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“I’m not going to give you his name.”
He pulled his lip between his teeth. “Luna Payne. Senior year. Won’t be difficult to find the name of your school, and each football team has only one quarterback.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked with a shaky breath.
“Luna?” My bodyguard’s voice sounded through the night.
I stared at the Vigilante, whose words sent ripples of confusion through me. Was he truly longing to avenge my honor? The very notion of it made no sense, but beneath my disorienting emotions, a steady beat of caution throbbed in my mind. Reminding me that I was cornered in an alley with a confessed serial killer.
Be smart, Luna. Don’t fall for his…manipulation, or whatever this might be.
“I’m over here!” I shouted. “In the alley!”
The corners of the Vigilante’s mouth rose higher. “You know I rather enjoy this cat-and-mouse game we have going on here.”
Anger shot to the front of my emotional line. “That makes one of us.”
“Well”—he took a step back—“I do hope you’ll consider what we discussed about justice, Ms. Payne.”
“Luna?” My bodyguard’s voice appeared at the entrance to the alley. I made the mistake of looking over at him, and in that moment, the Vigilante ran to the other end of the passageway. Vanishing in the shadows before I’d had the chance to stop him.
“Who the hell was that?” my bodyguard asked, his hand on his gun, watching the Vigilante disappear.
“A guy that could’ve ended me after his diversion,” I said, fear sharp in my tone.
“Diversion?”
“Where’s the mugger?” I asked.
My bodyguard tightened his jaw, his voice tight as he said, “Detained. Police are on the way, but we can’t wait for them. We need to leave. Now.”
“Why?”
He took a beat, and his tone dropped. “There’s been a break-in.”
CHAPTER33
Luna
“How did he get past the security system?” Hunter demanded. Still wearing his custom-tailored suit with a bright red tie from his day at work, he paced my trashed living room while Sean leaned against my dining room wall, watching security guards, Detective Rinaldi, and other police officers sift for clues.
My once-cozy cottage now looked like a battlefield. The drawers and cupboards in the kitchen were open, dishes and silverware scattered across the countertops like casualties of war. I had already been in my bedroom, where my pearl-white nightstand, which always held books for easy reading when I turned out the lights, had been ransacked. Its wooden drawers hung open, and the ones in my bathroom lay strewn across the floor, their contents thrown across the porcelain tile.
Hunter shoved a hand through his hair as he glared at his lead security officer, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest. It was the G.I. Joe look-alike with buzzed hair, a square jaw, and bicep muscles that could probably bust a human skull just by clenching. I’d learned his name was Adam, but based on his appearance, I would have expected it to be more like The Crusher or something.
“He broke a window,” Adam said.
“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.” I was trying not to take my anger out on the wrong people, but Hunter had filled me in on the alarm tied to the security cameras. “But I thought the security system had some sort of a trigger to it, so that if anybody broke in, it would signal an alarm, and police would rush to my cottage.”
“It does. And we arrived on site within fifty-three seconds of the alert, but the perpetrator was already gone. We set up a perimeter to search for him, and we immediately mobilized local authorities.”
The cottage was no more than a thousand square feet, so it wouldn’t take more than fifty seconds to do this level of trashing here. Andtrashingwasn’t the right word. It was clear they were looking for something, going through as many drawers and cabinets as they could before running out of time.
“Well, it’s a really good thing she wasn’t home when it happened. It’d have taken a fewsecondsto kill her!” Hunter shouted.
“Hunter…” I couldn’t blame him for being angry. I was, too, on so many levels, but Adam was on our side here.
“It’s fifty-three seconds too late,” Adam agreed. “Unfortunately, no security team, unless they are positionedinsidethe premises, can respond here in less than fifty seconds. Which is why we’ve always recommended that Ms. Payne not stay here alone.”
