Chapter Text
Neptune, California, Veronica thinks as she wheels her suitcase across the terminal. Where there’s an airport even though the town’s size alone wouldn’t be able to support it, if not for the millionaires and billionaires who demanded it. Home not-so-sweet home.
She wanders aimlessly around for a little bit. It’s a little bit because she doesn’t want to be in this town, and definitely not for this reason. Definitely not because Logan managed to get himself pinched for murder. But it’s also a little bit because the only person waiting on her is in a jail cell. After abandoning her sedate and steady existence, after booking a flight and kissing the boyfriend goodbye without explaining why she had to go, why she was leaving him behind, it felt like too much of a capitulation to tell anyone else she was coming back after she’d fought so long and so hard to not. So, she didn’t get around to calling anyone to pick her up. Didn’t tell her father she was coming to town. Didn’t pester Wallace for a ride. Didn’t text Mac. And she definitely didn’t call Weevil.
But that doesn’t stop him from standing right in front of her as she turns the corner.
She pauses when she sees him, hits herself in the back of the legs with her rolling suitcase. Curses, but low. He’s just far enough away that he shouldn’t hear, and it looks like he’s been entranced by a Cinnabun, so she thinks she might be able to creep back the way she came without him noticing. But before she can sneak off, he turns around and grins at her, wide and bright and Weevil.
“The prodigal child returns,” he calls out, and she grimaces as heads turn toward her. Weevil seems to be enjoying the attention he’s drawn to them as he saunters over, though, so she lets him have this little victory before she eyes him up and down.
He looks good. Traded his baggy jeans for ones that are just tight enough to highlight the fact that he’s a really very in shape, very good looking guy from the waist down. And, she thinks, from the waist up too. When she gets to his eyes, his eyebrows shoot up. “See something you like?”
“Hardly,” she scoffs. “More like trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing here, because it can’t be for me. I didn’t call you to tell you when I was getting in.”
“You told the boss man you were going to get here by morning. I might not be the licensed PI out of the two of us, but even I can look at flight schedules and put together the pieces, Vee.” He grins at her disbelief fondly, grins at her fondly, and she forgets why she didn’t want to know about him for nine years.
“Weevil -”
“It’s Eli now,” he tells her, and she flushes.
“Fine,” she tells him, crossing her arms. “Well, it’s Veronica now.”
His grin smooths out, and he pulls her to him. “Give me some love, chica. It’s been too long since I’ve seen you.”
She lets him fold her into his embrace, breathes in the smell of Weevil for the first time in a long time. Coffee and leather and the thing that was always just distinctly him invades her nose, and she tears up. Neptune doesn’t feel like home, but Weevil and his arms and his scent do.
“It’s good to be back,” she tells him, and when he snorts, it’s obvious that he thinks she means back in Neptune instead of back with him. “I missed you.”
“Yeah?” He releases her and grabs for her bag with one hand as he rubs his head with the other. “Good to hear. Because I thought we were tight, but then you just up and vanished on me.”
“It wasn’t you,” she tells him as he leads her out, into the world. Into Neptune proper. “I just couldn’t stay.”
“Yeah. I get you.” The sad thing is, he probably does. He probably knows why she left him behind, how she didn’t want - couldn’t have - the temptation of the world he ran with. He probably knows she sacrificed his friendship on the altar of normality.
She smiles sadly at him, and wraps her arms around herself. “Yeah.”
“After you left, I got on the real straight and narrow,” he tells her casually. “Got arrested just the once more before your dad hooked me up with another job, at his mechanic’s. I think he called in a favor or something. You have anything to do with that?”
She ducks her head down. It hurts to remember, her father calling her, telling her “Eli’s been caught with the last card machine”, and feeling the bottom drop out of her stomach. It hurts to remember telling him she wasn’t coming back, to not tell Weevil she knew. To ask her father to help him out, just this once more, please, and never pass along any information - good or bad - again.
“I may have requested one last get out of jail free card,” she tells him, and he reaches out and wraps his free arm around her shoulder.
“I was pissed as hell at you, that you didn’t come back. Sheriff told me you didn’t want to know nothing about me, so he wasn’t even going to pass my message to you on. And then, the doors just opened and I was working with my tools at a place that didn’t double as a chop shop. And it hit me: Sheriff likes me fine, yeah, but only one Mars would stick her neck out that far for me. So, thanks.” He shrugs. “I do get it, you know. Because I probably would have kept wanting to do all sorts of illegal shit if you were around to do it for, or to get me out when it came down to it. Once you were gone-gone, man, it was a wake up.”
She turns away from him, just for a second, and catches a glimpse of something shiny on a finger of the hand gripping her shoulder. “Eli Navarro, did some woman make you an honest man?”
It does a funny little thing to her stomach when he grins bashfully at her. “Yeah. I, uh, I wanted to tell you. Was gonna make you my best man, you know, if I tracked you down. Found an address for you and everything, sent you an invite through the USPS. Guess it never got to you.”
“I moved around a lot,” she offers. “I didn’t get it. I would have come, if I had.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re here now, aren’t you?”
She leans into him again, presses her side against his, and sighs. Because this is it. She’s home.
He leads her to a car, his car, and she stares down at it in confusion. “What is this?”
“This,” he says proudly, “is my baby. A 1967 Pontiac GTO. Rebuilt it from the rust up. It was my first major project for me, you know. Something I could keep. Call my own.”
She nods wordlessly, and continues to gape at it as Weevil - Eli - puts her suitcase in the back.
“You gonna get in it, or are you just gonna eye fuck it all day?”
“Both?” she answers. “It’s you, Weevil. It’s you as a car.”
He leans onto the roof and grins at her again. “And what are you driving these days, Miss Daisy?”
“I’m a New Yorker, now. My ride is the 6 train.” She thinks about her apartment on Bleecker, how she felt when she first saw it. How she felt giving up her wheels and letting someone else be in charge of getting her to her destination. How it’s still a process. She smiles at him. “It’s an exercise in experiencing a loss of control, most days.”
What’s depressing is, she’s not joking. He smirks, and opens the door for her. “You never did do too well when you weren’t the one behind the wheel.”
She scowls at him, and climbs in.
It’s strange how quickly she falls into old patterns. She wants to hate it, how she thought she was comfortable in her skin until she came home and slid into this car next to this guy, and her entire being exhaled in a way it hasn’t in years. She wants to hate how she knows she was happy, is happy, in New York, but Neptune - Neptune is still where she is Veronica Mars.
“How did you and Logan hook up, anyway?” It’s the question that has been nestled on the tip of her tongue since Logan dismissed her the night before. It kept her up, tossing and turning, before she finally had to just get out of bed and go for a run, and then pack, and then write out a list of people to ask Logan about, and then call a cab company instead of just waiting and hailing one outside of her apartment. It’s the question she refused to give voice to, when it was only Daniel asking her about why she was wound so tight.
Weevil glances over at her, and she watches his eyes crinkle. “It bother you?”
“Why would it?”
“Because.” He turns to her completely after hitting a red light. “You’re not behind the wheel.”
She huffs, and turns away from him, pretends she can’t hear him laughing at her. “Light’s green.”
Weevil taps the gas, and then tells her, “I don’t know what your dad told you, about Echolls.”
She knows he’s waiting, but she doesn’t want to say it. She doesn’t want to tell him that she blacklisted Logan too, for reasons both the same and entirely different from his own purging.
“Yeah, I guess I should have figured that,” he mutters. “He was in a bad place, after you were gone. I think he figured, whatever it was that kept drawing the two of you together would keep working it’s magic. And when you vamoosed, it kicked him in the teeth. But me, I had that one moment where you stepped in. So, I decided to pass it along.”
She draws in a shuddering breath, because she doesn’t need Weevil to tell her what she already knows about how bad Logan can - could - get. She doesn’t want Weevil to go any further.
“I told him that it wasn’t us, and it wasn’t on us that you couldn’t stay. I told him that you were a bitch, and he punched me, hard, and we fought. And then we drank. And then he’d call me when he’d gotten himself in some shit, or I’d call him when I figured he needed to get drunk and beat the shit out with someone who wasn’t going to hold a grudge. And then one day, I’m working at the garage, fixing up my baby,” he tells her as he runs his hand over the dash, “and I get this call. And it’s Echolls, looking for a guy Friday. He figured I was probably up for it. So, there it is.”
“And now you’re picking me up at the airport for him.”
Weevil laughs, and she shares in the ridiculousness of the moment. “Yeah. We’re not, you know, best friends or anything. But we’re the two who were left.”
It cuts her, deep, what that means. They were the two who remember Lilly. They’re the two who remembered her. Not as everyone else in this town did, but as she was. She hopes, anyway.
The station comes into view, and her body tightens. Weevil pulls into a space. Shuts off the car. And turns to her. “Listen, Vee, you’re still my girl. But he’s someone to me now, too. Got me?”
“Yeah.” She sits and stares ahead at the building.
“You know,” she confides in him, “I don’t know what I was more scared of, a Neptune that was exactly the same as I left it or one where everyone moved on.”
He hugs her again, and the Weevil of her memory isn’t this tactile. She can’t figure out if she pegged him wrong, or if this is a new side of him she’s missed out on for the last nine years. “Vee, we grew up. But we didn’t move on. At least, not me. And not him. You’re still someone I’m glad to know. You’re still someone I love.”
“You don’t even know me anymore,” she weakly protests, and he laughs at her outright.
“You telling me you don’t love me?” She shakes her head. “So, what’s to stop me from loving you? And I know you, Veronica Mars. You hopped a plane because a guy told you he needed you. There’s nothing more you than that.”
“What’s his bail?”
“He doesn’t have one set yet.” She watches him shift, and for the first time Weevil looks uncomfortable. “Listen, Vee, I don’t know what you know about the town any more.”
“Assume I’m Sergeant Schultz here.”
He laughs. “Alright, well, there’s a new Lamb in charge - Dan Lamb, and he’s about as big a dick as the original. And he feels about the same way toward Logan, and me, so there’s that.”
“What you’re telling me is that Logan’s not getting bail until he has to.”
“Yeah. On the plus side, I’m going to be waiting to drive your ass all around town, because you don’t have a car yet.”
Veronica laughs. “Oh, great.”
~~~
The first person she sees when she and Weevil walk into the station is Sacks, and for a hot minute she feels bad for him. But instead of showing it, she decides to go the time tested route instead, greeting him with, “Always a deputy, never a sheriff, huh, Sacks? Is it as bad as always being a bridesmaid, never a bride?”
Weevil snickers behind her, and Sacks smiles wide. Which throws off Veronica’s whole game. “Hey, Veronica! Didn’t know you were back in town.”
“Yeah,” she tells him a bit awkwardly. “I just got back. Literally. Weevil - Eli - picked me up from the airport.” She fiddles a bit and then asks the almost requisite follow up of, “And how have you been?”
“Same old, same old. You know how it is.”
“Right.” Sacks watches her benignly, and she rocks back on her heels. “So, if the sheriff in?”
“Uh, yeah. He is.” Sacks continues sitting, and Veronica nods.
“Can I see him?”
“I don’t know why you would want to do that,” Sacks tells her. “You didn’t really get along with the last one. Or, the last one named Lamb, for that matter.”
“Yeah, but I have some pressing business, so if I could just -”
“Oh, okay,” he says. “I’ll go let him know he has visiters.”
And as he leaves to do that, Veronica twists back to Weevil. “He hasn’t really changed at all.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s kind of sad, really.”
“Yeah, it kind of is,” Weevil agrees.
“You can head on back. You remember where the office is?”
“Pretty sure I do. Thanks Sacks.”
“Yeah,” the perpetual deputy answers. “Good seeing you.”
“Yeah, you too,” she says, and makes a face and Weevil.
“You were more popular than you thought,” he whispers to her, and she fake punches his arm.
“Don’t you ever say that. I always thought everyone loved me.”
He stops in front of the door, and tells her, “Here we go.”
“Away we go,” she echoes, and knocks as they enter.
Dan Lamb looks like a seedier, smarmier, version of his brother, and his lips turn back in a familiar sneer when he sees Weevil.
“Mr. Navarro. I’m pretty sure I told you yesterday that your boss wasn’t getting out of the slammer until a judge orders me to let him out. So, unless you’re going to tell me something that has you sharing a cell with him - and oh please let it be that - I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
She glances at Weevil in consternation, and he grins reassuringly back at her. “Nope. Just giving my friend here a ride. She’d like to see Logan.”
His eyes creep over her, starting from her legs and traveling on up, and Weevil tenses alongside her before not so casually slipping a bit in front of her.
“Well, hello. And who might you be?”
“Veronica Mars,” she tells him, just to see if the other Lamb passed on any tidbits. Judging by how quickly Dan goes from looking accommodating to looking surly, she thinks he had. “I’m Mr. Echolls’ private investigator. Can I see my client?”
“Didn’t think you’d ever be coming back,” this new Lamb grunts.
She raises her eyebrows, content to play this role. “Didn’t think you knew me in any way to have an opinion on that. So I guess we were both wrong. My client?”
“Don did always say you were a smart mouth,” he says, reaching for her bag.
She hands it off to Weevil, just out of belligerence. “Is that all he said about my mouth?” she asks before she walks through the door. A little bit of sass, she thinks, before she meets with the king of it himself. Walks down into the station’s underbelly, body on full alert.
“There she is,” Logan calls out from the darkness of his cell. “Riding in to save the day, like the heroes of old.”
“More like riding in to save your ass,” she retorts, and tries not to stare at him straight on as he waltzes out of the shadows and leans against the bars. Tries desperately not to think about asses at all. Veronica is almost sure he doesn’t mean it seductively, but several different long dormant fantasies are starting to surface and she doesn’t need to give them any more ammunition.
“That’s kind of like saving the day, right? I mean, I am now one of the premiere business men in this town. Saving me is basically doing your civic duty.” He bares his teeth in an approximation of a smile, and Veronica sees the rage shining through. Like Logan of old, she allows.
“It’s amazing how your ego hasn’t decreased even one iota since I’ve been gone,” she tells him dryly. “You’re a premiere business man now?”
She watches as his smile falters, as insecurity battles fury for dominance. “Uh, yeah. I thought you would know. With your tendency to, you know, stalk people.”
“I haven’t looked you up since I left,” she tells him softly, and watches him reel back from that. Physically, because Logan is nothing if not dramatic, and it comforts her that hasn’t changed. She thinks she might know what he’s thinking, that not looking him up means something different than it actually does.
“Have to say,” he mutters to the floor, “I didn’t see that one coming. Kind of explains how you didn’t know about Weevil’s employment, though.”
She bites back a question about why he still gets to call Weevil ‘Weevil’, and shrugs. “Yeah, well, clean break.”
“From everyone?”
Leaning back onto the table, she nods. “Mostly. I mean, I obviously still talk to my dad, and still see him. Am still practically co-dependent, even though a continent separates us. And Wallace, and Mac. But no one else.”
“There weren’t really a lot of other people to start,” Logan returns, and she can’t argue with that. So she doesn’t.
“You want to tell me what happened?”
“Met a girl, fell in love,” he pauses, as if he’s waiting for some reaction. She refuses to give him one. “That girl disappeared on me, so I did some drugs, got in some fights, drank, heavily, and then straightened out my life. Started actually, what was it, reaching my potential. Mac helped me put together my portfolio and introduced me to some other computer geniuses who decided to stay local, and I used my considerable funds to do some charity work. Rebuilt a community pool. Agitated for more affordable kindercare and other after school activities for low income kids. Developed a panel of like-minded businessmen and businessmen who I could bully into being like-minded, and then met a woman. A pop star. She was supposed to be an ambassador. A sexy face for a planned expansion beyond city lines. And she was - well, attractive, and I’m, well - and we started dating. And now she’s dead.”
“Thanks for the quick and dirty,” she drawls, “but I’m going to need more details about the pop star. Name, age, birth place, what your relationship was like, what her friends were like, where you two went most often, and where you were when she was killed.”
“You don’t know her name?”
“I got your call and immediately started working on getting home, so no, I don’t know her name.”
“She’s an up and coming pop star. You should have heard her hit on the radio,” Logan answers incredulously, and Veronica shrugs at him.
“I don’t listen to the radio.” No radio, no cable television, no celebrity news of any kind.
“What kind of person doesn’t listen to the radio?”
“The kind who has a subscription to Spotify and is able to curate her own playlists without having some nebulous person dictate what she listens to and when,” she answers, crossing her arms in front of her. “Now, name?”
“Her real name is Katherine. Boscove. Her stage name is Katrina Bliss.”
“Bliss?”
“It’s sexier than Boscove.”
“I suppose it is,” she tells him.
He sighs. “She was 20, her birth place was somewhere in Idaho or Indiana or Iowa, one of those ‘I’ states, and I didn’t meet a lot of her friends. I spent some time with her crew, and they’re all the usual types. You remember - they’re basically all Trinas. Or that woman who was my mom’s BFF for years before she was caught in a compromising position with dear old Aaron.”
“I forgot about that woman,” she murmurs, and Logan nods.
“I wish I could. Anyway. Kat - she liked to be seen. Photographed. Whatever. We’d go out to eat a lot. Meet up, have a meal, and then she would go off to work on her record or promotion work. We hit a couple of red carpets, and talked about seeing that new movie, the one about the end of the world?”
“There are like, ten of those out right now,” she tells him, and he laughs.
“Right, of course. Anyway, we never got around to doing that. It was nice. Simple. Sweet. She liked me, and I liked her. We weren’t at the stage yet where we were exposing our deep dark secrets,” he tells her meaningfully, “but it was - there might have been something there.”
“What about that night?” she asks, beating down the little jump her stomach did in reaction to Logan talking about another girl, hating that her stomach was still stuck at sixteen when the rest of her is considerably older. And less inclined to be affected by Logan’s - by Logan.
“She came over for a little bit. I left, and when I came back, I found her. So, I called 911 and was promptly arrested and brought here, where cell B is just not reaching the standards of accommodation it used to. And then I called you.”
She starts to nod, and stops. “Wait - if she came over to your place, why did you leave her there?”
He glares, and then fiddles with his fingers. She waits him out, just watching, until he breaks. Like she knew he would.
“We fought,” he tells her, reluctantly, and she finds herself leaning forward.
“About what?” He glares at her, and she shrugs. “I need to know, Logan. If you don’t tell me, I don’t have anywhere to look.”
“It was - she thinks - she thought - I flirt too much. With people who aren’t her.”
Her eyebrow goes up. “You probably do.”
“You never complained.”
She looks at him, this angry man who came out of the sullen and angry boy she knew. She looks at him, and then down at her hands. “Yeah, I didn’t. But I felt it.”
“Then why didn’t you - you know what, nevermind. It doesn’t matter. What matters is Kat thought that, I stormed out, and then when I came back, she was dead.” She nods at him and he leans back.
“Do you remember the time? When you stormed out?”
Logan fidgets. “Had to be after six thirty. But before Jeopardy, because that was playing when I got to the gym.”
She snickers at him watching the quiz show, and he huffs in response.
“Laugh all you want, but it’s educational, and it distracts from the actual monotony of gym life. And if I make goal or answer enough questions, I treat myself to an ice cream.”
“Amy’s?” she asks, a rush of nostalgia overtaking her.
He grins at her, and she sees phantom versions of them getting ice cream together, him buying her the kinds that would turn her tongue and lips blue while he got a ‘grown up’ flavor.
“Yeah. Amy’s.”
“So, between 6:30 and 7, then.”
“Yeah.”
“That should be enough to go on, at least for now,” she tells him flatly. “Try to not go too stir crazy in here.
Logan snorts. “Well, they can’t put my dad in as my cell mate, so I’m already heads and shoulders above my worst visit.”
“I’ll fill you in, if I find anything.”
He waves her away, and Veronica stands to leave. For some reason, she feels the need to defend this girl she doesn’t even know. So, she tells him, in a kind of non sequitur, “I didn’t bring it up because I was afraid you’d just leave. Like you did to her. But, yeah, it bothered me. Every time you’d step away from me when a pretty girl walked by, every time a girl called me your friend and you didn’t correct them, it bothered me.” She looks straight at him. “I know it’s who you are, and I know you like what you get out of it, but it was just another piece of intel letting me know you weren’t in it for the long haul. It wasn’t out of jealousy. Not entirely, I mean. It was just - I knew you were looking for something better.”
It’s a dull ache, telling him that, admitting that he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t exactly secure in their relationship. It used to be a sharper pain, a squeezing of the chest. It used to be that she worried over it. When he would leave. When he would find someone who was actually fun, or less cynical, or more experienced - in bed and other places. Someone who wouldn’t shut down. Someone who could laugh. When he did leave, it had hurt so badly she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to feel anything else but pain. And when she came to him to make it work, she had left before he could. Because he was still the guy who didn’t like her job and who would be able to look at the girl he’d slept with weeks before with nothing more than disinterest, and she was still the girl who had to solve the case in order to breathe and who needed to know who he’d been with when. Who was terrified at the idea he could hide the truth from her as easily as she could ferret it out from anyone else.
But now, as she finally looks at him head on, she doesn’t have to worry about any of that. Before, she was afraid he’d be the one to walk away, so she kept quiet. But it’s been years, and they aren’t together. He found other women to fit into his life, and she’s had other boyfriends. Now, it’s just something she can say, without worry. When this is done, she can leave again. When this is done and he walks away, it won’t be from them. It’ll just be because their reason for being around each other is gone, and they can get on with their regularly scheduled existences.
He stares back, and his eyes are as open as they were when they were nineteen, and she hates that she still envies him that openness.
“Veronica,” his voice creaks, and she ducks down to look at the floor. “When I was with you, I wasn’t looking for anyone else. And there couldn’t have been anyone better. You were the only person I saw.”
Tears she never let fall over this burn at the back of her eyeballs, and she beats them back. “It felt like you were. And, really, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Sure, it does,” he argues, because he always has to argue with her. He can’t ever let her be right. “It matters a lot. If we’d talked about this crap, we would have -”
“Broken up anyway, because we were nineteen years old, Logan. Something else would have happened. And you were who you were and I was who I was, and there were parts of us that just didn’t fit together. You know it.” He has to know it, because she swears it’s written somewhere. ‘Logan and Veronica: Too Broken to Make a Life Together’. There’s a second volume, too, called ‘Why Nineteen Year Olds Shouldn’t Date: Logan and Veronica’.
“You don’t know that.” He crosses his arms and sets his mouth and she hates him when he’s like this, because when he’s like this she feels like he’s going to be able to change her mind.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” she says quickly, “because it’s been years and we didn’t and it doesn’t matter. Because you obviously moved on. And so did I.”
He snorts, and turns away from her. “So, uh, you going to be my lawyer and my private eye?”
Just like that, he changes the subject. Throws her off-kilter, because she was expecting him to come back again, to needle her and work her last nerve until she wants to strangle him. This new Logan is a creature she doesn’t quite know how to handle, and she doesn’t like that. She doesn’t like that when she was away, he grew up on her.
“I can’t, because I haven’t taken the bar yet. And if I had, I’d still only be able to defend you in New York. So you should try to be accused of dastardly crime in New York next time.”
He throws her a soft smile, and she can’t help but smile back. “Nah, you could. I remember my Legally Blonde. You just need a licensed attorney to vouch for you or something.”
“Well, as long as we’re getting legal advice from romantic comedies, I think we’ll win this,” she tells him wryly, and resists the urge to go over and pat his arm. Instead, she coughs. “Who’s your lawyer? I’ll ask about bail.”
“Who do you think? Cliff.”
She coughs. “Cliff? Like, Cliff-Cliff?”
“McCormack, yeah. Man with a voice of melted butter? Why wouldn’t I hire him?”
“Um,” she says, “Because you’re apparently one of the wealthiest men in Neptune, sans trust fund, and Cliff is a lawyer who can be and is regularly hired by hookers?”
Logan nods. “Yeah. That’s the guy. He does good work. And I know he’s not as twisted as some of the other lawyers, because he’s got the seal of approval from one Veronica Mars. He is your lawyer when you’re in town, is he not?”
“Yeah,” Veronica agrees. “Because I know no other lawyers and he’ll work for free as long as I do him favors. That’s not a ringing endorsement.”
He presses a finger to his mouth. “So, you don’t like Cliff then.”
“I love Cliff. I just don’t think Cliff is murder trial material. And I don’t think he thinks he is either.”
“He doesn’t,” Logan confides with the grin that always made her knees weak. “He told me to hire a different lawyer. He said this was too much work for him. It makes me like him all the more.”
“Logan -”
“Veronica, I didn’t kill her. Do you believe me?”
She looks away, and breathes deep. “You know I do. But I’m not going to be on the jury. And I don’t want this coming down to an attorney who advertises on the backs of bus stops and a private eye who’s been out of the biz for almost a decade. I don’t want to screw this up for you, and I need you to not screw this up for yourself. Can you do that?”
“You’re worried,” Logan seems to realize.
She lets out a hysterical giggle. “Of course I am, Logan. I’m rusty and this is your life and if I mess up, I don’t get to see you again. And I don’t want to leave anything to chance here, and you’re leaving everything to chance.”
He presses his face against the bars. “Hey, hey. You listen to me. I have been in a lot of jams. I’ve had the high priced lawyers. And I’ve even hired a couple of PIs who weren’t you in my time, even though I was appalled when they charged me. So, I know. This isn’t a risk. Even after - everything - you still care enough about me to fly across the country. And Cliff is good enough that he won’t stab me in the back. And that’s what I need. I need people on my side who I can depend on. I’ve had those other people, Veronica. And at the end of the day, you don’t get what you pay for. I want you. And I want Cliff. And if I fry, at least I know that you were working for me and not the dollar.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” He leans back, and she attempts to not let him see her cry. “So what’s the next step?”
“I’m going to go talk to Cliff. See how far he’s gotten. You know. Preliminary work. I’ll probably be back.”
“Or, you could solve the case and get me out of here. That would work too.”
“Just so I know how that fits into your schedule.”
He smiles again, and leans against the bars. “I missed you. I’m glad you’re home.”
“Me too.” The strangest thing, she thinks, is how that’s not a lie.
~~~
“When you figure out that your little boyfriend there did his girlfriend in,” Sheriff Dan tells her with the same knowing smirk that always made her blood boil when it graced his brother’s face, “I’ll be here.”
“Will you also be here when I figure out who actually did it, so a Mars can once again solve a crime for a Sheriff Lamb? Or will you be letting Sacks take point that day?” she asks saccharinely.
Sheriff Dan scowls. “That’s never going to happen. So when you go to sleep tonight, I want you to think about the sixteen times Logan Echolls bludgeoned his girlfriend in the head.”
“Really? Because if you’re twice the sheriff your brother was, I’m still four times better than you at this. And when I bring you the real murderer, I hope you’ve got on your grovelling shoes on, because you’re going to need them for all the backtracking you’re going to be doing when it comes to clearing Logan’s name.”
She leaves him speechless as she books toward the door, Weevil trotting to keep up with her.
“Still got your issues with authority, I see,” he pants, and she sneers in response.
“Those,” she tells him, “and a whole host of others that are just raring to come out and play.”
He bumps her, and she turns to look at him as they get to the parking lot. “I’m not judging, but maybe you were a little harsh in there, talking smack about the guy’s brother. He did die, you know. A little compassion wouldn’t be out of the question, n’est ce pa?”
Thrown, she can’t help but first ask, “French, Weevil?”
“Me and the missus,” he tells her, “we honeymooned in the south of France. Provence. On Echolls’ dime.”
The reminder of Logan gets her back on track. “Is he showing any compassion for Logan? Any understanding? Because until he stops being such a smug asshole and starts working, then no, I don’t think I should be any different about his brother.”
Weevil grins at her. “I forgot about your mama bear routine when it comes to him.”
“What are you talking about?” she demands as she swings her bag off of his shoulder onto her own.
“Just that you got pretty intense there, over Echolls. Were willing to rip the sheriff a new one. And I can remember a time when I was on the receiving end of it. In fact,” Weevil continues, “I remember getting shit from you when you weren’t even that fond of Echolls at the time. Yelling at me for thinking he could possibly have killed my best friend, icing me out for burning down his house. Mama bear stuff.”
She reddens, and quickly shrugs. “So, I get a little defensive. What of it?”
“Nothing. Just find it - curious is all.” He gifts her his smuggest grin. “I also think I’m going to be winning the bet.”
“What bet?”
“Me and Echolls, we’re betting on the chances of you two hooking up. He lowballed the odds. Between you and me I think he’s feeling a little insecure. But I knew. The second you jumped when he told you to, I knew.”
“You don’t know anything,” Veronica tells him as she slides into his car, and Weevil gently knocks on the roof twice before getting in himself.
“Nah, I only watched this song and dance go down like a thousand times between you and him. I can’t figure out when the chorus comes in at all.”
“I have a boyfriend, and an apartment nowhere near here. A job, that I’m going to love. So, no. Not happening.”
“Sure,” Weevil placates her. “Of course not. Where are we headed?”
“Don’t think I’m going to forget about this, because I won’t,” she tells him, “but we’re off to see Cliff. You know -”
“Yeah, I know Cliff.” Weevil pulls out of the space, and then throws the car into park. “So, how’d he look? As good as me?”
This time when she tries to punch him, she attempts to make it hurt. At least a little.