Page 68 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

Not much.

A pattern beside the shed, where the drift eddies and the old tool chest leans.

Tracks curve there, light and deliberate.

Not ours.

Not deer, not fox.

A boot. A big one.

The tread is shallow, then deep, then gone, like someone walked the line of our perimeter then left.

My smile empties out. I set the wood down without a sound and go to the edge of the print.

I do not step in it.

I put my own foot alongside and measure.

Big, but not clownish.

Human.

Tire tracks lace the ridge road, our plow and Grady’s old Ford.

Nothing else.

Whoever this was came through the trees.

They stood close enough to the shed to touch.

They watched the window and did not like what it showed.

“Deacon,” I call, not loud, just enough to carry. He appears like he walked through the wall.

“Tracks,” I say, pointing. “Not ours.”

He looks for three seconds and is already making lists. “I saw a flicker on the west camera last night, then snow took the lens. Could be kids,” he offers, but the face he makes says he does not believe it’s kids when the snow is this mean.

“It could be anyone who prefers us worried,” I say. The Fire Vultures have long memories and bad manners.

The Iron Blessings pretend at church and carry knives in hymnals.

And the worst kind are the ones who wore our patch once, ate at our table, then decided Roman’s house was too clean for their taste.

Those men do not forget which door they kicked and which man told them no.

“We will walk the lines after coffee,” Deacon says, which in his language is now. He checks the shed latch, tests the hinge, studies the tree line where the tracks end without beginning. “Tell Roman.”

“I will.” I lock the back door with a quiet click and run my hand along the old wood, the way a man does when he reminds a thing to be strong.

Back inside, the stove is singing soft. The pan soaks.

The kitchen smells like cinnamon and cedar, also the holy note of orange and rum sneaking out from the closed pantry.

The competition loaves are sleeping on the top shelf, tented the way Deacon ordered, and I will not touch a single crumb of them.

I am still a man, however, and a house full of worry needs breakfast.