Page 28 of Carved

"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 shecan 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.Reallyunderstand 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.