Chapter 6 - Kent #2
"The breakfast skillet sounds good," I say. "And you're right about the long day ahead."
She scribbles the order on her pad, and I notice her handwriting is small and neat. Everything about her movements is measured, slow. The behavior of someone who's learned that mistakes have consequences, but also someone who refuses to let fear make her sloppy.
"You're not from around here," she says, not quite a question. Her eyes are studying my face with uncomfortable intensity, like she's trying to solve a puzzle.
"What makes you say that?"
"The way you sit. Most locals either know everyone in here or they're trying to get noticed.
You're watching everything like you're gathering information.
" She pauses, then adds with a slight smile, "Also, nobody drives across town for breakfast at Rosie's unless they're either lost or have very specific reasons for being in this neighborhood. "
The observation is uncomfortably accurate. She's reading me almost as well as I'm reading her, which shouldn't be possible. Sixteen-year-old waitresses aren't supposed to have this level of situational awareness. Even battered ones.
"Maybe I'm lost," I suggest.
"Maybe." But her tone suggests she doesn't believe it. "Or maybe you're the kind of person who likes to understand a place before you decide if you belong there."
The comment hits closer to the truth than I'd like. There's something unsettling about being so easily read by someone who should be focused on taking my order and moving on to the next table.
"You're very observant for someone so young," I say.
Something flickers in her eyes—amusement, maybe, or recognition of a challenge. "You learn to read people pretty quickly in a job like this. Figure out who's going to tip well, who's going to cause problems, who's going to try to get handsy when you're refilling their coffee."
She says it matter-of-factly, but there's steel underneath the casual tone. This is someone who's learned to identify threats because her survival has depended on it. Not just here at work, but everywhere.
"And what's your read on me?" I ask, genuinely curious about her answer.
She studies my face for a long moment, and I can almost see her mind working through possibilities. "Dangerous," she says finally, but not in a way that suggests she's afraid. "Not to me, necessarily. But dangerous. You’re pretty intense."
The accuracy of her assessment sends ice through my veins. She shouldn't be able to see that. Normal people can't read violence in someone's posture or recognize the particular stillness that comes from being capable of terrible things.
But Delilah Jenkins isn't normal people. She's someone who's lived with a monster for sixteen years, someone who's learned to identify predators because her life has depended on it.
"That's an interesting conclusion to draw from a breakfast order," I say carefully.
"Is it untrue?"
The direct question hangs in the air between us, loaded with implications I'm not sure either of us is ready to address. Because she's not wrong, and we both know it. The question is whether she's smart enough to be afraid, or damaged enough not to care.
"I'll get your order started," she says finally, stepping back from the table. But her eyes never leave my face, and there's something in her expression that suggests this conversation is far from over.
I watch her walk toward the kitchen, noting the way she checks the other tables without seeming to hurry, the easy competence of someone who's good at taking care of people.
But there's something else in her movements now—a heightened awareness, like she's suddenly more conscious of my presence in her space.
She knows I'm watching her. More than that, she knows there's something significant about my being here, even if she can't name what it is.
When she returns with my coffee refill, she moves differently. Still professional, still careful, but with the particular alertness of someone who's recognized something familiar and is trying to place it.
"Your order should be ready in a few minutes," she says, topping off my cup. "Rosie likes to take her time with the skillets."
"No rush."
She starts to turn away, then pauses, studying my hands where they rest on the table. "You work construction?"
The question catches me off guard. "What makes you ask?"
"Your hands. Calluses in specific places, small scars from tools. My dad…." She hesitates, then continues more carefully. "I know what construction workers' hands look like."
It's a reasonable observation, and partially true. But there's something in the way she's looking at me that suggests she's putting together pieces of a puzzle I can't see.
"Among other things," I say.
She nods slowly, like I've confirmed something she suspected. "There was a construction crew working near our neighborhood last week. Street repairs, I think. Lots of trucks coming and going."
The casual comment shouldn't mean anything, but the way she says it—like she's testing a theory—makes my chest tighten. Because she's right. I have been in her neighborhood, watching, learning Jenkins's patterns. But she shouldn't be able to connect that to me sitting in her café.
"Small world," I manage.
"Isn't it?" But her tone suggests she doesn't think this is a coincidence at all. "Sometimes you see the same faces in different places and don't realize it until later. Like your brain is trying to tell you something important."
Before I can respond, the kitchen bell chimes, and she moves away to collect my order. When she returns with my breakfast skillet, she sets it down with the same professional efficiency, but there's curiosity in her eyes now.
"You seem pretty smart," I say, cutting into the eggs. "Are you in school, or is this keeping you too busy?"
She refills my coffee, and I catch a flash of something—pride, maybe, or surprise that I'm interested. "Senior year. It's manageable."
"Aren’t you a little young?” I can’t help but blurt it. Sixteen.
“Oh, I’m a regular genius. Just call me Doogie. I skipped fourth grade and everything.”
“Still, senior year's tough. College applications and all that." I keep my tone casual, conversational. "Is college something you’re interested in?"
"State school, probably. It's what I can afford." The words come out clipped, matter-of-fact. I hear the defensiveness underneath.
"What do you want to study?"
Her posture changes slightly, straightening with something that might be excitement or determination. "Psychology. Maybe criminal psychology, specifically."
The irony isn't lost on me. I take another bite of hash browns, processing. "That's ambitious. What draws you to it?"
"Understanding why people do things." She glances around the café, making sure her other tables don't need attention. "Why they hurt people. Why they choose violence when there are other options."
The way she says it, careful but intense, tells me this isn't academic curiosity. This is personal research.
"Heavy subject matter," I observe.
"Someone has to understand it." Her voice carries a weight that seems too old for sixteen. "If we don't understand why people become monsters, how can we stop them?"
Monsters. The word sits between us, loaded with implications neither of us can address directly. But I can see in her eyes that she knows exactly what kind of monster she's lived with. And she's planning to spend her life studying people like him.
"You think monsters can be stopped?" I ask.
She's quiet for a moment, and I watch her face carefully. "Some can be helped before they become monsters. Others…." She trails off, and something shutters in her expression. "Others have to be stopped different ways."
The clinical distance in her voice when she says it tells me everything I need to know about how she's processed her father's violence.
She's not just a victim—she's already thinking like someone who plans to fight back.
Maybe not directly, but through understanding, through building cases, through whatever professional tools she can acquire.
"That's a hard way to look at the world," I say.
"It's an honest way." Her voice goes flat, defensive. "Some people deserve help. Others deserve consequences."
The conversation has shifted into dangerous territory, and I can see her realizing it. The openness in her expression fades, replaced by that practiced service industry smile.
"Anyway," she says, stepping back from the table, "I should check on my other customers. Let me know if you need anything else."
Just like that, the wall comes up. Not out of fear, but out of survival instinct. She's shared too much with a stranger, revealed too much of her internal landscape, and now she's retreating to safer ground.
But in that moment before she closed off, I saw something that explains the steel in her spine, the way she functions despite the bruises.
Delilah Jenkins isn't just surviving her father's violence—she's studying it.
Preparing for a future where she can fight people like him with knowledge instead of physical strength.
I understand her in a way that has nothing to do with the breakfast order or casual conversation. I understand the cold calculation that comes from living with a monster. The way you learn to compartmentalize horror so you can function. The decision to turn survival into purpose.
She's not just a victim.
I finish my breakfast in silence, watching her move between tables with renewed respect. When I leave money on the table—enough to cover the food plus a substantial tip—she nods her thanks with professional politeness. Nothing more.
"Have a good day," she says as I stand to leave.
"You too."
The words are ordinary, forgettable. But as I walk out of Rosie's Café, I know this encounter has changed something fundamental about how I see both her and my work.
I drive back to the trailer park with my mind spinning.
What the fuck was I thinking? Going there wasn't reconnaissance—it was a reckless emotional response that violated every principle I've built my life around.
I should have killed Jenkins quick and clean, then disappeared before personal feelings could complicate the mission.
But sitting in my trailer now, replaying our conversation, I can't bring myself to regret it.
Because I understand her now. Really understand her. Not just as collateral damage or an abstract victim to be protected, but as someone who's made the same fundamental decision I made years ago: that the world is divided into predators and prey, and she refuses to stay prey forever.
The difference is she's planning to fight her war through legal channels, through degrees and professional authority and systematic understanding. She believes the system can work if you know how to use it.
I gave up on the system a long time ago.
But maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe what matters is that we both recognize the truth about monsters, even if we've chosen different ways to deal with them.
This was a mistake. I know that. Getting emotionally invested in a target's family, making contact, revealing even small pieces of myself—it breaks every rule I've lived by. It's the kind of error that gets people like me caught or killed.
But it felt inevitable, like stepping off a cliff I'd been walking toward since the moment I saw her crying in that upstairs window.
And now that I've crossed that line, there's no pretending I can go back to seeing her as an abstract concept. She's real. She's brilliant. She's planning a future that involves understanding and stopping people exactly like me.
The irony is almost funny.
Jenkins is still going to die—that hasn't changed. But now his death feels less like justice and more like clearing a path. Making sure nothing and no one can derail the trajectory of the sixteen-year-old girl who wants to spend her life catching monsters.
Even if one of those monsters is sitting in a trailer across town, thinking about her in ways that would terrify any rational person.
I've never felt protective of someone before. I've never wanted to make sure someone else's future remained intact.
But Delilah Jenkins has gotten under my skin in a way that changes everything about what comes next.
And I'm not sure whether that makes me more dangerous or less.