth sole of a sneaker. Something meant for traction, for leaving a mark.

Nine minutes later, I heard the bike. The engine died at the curb, and then boots on the gravel, fast and purposeful. I unlocked the front door before he knocked. He came through it already scanning -- the prints, the pillow, the face down photo, me with my arms crossed over my chest.

He didn’t say anything. Just moved past me toward the back hallway, checking each room as I had the first time, but with sharper attention. He pushed the bedroom door open with his fingertips and stepped inside. I heard the closet door slide open, the soft rustle of clothes being shifted. The bathroom light flicked on, then off. He came back down the hall and checked the kitchen, crouching at the back door to look the lock over -- no marks, no forced anything, same as I’d found it -- and I watched his jaw tighten the same way mine had that morning, staring at the clean cuts in my tires.

I stayed where I was. Watching him navigating the space with the efficiency of a man who’d done this before. For someone else. In another house. The thought should have been comforting. It wasn’t.

He came back to the living room and stopped in front of me. His expression hadn’t changed. Same calm restraint. But the skin around his eyes had tightened.

“You can’t stay here,” he said.

I opened my mouth. The arguments lined up automatically -- I have a deadbolt, I can call the police, I’m not letting some stranger run me out of my own house -- but he cut through them before I could speak.

“It’s not a question.”

A long beat passed between us. I looked down at the boot prints on my floor. The mud was drying at the edges, turning pale and cracked, but the center of each print was still dark, still damp enough to have been made recently. A couple of hours ago, maybe. While I was serving coffee and clearing plates and pretending the world was still the shape it had been yesterday.

I looked at the bookshelf. At the overturned photo. My grandmother’s face pressed against the wood, invisible, like whoever had been here wanted to make sure she couldn’t see what they were doing.

My jaw worked. I could feel the heat behind my eyes. I pushed it down, hard, until it settled somewhere behind my breastbone and stayed there.

I crossed to the shelf and picked up the photo. The glass was cool under my fingers. I held the frame against my ribs, her face turned toward my body where no one could reach it.

“I need to pack a bag,” I said.

Roulette dipped his chin and moved to the door. He stood there with his back to the room, giving me the privacy of the hallway, and waited while I gathered clothes from the bedroom and my toothbrush from the bathroom and the paperback I’d been reading from the nightstand. I set the frame in on top of my folded clothes, not bothering to zip the bag all the way -- the photo stuck up at an angle, glass catching the hallway light -- and slung it over my shoulder anyway.

He held the front door open. I stepped through it into the darkness, and he closed it behind us, testing the lock twice the same as I always did. He walked me to my car and waited while I threw the bag onto the passenger seat, then swung a leg over his bike and waited for me to follow him.

The porch light stayed on. The boot prints stayed on the floor. The house sat behind us, hushed and violated, and I didn’t look back.

Chapter Four

Lark

The gate rolled shut behind us with a sound like something solid dropping into place. Metal against metal, the chain-link rattling into its frame, and then stillness. I followed behind his motorcycle, my duffle on the passenger seat. On instinct, I’d grabbed the blanket from the house while packing, and it sat under my duffle. It smelled like my house, or what my house used to smell like before someone else’s boots walked through it.

He parked in front of a house at the far end of the lot. I pulled in behind him, then cut the engine. Through the closed window, I could hear the low murmur of voices from the clubhouse carrying across the gravel. Roulette came over and opened my door, reaching across to grab my duffel before I could protest. “You don’t have to --” I started.

He was already walking toward the house. I shut my mouth and followed, my sneakers crunching on the gravel, the night air cool against my face. His house was single-story, set back from the lot with a covered porch and a solid front door -- deadbolt, plus a keypad lock he’d clearly installed himself, wires still visible where they ran up into the frame. Good security. The kind that would stop most people. Except, I wasn’t entirely sure my stalker could be considered most people. He punched in a code with his thumb, four digits I couldn’t see from where I stood, and pushed open the door. Stepped aside. Waited.

I went in first because that’s what he’d made room for, and stepping over the threshold felt like walking into a life that wasn’t mine yet, one I hadn’t earned the right to.

The living room looked clean because he lived that way, not because he’d prepared for company. A leather couch faced a flat-screen mounted on the wall, a coffee table between them with a half-finished glass of water still sitting on its surface. The thought of it -- this man drinking water and not finishing it, leaving it there like any normal person would -- tightened my chest in a way I hadn’t expected. Club memorabilia covered one wall: framed photos of men on bikes, patches mounted behind glass, a banner with dates and names I didn’t recognize. The kitchen was visible through an archway to the right, countertops clear except for a coffee maker and a dish rack with one mug in it.

He moved past me toward the hallway, my duffel in one hand, and I followed because there was nowhere else to go. He stopped first at a room with the door open -- a guest room, maybe, from the bare look of it -- and set my duffel down just inside the frame.

“This one’s yours,” he said.