The memory sits in my chest like a boulder, pressing against ribs that feel too tight a cage for my lungs. I've heard similar words before; different voices, different circumstances, but the same reflexive submission to violence. The same learned helplessness that comes from years of conditioning.
Usually, it just makes me angry. Clean, focused anger that I can channel into purpose.
This feels different. Personal in a way that makes my teeth ache.
I take my coffee to the small window above the kitchen sink, looking out at the trailer park's main road where potholes collect rainwater and someone's broken-down Camaro sits on blocks. The place isn't much—rows of aging mobile homes separated by strips of gravel and dying grass—but it's anonymous. Cash rent, no lease, no questions asked. Perfect for someone who needs to disappear when necessary.
Somewhere across town, Delilah Jenkins is probably making breakfast for the man who terrorized her last night. Cleaning up the mess. Pretending everything is normal.
The thought makes me want to put my fist through the thin aluminum siding.
I've never felt protective of a specific person before. My work has always been abstract—removing threats from the world, balancing scales that the justice system has left tilted. But sixteen-year-old Delilah isn't abstract. She's real and immediate and completely innocent of everything except existing in the same house as a monster.
And I'm the reason Jenkins had an excuse to hurt her last night.
The guilt sits strange and unfamiliar in my stomach. I'm not used to feeling responsible for collateral damage, mostlybecause I'm careful enough to avoid creating any. But those house keys in my pocket gave Jenkins exactly what he needed to justify his rage, and she paid the price for my systematic planning.
That has to mean something. That has to create some kind of obligation.
I finish my coffee from a chipped mug that came with the trailer and try to focus on practical concerns. Jenkins will be hungover and mean this morning, probably looking for ways to reassert control after last night's display of vulnerability. He'll go to work wearing his badge and uniform, projecting authority to cover the fact that he spent the evening drunk and helpless on his own front porch.
Men like him always need someone smaller to make them feel big again.
Which means she's not safe. Not today, probably not tonight when he comes home still nursing his wounded pride. The cycle will repeat—him drinking, her walking on eggshells, violence erupting when she inevitably fails to anticipate his needs perfectly.
Unless I do something to break the pattern.
The rational choice is obvious: kill Jenkins as quickly and quietly as possible, then disappear. No prolonged surveillance, no elaborate psychological games, no forcing him to confess his sins on tape. Just remove the threat and move on to the next target.
But that would mean never knowing if she's really okay. Never seeing for myself that she's healing from whatever damage he inflicted last night. Never being certain that my intervention actually helped rather than just transferring her from one kind of danger to another.
The thought of walking away without confirmation feels impossible.
Which is how I find myself standing outside Rosie's Café at seven-thirty on a Saturday morning, telling myself this is recon.
The place is exactly what I expected from a sixteen-year-old's part-time job: small, homey, the kind of establishment that survives on regular customers and comfort food rather than trendy atmosphere. Hand-lettered signs advertise daily specials in cheerful colors, and the windows are fogged with steam from the kitchen.
Through the glass, I can see her moving between tables with practiced efficiency.
She's smaller than I expected, which shouldn't surprise me given what I witnessed last night. But there's something in the way she carries herself—straight spine, cautious movements—that suggests strength underneath the careful composure. Even from outside, I can see the faint discoloration along her left cheekbone where makeup doesn't quite cover Jenkins's handprint.
The sight of it makes my jaw clench hard enough to hurt.
I should leave. I should walk away right now, before this compulsion to check on her welfare becomes something more complicated. Before I cross lines that can't be uncrossed.
Instead, I push open the café door and step inside.
The bell overhead chimes, and she looks up from the table she's wiping down. For just a moment, our eyes meet across the small dining room, and something passes between us that I don't have words for. Recognition, maybe, though we've never met. Understanding of some shared experience I can't name.
She has green eyes, pale and intelligent, with the kind of depth that comes from seeing too much too young. But there's something else there too—a fierce alertness, like a wild animal that's learned to survive by reading every threat in its environment. They're not the eyes of a victim who's given up. They're the eyes of someone who's still fighting, even if the battle is invisible.
I've seen similar eyes in mirrors.
"Sit anywhere you'd like," she says, her voice carrying the practiced cheerfulness of customer service. But underneath it, I catch something sharper. Curiosity, maybe. Or the natural wariness of someone who's learned to assess danger quickly.
I choose a booth in the back corner, positioning myself where I can see both entrances and most of the dining room. Old habits. The vinyl is cracked and patched with tape, and the Formica table has rings from countless coffee cups. It's the kind of place where everything has been used hard and repaired rather than replaced.
She approaches with a coffee pot and menu, moving with careful grace. But I notice things the other customers probably miss: the way she favors her left side slightly, the subtle stiffness in her neck, the practiced way she keeps her bruised cheek angled away from the dining room's main traffic flow.
