Page 79 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies
The storage room is colder and smells like oil and cedar and the rubbed-metal tang of secrets.
I pull the false panel behind the gear chest—the one we built during the charter war when we learned the hard lesson about redundancy—and wake the burner laptop.
It pulls power from the private repeater I wired into the joist bay and not from anything a neighbor could sniff without burning their tongue.
First order: logistics.
A supply drop out of Albany flagged weather-delayed at noon.
I reroute it to the Deer Run layup so it doesn’t sit with two crates of mixed ammo and a hydraulic jack in some kid’s storage unit where the wrong cousin could get curious.
I ping the southern run.
Our courier hasn’t checked in.
I mark himMISSING—WEATHERwith a time stamp generous enough to respect his pride and short enough to respect the miles.
Then the button.
I pull the pouch, take two photos in the light of a goose-neck lamp I trust not to lie, roll the image until the stamping catches the shadow.
I log into a board we swore we’d stop using the day we burned our old patch, then only kept for moments like this when old fires spit new sparks.
My handle still works.
My stomach doesn’t like that.
I tag the file with a phrase only the wrong people will read all the way through.
WHO LOST THIS SAINT’S EYE NEAR A CUPBOARD?
I add a second line:LOOKING FOR A GHOST WHO OWES US QUIET.
It’s bait and it’s a handshake.
You don’t write full names where men have bled.
You write a shape and wait to see who thinks it fits.
I sit with the hum of the repeater in my bones and the slip of wind under the door like a dog breathing at the threshold.
In the kitchen, faint—Marisa’s laugh, unsteady, brave.
Cruz’s low answer.
Roman’s shorter one.
The twins offering commentary like a Greek chorus with milk mustaches.
Night edges in.
The laptop throws a weak rectangle of light on the wall.
My husky brain paces; my shepherd brain sits.
We wait.
Nine minutes.
