Page 105 of My Vigilante Valentine

I wouldn’t finish that thought. I needed to stay tactical.

The Marine in me knew that emotions would only cloud my judgment, but the man in me?

The one who’d woken up to find that creepy Valentine—smelling faintly of something chemical—under his door?

That man wanted blood.

Movement caught my eye at the shop, and I screeched to a halt in front of a panicked Chris.

He was already outside, his usual tech-wizard demeanor replaced by terror.

“Tell me she’s with you,” he called out the second I came into focus. “Her phone’s off, but it last pinged near your building, so I thought?—“

I held up the card, and his words died in his throat.

“Is that…? When?” he demanded. “How?”

“Found it under my door just now. You were the last one to see her. What happened?”

Guilt flashed across his face. “We figured out he knew who you were. She said she was going to tell you what we found, and I?—”

“What did you find?” I cut in.

I couldn’t let him finish that sentence. Not if it meant hearing him say that he’d let her go off alone.

Now wasnotthe time to react to that.

I couldn’t get distracted by misplaced anger at Chris when the one Iactuallywanted to kill had Luna somewhere else.

“He’s been watching all of us.” Chris’s voice cracked. “I found surveillance photos. He knows who you are, Jax. Everything about you, going back way farther than all of this. But mostly? He knows about thetwo of you, what you mean to each other. I kept digging after Luna ran outside, and there’s stuff on there that makes me think you two are the whole point. You tried to stop him?—”

“With her by my side,” I finished, the words coming out through clenched teeth. “Show me.”

Chris nodded, and we hurried into the shop. I needed to see it for myself in case there were any clues as to who this psycho was or how I could stop him.

Luna’s cheerful Valentine’s Day decorations mocked us as Chris pulled up the photos on his laptop, and each one was like a knife to the gut.

The two of us together, looking at each other like...

Like we were in love.

Because we were.

And now he had her, all because I’d let myself believe I could have this—haveher—without consequences.

“The card,” I said, grabbing it back from Chris. The smelly paper crinkled in my grip. “Where broken hearts go to die. What does that mean?”

Chris’s fingers flew over his keyboard with the kind of speed that would’ve impressed me any other time. “Give me a second. Cross-referencing with known locations that could be tied to Valentine’s Day, hearts, The Valentine Villain...”

I paced, every cell in my body screaming at me to move, to search, to dosomething.

But the tactical part of my brain—the part that had kept me alive through countless missions—knew better. Rushing around without a plan would only put Luna in more danger.

She’d kill me herself if I got myself hurt trying to save her in that way.

“Wait.” Chris’s typing intensified. “There’s an abandoned cardboard factory on the east side. Paper goods—and it says right here a company once used it to make Valentine’s cards before they went under. Could be?—“

I was already moving. “Send me the location.”

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