Page 13 of Stripped
Some habits are harder to kill than others.
Chapter Five
Cole
The diner windows are fogged where the AC hits the July heat, the glass gone to something between solid and not — present but blurred, the way most things in Roan exist. I push through the door and the bell jingles once, weakly, like it's as tired of the sound as I am.
The place is half-empty. A couple at the counter nursing coffees they stopped drinking twenty minutes ago. An old man in the corner booth with a newspaper he hasn't turned a page of since I walked in. Old grease and burnt coffee and the damp of a building breathing the same air for fifty years. Vinyl booths split at the seams. The neon outside pulsing even in daylight, faint behind the fogged glass.
June's at the counter polishing silverware, not looking up. We've been doing this dance long enough that the steps are written in our bones. She doesn't acknowledge me. Doesn't need to.
I clock Tally before I'm fully through the door. Cornerbooth by the window, the one with the best lines to both exits — not an accident. Lank brown hair tucked behind her ears in that nervous, habitual way, like she's trying to keep it out of her face and her hands keep betraying her. Pale skin that hasn't seen enough sun or enough sleep, shadows under her eyes dark enough to qualify as architecture. She's gripping a coffee mug with both hands, knuckles white, and she hasn't taken a sip. The mug just sits there, full and going cold, her hands wrapped around it like it's the only solid thing in the room.
Her foot taps under the table. I can see the tremor running through the vinyl seat every half-second. She checks the door — once, twice — before I've made it halfway across the room, each time measuring the distance like she's timing how long it would take to reach it.
I slide in across from her. The vinyl's warm from whoever sat here last. I keep my voice low, the way you talk where the walls have ears.
"You came," I say.
She doesn't look at me. Her eyes are on the mug, the table, the window and the blurred street beyond it. "Didn't have much choice."
"I appreciate it."
Her foot taps. Tap. Tap. Tap. Steady, metronomic, a body keeping time because the mind can't afford to stop moving.
I lean in. "The girls, Tally. Annette. Judy. Hannah Brooks. What do you know?"
She shakes her head fast, a sharp little flinch, like I've slapped her. Her voice drops to barely above a whisper, tight and compressed. "Not here."
"Nobody's listening."
"Everyone's listening." Her eyes cut to the door again. The old man hasn't turned his page. The couple stares at their cold coffee. June polishes the same fork she was polishing when I walked in. Nothing's changed and everything is wrong. "You don't get it. You don't—" She stops. Swallows. Lower: "Not here."
I push. Careful, measured, the way you approach a wounded animal — slow, predictable, giving it every chance to bolt before you get close enough to help. "I need something, Tally. Anything. Hannah's being groomed right now. Same thing, all over again."
"I said not here." Clipped, final, her voice snagging on the last syllable like it caught on something sharp. She looks at me then — really looks, the first time since I sat down — and what's in her face isn't anger. It's fear, specific and bone-deep, the kind that doesn't come from imagining what might happen but from remembering what already did.
The diner hums around us — the AC grinding through its cycle, the refrigerator behind the counter kicking on with a rattle, June's silverware clinking in the sink. Normal sounds. A town going about its business while girls disappear and nobody asks why.
Tally digs in her jacket pocket. Her fingers shake, a fine constant tremor she's trying to hide by moving fast. She pulls out a folded scrap of paper, creased so many times along the same lines the fold's gone soft, almost translucent. She slides it across without looking at it, her eyes fixed somewhere over my leftshoulder.
"Sunday," she says. The word drops between us like a stone. "When they're all in church. Come alone."
I pick it up. Unfold it. The address is in blocky capitals, the kind you use when you want every character legible: 447 LAKEVIEW DR. The letters are shaky but pressed hard enough to emboss the back of the page. I fold it along the same crease and tuck it into my jacket.
"Who are you scared of, Tally?"
She looks at me again. Just for a second — a flash of something dry and sharp under all that fear, a glimpse of the woman she'd be if fear hadn't sanded her down to nothing. Her mouth quirks at one corner, not a smile, something harder and sadder, and for that half-second she's fully there, eyes clear, the shadows under them outshone by whatever's burning behind them.
Then it's gone. Swallowed. Her gaze drops back to the table, the mug, the safety of things that can't be hurt.
She stands. Tucks the same strand of hair behind her ear, automatic, a tic she's probably had since childhood. "Just come alone," she says, and then she's moving, sliding out of the booth fast and quiet, trying not to draw attention while getting gone as quickly as she can.
She doesn't look back. She looks at the door — once, twice — and then she's through it, the bell jingling that same tired note, and through the fogged glass I watch her cross the lot with her shoulders hunched and her head down, checking behind her like someone's already there.
I stay in the booth. The vinyl is warm where she sat. Her mug is still there, full and cold, the surface undisturbed. I move it to the edge of the table where June will find it.
The note sits in my jacket. I can feel its weight through the fabric, slight but specific. I don't take it out again. The address is already in my head, along with the way Tally moved — not the jitter of someone nervous by nature, but the conditioned terror of a person who knows exactly what happens when powerful men find out you've been talking.
