Page 8 of My Vigilante Valentine

Or… maybe it was the owner.

Luna Wilde.

Beautiful, brightly-colored, and in my mind? Nothing but a frustratingly persistent distraction.

Distractions got people hurt, and I didn’t have a rule book for my crime-fighting crusade, but if I did, that would be rule number one.

I should’ve ignored her at the bank the other day. I should’ve been entirely focused on taking down the threats like I usually was. Instead, I’d made time to notice the way she joked through her fear, like it wasn’t even an option for her to bow down to it.

I hated how much that impressed me.

She should’ve been shaken. In a situation like that, most people were.

But one thing I’d learned after months of using her coffee shop for my research? Luna wasn’t most people.

And during that heist-gone-wrong (thanks to me), she’d made jokes. Kept her wits about her. Brought light into a situation that should’ve been nothing but dark.

It bugged me.

Okay, not because she did it—but because I’d noticed, or cared.

I pushed out a long breath and forced my feet to keep moving.

Tomorrow, I’d find my lead. I’d figure out who this killer was and how to stop him before he did this again.

And, no matter what, I’d do it without thinking about Luna Wilde.

3

on the house

“Is it weird that I’m basically living off your mac and cheese this semester? Asking for a friend.”

I grinned, sliding the bowl across the counter with a flourish that suggested this was haute cuisine and not, you know, tubby elbow noodles drowning in cheesy goodness.

“Not weird at all. In fact, I’d argue it’s the peak of academic self-care.” I tapped the side of the bowl like I was presenting fine china. “Also, tell your friend they have excellent taste. If I had to live off one meal, it’d be this one for sure.”

Madison was a regular at my coffee shop, and with her messy bun, oversized hoodie, and the kind of under-eye circles that screamed “prepping for midterms” louder than her open psych textbook, she was the perfect picture of what I imagined college life to be like.

I wouldn’t know since school wasn’t exactly my jam back in the day, but hey—I did all right.

She laughed, nudging her laptop aside so she could dig into her meal. “Good, because at this point, I think I’m fifty percent human, fifty percent mac and cheese.”

“The perfect ratio,” I said, patting my hands dry on the eccentric towel tucked into my apron, a relic from the 70s with psychedelic swirls of color. “Enjoy, babe.”

I stepped away to let her eat as Wilde Brew buzzed around us—mismatched mugs clinking, conversations overlapping, and the espresso machine hissing out dramatic sighs like it, too, was overworked.

Mood.

The low murmur of the news playing from the small TV in the corner snagged my attention, and I looked up automatically. “Authorities are investigating what they’re calling a disturbing crime scene discovered late last night in Old Town. The victims, a man and a woman, were found positioned together with?—”

I clicked the power button on my remote and wrinkled my nose.

Morning coffee shouldnotinclude homicide.

And in other crime-related news, it had been three days since Chris and I got caught in that bank robbery gone wrong, and yeah, I was still losing a bit of sleep over it.

It wasn’t that I was traumatized, exactly. Though, my inability to take the situation seriously while it was happening was a decent clue that I’d been scared out of my mind when those guys with guns appeared.

---