Page 34 of My Vigilante Valentine

She laughed, the sound filling the car in a way that was both irritating and… decidedlynot.

“Okay, but, important question,” she said, leaning forward. “Do we get code names? Because I feel like that’s standard vigilante protocol. In the movies, anyway. Also, should we have a secret handshake?”

I gritted my teeth and kept my gaze locked ahead.

I’d crack if I looked at her.

“No code names. No handshakes.”

She sniffed. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the parapet this morning.”

“The para-what?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

I shot her a look. She grinned wider, like whatever she’d said was a joke she refused to let me in on.

Her energy was infectious.

It was like a song you didn’t want to like—especially when it got stuck in your head—and then you found yourself humming it all day because it really was kinda catchy.

I hated it.

Mostly.

Because deep down, some traitorous part of me craved the way she made me feel.

Alive. Connected.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

* * *

The truck hummed softly as it idled. We were parked across from a warehouse that looked like it had been abandonedsometime around the dawn of time, with rust creeping up its metal siding and paint flaking off the signage.

The crumbling exterior was practically a neon sign on its own, calling to all of the dumb crooks in this city that it would be the perfect place for their secret bad-guy meetings.

I adjusted my night vision binoculars, scanning the perimeter.

Nothing, yet, but this was the part I liked—the quiet before the storm. It gave me time to focus on my target, quiet my mind, and make plans.

Except, of course, with Luna taking up more space than just the passenger seat. She was in my head, too, and her coffee and vanilla scent was firmly in my nose.

And now, I realized, it’d be embedded in my leather seats.

Perfect.

She shifted for the third time in as many minutes, the crinkle of a snack wrapper breaking through the silence.

I shot her a look without lowering the binoculars.

She froze mid-crinkle, her hand buried in a bag of what looked like pretzel sticks. “Want one?”

I sighed, returning my attention to the warehouse. “We are observing. Quietly.”

She popped a pretzel into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. After a beat, she used another one to point at a crow lurking on the top of the warehouse’s slanted roof.

“And here we have the elusive, wild pigeon,” she whispered—with a terrible accent—as if narrating for National Geographic. “Observe as he tries to blend in with the shadows in his black disguise, likely part of a criminal seed-smuggling ring.”

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