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This is a bad idea.
It’s not her worst idea ever. It’s not like she’s going inside Stingers. It’s not like anyone Sorokin-shaped is likely to see her parked in the half-full lot of the shady so-called Gentleman’s club, hunched low in the driver’s seat of the Saturn, camera in hand as she waits for—something. She doesn’t know what, but expects she will when she sees it. She is... somewhat safe.
But still, it’s not Veronica’s best idea either. It lands somewhere in the middle, between breaking into a software mogul’s mansion and checking Lilly Kane’s air vents. Between following Danny Boyd into the River Styx and cutting the new kid down from the flagpole. Between dashing up to meet a murderer on the roof of the Neptune Grand and sending an SOS to the only resident of the hotel she trusted to respond. It’s just idiotic enough to be a bad idea, but not so stupid that she’s imagining funeral arrangements for herself.
Compared to some of her other ideas lately, this is downright cautious.
And maybe she can’t exactly explain why she’s doing this, why she’s dipping her toe in the investigative waters once again in such a dangerous way, stationed outside a mob-owned establishment with a bad feeling and no real leads, but she has the itch. And the itch will not be ignored.
Plus, it takes her mind off everything Piz said that afternoon.
It’s October now: a chilly, dry October. The stores are filled with Halloween decorations, football season has Hearst fit to burst with school spirit, and Neptune seems all Neptune, again. The last of the summer tourists have finally departed, but the elite elderly have yet to fly south for the cold season, leaving the town in brief reprieve. These days, Veronica focuses on school (the all-important sophomore year) and her job at the library, and she doesn’t let the (mercifully) diminishing cracks about the (not quite) sex tape get her down. She’s trying to be normal: she’s officially not taking cases anymore. Or, she's not officially taking cases anymore. There shouldn't be a difference.
The fourth anniversary of Lilly’s death was a few weeks ago, and it was worse this year than it’s been in ages. The missing her best friend still sits heavy with Veronica, a rush of longing for Lilly's vivacity, Lilly's strength, that’s fresh again somehow. Veronica knows she’s not dealing with it very well. She knows that sitting outside Stingers counts as a poor coping mechanism, as do her occasional trips to Fitzpatrick dominated neighborhoods where she’s hoping to find proof of the new sheriff’s corruption. And “poor coping mechanism" doesn't even begin to cover the incident off the PCH last night.
She hasn’t told anyone about these little excursions; they’re her dirty little secret, and it reminds Veronica of her early days investigating for her dad, when she was still sneaking cases off his desk and learning to use the Mars Investigations camera. But she understands the impulses a little better now, and she guards the secret more closely, fears it sometimes. Back then, in that first awful year after Lilly died, she cut off all her hair and stopped pretending things were okay. Now, she grows it out, her hair, and acts like she’s giving her all to her Psych classes and the job in the library. She sits with her boyfriend in his dorm and listens to vaguely melancholy indie rock songs that Piz imagines have something to tell them about pain.
And this? Bad ideas in neighborhoods where half the streetlights don’t come on at night? Well, if no one sees her, it’s like it never happened.
A group of five or six young men, all whooping and swaggering, pile out of a blue SUV across the throughway. Bachelor party, Veronica judges. They make their staggering way into Stingers, clearly several drinks in, but Veronica’s not too interested in them.
On the other hand: the middle-aged Buick driver who pulls up just after, cutting a decisive path around to the side entrance? That guy catches Veronica’s attention.
It’s easy, shockingly easy, to guess which ones are here for the strippers and which ones have other plans. She snaps a few shots of the older man, just for research purposes. Probably nothing will come of it. She’s not going to learn much from out here, nothing really useful. If only there were a way to get herself into the backroom... it’s so risky, too risky, a cover story won’t work if Gory Sorokin or one of his friends shows up. Nonetheless, Veronica feels a faint but growing inclination toward the idea of a break-in.
She’s still toying with the possibility, her brain carving out the rough outline of a plan, when she spots a large black car pulling in on the other side of the lot. The driver parks, kills the lights, and emerges, and Veronica waits to decide if he’s worth a fragment of her attention—whether he’s here for a lap dance or for something else—as she zooms in on the space where he will appear the second he closes the car door.
He comes into view, half his young face intermittently illuminated in the blinking purple neon of the Girls! sign from the club and then—more dimly—in the orange glow of the single bulb outside the entrance. It’s a shock—the familiarity of the long, straight nose, the quirk of his lips to one side as he looks down, watches the key ring twirl around his own index finger before he catches the keypad in the palm of his hand. He beeps the car locked.
“Shit,” Veronica swears and grabs for her purse. She trades the camera for her cell phone and punches that absolute moron’s speed dial.
Logan is making his way toward the strip club, in profile to her now, but he pauses when his phone rings and pulls the cell out of his jean pocket. Without the zoom lens, she can't see him as clearly, but she makes out a frown as he peers down at the caller I.D., confusion etched in every line of his body. As though he doesn’t recognize her goddamn name.
Maybe he deleted your number, says a mean little voice in Veronica’s head that sounds like no one but herself. She doesn't really believe it.
“This is Logan, with a thought for today: never make someone a priority when all you are...”
The stupid jackass just ignored her call!
Veronica snaps shut her phone, opens it again, and slams her thumb back onto the 3 button. He ignored her damn call!
Logan once more pauses, deliberates longer this time, glancing up at the club and down at his phone three times before...
“This is Logan, with a thought for ...”
She is going to kill him. Straight-up murder his thoughtless, reckless, stupid self...
She pushes her way out of the car and slams the door shut, but Logan is far enough away, and the sound of a car door doesn’t exactly send up a lot of red flags in a parking lot. He continues on his merry way towards certain fucking death.
Does he have any idea what he’s walking into?
Keeping low, Veronica slinks behind the pickup parked alongside her, and then, after a quick survey of the lot to make sure no one else is around, she sprints across the main aisle to the next row of cars. Logan isn’t exactly rushing, but he walks at a quick, determined clip, and Veronica has to hurry if she’s going to catch him before he reaches the end of the lot. Looping around to the back of the row of vehicles opposite to her own, Veronica moves as quickly as she can while staying ducked down. She goes quietly, holds her breath when she’s parallel with Logan’s strides, and then gets ahead of him: two, three, four cars, ending up between a station wagon and a battered old Lincoln, where she crouches on the asphalt and waits several seconds until Logan comes into view.
She grabs his wrist and yanks him down to the ground with her.
Logan lands surprisingly gracefully—not quite on top of her, but almost. The palm of his free right hand scrapes the cement before he catches his balance on his knees, and for a second, there’s a flash of something in his eyes. When he sees his assailant, then registers that it's Veronica, his hand—which he was in the process of raising, ready to defend himself—drops, and his eyebrows shoot up. He suddenly looks... well, that doesn’t make any sense: he looks frightened.
“Jesus Christ, Veronica, are you insane?” he demands, too loudly, and Veronica hushes him, crawling back away from the center aisle where anyone might see them. He moves with her and lowers his voice, matching her, complying with her automatically, as he continues in a furious whisper: “I almost hit you!” As he says it, he cups her face with his free hand (she’s still clutching the sleeve around the other one) and Veronica freezes, receiving another shock for the evening. She wasn't expecting all this nearness, nor the brief head rush when Logan’s stare is suddenly tender (if panicked), when his big stupid hand feels perfectly warm on her cheek. It’s all she can do not to close her eyes and lean into the touch. She resists the impulse. Barely.
But she doesn’t shake him off either. Instead, she swallows thickly and says: “Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned about thinking before you hit people.”
Logan doesn’t take the bait. “Lesson learned,” he mutters. He stays put while he gathers himself, brushes his thumb once over her cheek, and then (unfortunately) drops his hand and repositions himself, so he’s sitting against the driver’s side door of the station wagon, legs bent at the knee. Veronica gives him a more thorough once-over now: he's wearing dark jeans, tennis shoes, a maroon t-shirt she always liked on him, and a black cotton military jacket she's never seen before. Conclusion: Logan looks good. Which—tells her nothing. Unless he's here to meet a date. That strikes her as unlikely. Veronica releases his arm and sits down on the ground beside him. “You might want to take a brief seminar on not besieging people in dark parking lots,” he grumbles, tilting his head back against the car and closing his eyes.
Her brain no longer on the foggy side from the unexpected Logan proximity, Veronica remembers where they are and why they’re there, and she turns to glare at her companion: “You ignored my calls!” she accuses, and Logan snorts.
He doesn’t open his eyes, but he’s smirking joylessly when he says: “I should’ve known you weren’t just checking in.”
Veronica folds her arms over her belly and turns back to stare at the tires of the beige, mud-splattered Lincoln across from them. “Well it wouldn’t have mattered if I was, you’re screening my calls apparently now.”
“Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option,” Logan recites. The quote from his voicemail. There’s an unpleasant squirming sensation in Veronica’s stomach, but she doesn’t give any outward reaction.
“Yeah, I know, I heard. Twice.” She angles herself toward him again, feeling a bit silly with all this twisting back and forth, but she can't help herself: “What the hell are you doing here, Logan? Don’t you know who owns this place?”
Logan’s eyes pop open and he nods in the general direction of the club, mostly obstructed as it is by the old town car. “What? This place? I have no idea, Veronica. I’m just following the sign. Y’know, I saw the lights from the road and the punctuation after ‘girls’ just added such enthusiasm to the thing...”
Veronica rolls her eyes. “Oh, I see, you’re here for the strippers, and not for the Sorokins’ high-stakes, backroom poker game. By all means, carry on.”
“Strippers? Now wait a minute, the sign clearly says ‘girls,’ it doesn’t say anywhere that they’re strip...”
“Logan, be serious.”
Logan lets out a whistling breath. “Our mutual friend has a flunky who likes to sit outside my Victorian Lit class. For the last couple of weeks, old Eastern Promises has kindly been inviting me to the game here.”
“Gory’s not supposed to go after you,” protests Veronica at once, “His cousin’s supposed to make sure!”
Logan stares at her. “Veronica,” he begins slowly, “did you make a deal with the mob?”
“No.” She takes an interest in her hands, which are pale and a little dirty as she wrings them together. “I had Jake Kane do it.”
Logan continues to gape for a few seconds, and then he begins to chuckle. “You are—I don't even know what you are. My vocabulary doesn't cover it. I'm not sure the English language covers it. There's probably something in Swahili.”
“It’s not really a deal,” Veronica goes on, more confidently, “It’s light blackmail, at worst. I just... arranged for Jake Kane to let it slip to Gory’s dad that the perverted bastard is running his mouth about his family’s more... legally suspect activities, and after that, the Sorokins were eager to keep Gory on a pretty tight leash. I know for a fact they put the kibosh on any more brawls with you.”
"What a shame, I was really looking forward to our dance-off." Logan’s eyes narrow. “Arranged?” he echoes her term, and Veronica sighs.
“I told Jake that the Sorokins knew about the hard drive...”
“What hard drive?”
Oh, right. "Um... long story, but I... basically, I gave the impression to Jake Kane that the Sorokins knew that Gory had bragged about the family business in less than secure quarters, and that he—that Jake should make peaceful overtures, or the Sorokin clan might not be too thrilled in their son’s choice of wealthy benefactors, and in the process...”
“Jake told the Sorokins what his son had been up to without implicating you at all, I get it.” Logan nods slowly. “Nicely done.”
“Apparently not, if Gory’s still after you. What do you mean he 'invited' you to the poker game?”
“He sends some guy around to glare at me. For the last couple weeks he's been telling me to stop by here. Not sure why... it's been months since I've had such hoodlums after me, so I'm a little rusty, but I was thinking he’d use it as an excuse to corner me in an alley and work me over with his cronies...” Veronica chews on her lip to keep her face neutral, “But if I’m supposed to be off-limits, maybe he’s got something more elaborate planned. Frame me for cheating in the game or something, so his family does the honors for him.”
“The honors?” Veronica smacks his arm. “Logan, this isn’t the PCH bike club, they’re not going to tape you to the flagpole and call it a day! They’ll kill you! They are scary people...” She thinks of Gory’s story and the woodchipper and figures she should close her mouth before tragedy befalls her new jeans.
Logan doesn’t respond for a minute, and when he does, there’s no fight in his voice: “So what are you doing here?”
Damn it. “What do you think? I’m working.”
“I thought I heard that you were on the straight and narrow,” Logan says dubiously, and Veronica doesn’t know why it sets off all her defensive instincts.
“I’m just taking a couple of pictures. In case I need leverage again. And,” she pokes his shoulder, “since you’re so eager to play with mobsters, I probably will need it.”
“It’s not your job to...”
“It wasn’t yours either,” Veronica interrupts, and then they’re both quiet for a few seconds, watching one another a little too intently. “Logan,” she begins again after a while, “why did you come here?”
“I just told...”
“But why did you show up? So Gory’s harassing you, you didn’t have to walk straight into the trap, even if you thought he was just going to beat the crap out of you.”
Logan sighs, replies in a mumble: “I don’t know, I just figured it was better than waiting around for the other shoe to drop. I hate the waiting, and that creep he sends to keep an eye on me is just...” He shakes his head. His left wrist is propped up on his knee, fingers splayed, while the palm of his right hand lays flat on the fingertips, stretching them back as far as they’ll go. He keeps his eyes there. “I’m hoping, I don’t know, he gets a few good punches in, takes my money, and feels enough like a tough guy to leave me the fuck alone for a while.”
“And what if he kills you?” Veronica demands, but Logan rolls his eyes.
“Well then I’m dead.”
Her chest constricts painfully, and she falls back against the car. She aches down to her bones, but it lends a good amount of venom to her tone when she retorts: “Welp, there’s that rich boy death wish again. I was wondering when it would resurface.”
“It's not a death wish,” Logan snaps. “I have back-up.”
Veronica sits forward and turns her head in all directions, looking around incredulously. “And they’re where, exactly? They don’t seem to have noticed you vanishing into a line of parked cars.”
“Well I couldn’t bring them, could I? But if I don’t check in by midnight, they’ll call the cops...”
“Logan, the sheriff’s department doesn’t come here, don’t you...?”
“Yeah, well, they’ll show up when it’s the establishment calling to say the crazed son of a late B-lister is drunkenly harassing the dancers, and to please send a squad car as quickly as possible...” He smiles a little at her, and Veronica really exerts herself not to respond in kind. But she has to admit:
“That’s... not the worst plan.”
“High praise.” He bows. "Many thanks."
“I mean, it doesn’t beat, say, not playing poker with people who want to kill you, but...”
"Well where's the fun in that?"
There's at least one flaw, though, she must point it out: “Do you really think Dick can pull off a con like that? What if he gets too drunk and forgets to call the cops?”
“I didn’t say Dick was my back-up.”
“Then who is?”
“None of your business.”
Veronica scowls. Mostly because she’s genuinely hurt that he didn’t ask her to do it. “I do a pretty convincing Russian accent,” she complains feebly, and Logan's head whips around to face her. “I’m just saying, you could’ve asked.”
“Calling in favors doesn't really jive with being permanently out of your life,” says Logan, surly.
That stings. Fuck him, honestly. Seriously, can’t he ever just let her have anything? “I was pissed,” she bites at him, “And justifiably so, I might add.”
“And I’ve just—what? Missed all the calls since you cooled off? You lost my number? The Grand hasn’t patched you through on the landline, is that it?”
“Well you missed two calls tonight,” snaps Veronica, which doesn’t really answer his question or negate his point. He refuses to let her have that cheap-shot too, and he continues to watch her expectantly, because if she can demand that he keep her posted, he can demand an explanation for why she doesn’t plan to reciprocate. “Piz...” she begins, faltering, and Logan nods: all the explanation he needs.
“And how is good old Straight and Narrow?”
Glowering: “Does that make you crooked and thick?”
“Well I’ve never gotten ‘crooked’ before, but ‘thick...’”
“Oh shut up." But she’s trying hard not to laugh—failing, too. They both are, so it’s another few seconds before Logan sobers and presses her again.
“Seriously, though. Where’s your back-up?”
“Curled up on a rug with a bone right now, probably.”
“And what about your dog?”
“Logan.”
“Well stop lobbing them over the plate then!” Logan argues, like it’s all her fault. He frowns. “What? So you won’t let Piznarski wingman for you either? What about the rest of Team Mars?”
Veronica does her best not to make a face, and she has no idea how successful she is, because the idea really is ridiculous to the point of idiotic. Piz would be about as useful for that kind of back-up as Mac would be... and probably less willing to use a taser. She’s not going to drag him out here just because he’s got male reproductive organs. He wouldn't have any interest in this scene anyway. But it never even occurred to Logan that anyone would reject the opportunity to back up Veronica Mars.
She shifts to sit at another angle; the asphalt is incredibly uncomfortable—and probably not the safest of places, now that she thinks about it. The pair of them are well invisible from the club door, talking quietly enough that even if someone steps out for a cigarette, as several of the customers and employees alike have done since Veronica arrived an hour ago, they’re unlikely to overhear the conversation. Still, someone could walk by at any time. She’s a little surprised their privacy has lasted this long, actually.
“Veronica,” Logan prompts. He wants an answer for why she’s here alone tonight, and she doesn’t have one—doesn’t have a good one, anyway, so she deflects with another hard truth:
“I think Piz is pretty much over it, anyway,” she non-explains.
Logan blinks, confounded. “He dumped you?”
“Not yet. But he—he said some stuff, and he wants to ‘have a talk’ tomorrow, so it figures...” She shrugs. It hurts. Not as much as it should, but it's not her favorite feeling in the world. She likens it to an emotional splinter. Logan sits in stunned silence, and Veronica raises her eyebrows. “What’s so surprising about that? You dumped me once, too.”
(That one still smarts. Bad.)
“Well,” Logan clears his throat, “Sure, but I could do better. Piz? You’re clearly out of his league.” Veronica elbows him in the arm, and Logan smiles weakly. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much if I were you. It’s pretty hard to quit you.” Her heart rate quickens exponentially at that, and even more when he takes her hand from where it rests on her knees, making a big show of looking it over.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking for all the poor bastards you got wrapped around these guys...” He wiggles her fingers. “If you look carefully, there’re telltale signs.” He pinches her pinky, “Piz...” Ring finger, “Wallace...” Index, “Is this one for Weevil or your dad?” Veronica jerks her hand away.
“I think Piz is safe from my clutches,” she tells him. “He says I’m 'cold.' And secretive.” Veronica isn't sure what she's expecting Logan to say to that, and he doesn't seem to have a response anyway, but still she finds herself glaring at him: “Well, gee, don’t rush to my defense, I might get the wrong idea.”
“Not cold,” he says softly. “The secretive thing isn’t exactly easy.”
Veronica nods and swallows the lump in her throat.
I love you, Veronica, do you love me? Logan asked her, once upon a time. That’s the big one, really, as far as it goes with secrets. She kept it, always keeps it, cards to the chest, never give anything away, Veronica, never let him have that. She needed it, needed that power, felt the comfort of security whenever there was any indication that she had him fooled, but then hated when he doubted her, because how could he not know? Her poker face was never that good, not for him, he saw straight through her all the time, so why did he need more? Why was he always demanding more?
Piz is right about her. She's cold.
She’s cold and she's sick, and she's getting worse. She doesn't know how to stop herself. Every time she tries to be better, tries to be the normal girl, the perfect college student, it just get worse. She does something like this, camps outside a Sorokin hangout, puts her life in peril for something—something she doesn’t even understand. She’s trying to prove something to someone and she doesn’t know what or who, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to do it, but she knows that she will, knows that she has to...
“I drove out up the PCH yesterday,” she begins, eyes downcast, and the absurdity of telling Logan this story here, on the ground of a strip club parking lot, occurs to her only briefly. If no one sees her, it’s like it never happened, but Logan has seen her now, so she might as well give up the game already. Logan might understand, and even if he doesn't, she needs to tell somebody. “I was just going for a drive, I wasn’t going anywhere. But I went past that bar... out, just before Cliffside Heights—the biker bar, where they don’t I.D., and I don’t know what got into me, but I pulled over and went inside. I didn’t even want to drink or anything, I just went in and ordered soda and sat there. Nothing really happened, you know, Wednesday night isn't very exciting. I—I just hung out. No one bothered me, but then, right before I was going to leave, there were these two guys going out the back way, dragging this other guy, this little guy, with them, and I got up and followed them out to the parking lot.” Logan watches her, silent, impassive, waiting: “They didn’t see me, they were too busy throwing the little guy around, and I stood out behind the dumpsters, and I watched them. After a while, the guy was on the gravel, and they were cussing him out about—I don’t even know, actually.” Veronica frowns. “I could’ve called the cops or told the bartender or something, but I...” She blinks rapidly, pushes through the fear that prickles at her when she recalls: “I went out, right up to the two guys, and I acted really drunk. I acted like I was cheering them on. And then I asked if they wanted some coke, and I got really flirty...”
She remembers running her hands up along the zipper of the one guy’s leather jacket, his blue eyes darkening at the sight of her—how he smelled of cigarettes and whiskey and old, set-in sweat, and the combination made her nauseous. More than anything, she’d wanted to reach into her bag and grab her taser and see this guy on the ground, but there were two of them, that wasn't the right play here, so she only smiled, batted her eyelashes, and asked if the two big strong men wanted to meet her in the men’s room for a bump of cocaine.
“And the little guy ran away while I was talking, got in his car and took off, and I told the other two I had to get the drugs from my car so I went around to the other side of the building, where I was parked, and I guess they were okay with waiting for me, because I got away.”
Logan hasn't moved, but his expression has warped slowly. Creases have appeared on his forehead, the line of his mouth subtly slopes downward now, and a fear that borders on pain shines in his eyes so that Veronica can only match his stare for a second before she has to look away.
“You had time to call the police?” Logan begins after a long, heavy pause, and Veronica nods: “Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” she confesses. She doesn’t understand it, but something’s been happening to her lately. No, not just lately, for a long time, for a year or more. She didn’t call the police when she suspected Cassidy Casablancas; she sought him out solo. She didn’t call for help when she figured out where Mercer was headed; she jumped into the intended victim's bed. She didn’t report the clear violation that was the (not really a) sex tape, but snuck into Jake Kane’s house to investigate for herself. And rather than reporting Gory Sorokin even to the school, so that at least Hearst would expel him, she went to his family, to the damn Russian mob, and let them deal with him. It’s been building for so long, she has to do something, has to learn to ask for help, but every time she does—
She thinks of her dad in the hospital, bruised and burned after he walked through the flames to save her from Aaron Echolls. She hears the gun go off on the roof of the Grand, remembers Beaver's bullet aimed at Logan. She thinks of Wallace in that shock collar, Sheriff Van Lowe, Gory Sorokin’s “You’re gonna die...”
“I don’t know,” she says again. It’s a nice little encapsulation of her life right now.
Logan nods. Neither speaks for a long time. A minute passes, two—Veronica stares straight ahead at the muddy hubcaps on the Lincoln; Logan peers up at the unlit streetlamp and, past that, the stars. Then, he exhales and lowers his eyes to Veronica again.
“Well, we can’t sit here forever,” he says, and pushes up to his feet, brushing off his jeans. He stands over her for a second, then extends his hand to her. It’s the one he stopped his fall with—red and a little raw on the palm, lightly dusted in dirt from the ground.
“Are you going inside?” she asks doubtfully, meeting his eye.
Logan glances back over his shoulder to the club (briefly, his face glows purple), and then he looks back to Veronica and shakes his head. “No.” She lets him help her to her feet. Then, she’s two for two, because she lets him walk her to the Saturn.
She left the window rolled down, she realizes, as she climbs into the driver’s seat. Logan sort of drapes himself over the open window frame, arms crossed, elbows sneaking into the car. He cocks his head to one side, amused, like he knows what she’s thinking about the window.
“It’s not even close to my most reckless move,” Veronica remarks dryly.
“Are you going home?” he asks. Veronica drops her gaze for a moment, then shakes her head. “I’ll stick around for another hour. See if I can get any good shots.”
Logan tenses. His jaw clenches, and he inhales through his nose. She wants to say something nice, some promise—she’ll stay in the car, she’ll be careful, she has her taser. But then Logan relaxes again. His shoulder sag, his mouth softens into almost a smile, and he reaches out to take Veronica’s hand from where it’s resting on the steering wheel. She lets him. Three for three.
Her heart beats in staccato rhythms again, she's probably beet red, as Logan slowly extends each of her fingers, flattens her hand gently, thumb in her palm, and then, one by one, folds each of her fingers down again—all except the middle. She’s sitting there, flipping him off by his volition, not hers, and he smirks at her.
“This one,” he says. Veronica blinks, uncomprehending at first. Then she catches on; he’s assigning himself a finger to be wrapped around.
“Really, Logan.” The smirk widens to a grin that threatens to make Veronica smile too, and she shakes her head, withdrawing her hand; “You’re so weird.”
The grin becomes laughter, and Logan grabs his sleeve in his palm: “You’ve got dirt on your face,” he tells her, brushing it away. It’s from his hand earlier, when he first hit the pavement.
“You got dirt on my face,” she corrects, and Logan sticks out his tongue, which seems like an invitation Veronica wishes she were in a position to accept.
He finishes with her cheek and taps the tip of her nose with his index finger. “Ambushed me,” he reminds her.
"Saved your life," she counters.
"You say 'potato...'"
Logan straightens up. He removes his arms from the car and stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jacket; he’s going to leave now. Veronica wishes he wouldn’t, but she doesn’t ask him to stay. He shrugs his shoulders, walks backwards a few steps and then dips forward, moving around the front of her car. He circles around to the passenger side, and Veronica nearly jumps when he pulls the door open and hops onto the seat beside her.
He doesn’t say anything and neither does she. Rather, he closes and locks the door, and then leans back against the car seat, reaching down and pulling the seat lever so that it falls to the reclining position. Then, he throws his feet up onto the dashboard and extracts his cell phone from his pocket.
Veronica considers him for a moment.
“Weevil,” she realizes suddenly. Logan looks up at her, the screen of his cell casting half his face in a white glow, leaving the other half in shadow. “Weevil’s your back-up." It’s not a question; she already knows. Logan grins and winks, and then returns his attention to his phone.
“You could've asked me," she reminds him, "You can ask me, I mean. Next time." Logan stills, doesn't reply at first, but then he turns his chin toward her and nods.
“Okay."
“You're not..." She gathers her wits, and seriously, going after those thugs at the bar was easier than this: “You're not just an option."
"Okay," he says once more. Veronica nods and scoots lower in her seat, aiming the camera toward the club again. They sit in silence, Logan texting—probably calling off the dogs—and Veronica surveilling the entrance of Stingers. It's comfortable, the quiet between them, as they carry out their own orders of business. There's always something.
After a while, Logan, with his thumbs working quickly over the keypad, asks: “Got any snacks?”
He probably knows that she does.
“Goldfish crackers in the back,” Veronica replies. Logan finishes his text, tosses the phone in a cup holder and twists his torso around, rummaging for the crackers like an impatient child on a road trip.
“You have so much crap back here,” he whines, "You aren't living in here, are you? Should I be donating to the Habitat for Veronica fund?"
And god, he's such a nuisance sometimes, but Veronica lets him stay. She's glad he's here, she wants him to be. For safety, sure, but mostly for the company. She doesn’t feel cold with Logan. With Logan, she feels—
Well anyway, she reflects, when Logan finally locates the goldfish ("The snack that smiles back!" he sing-songs at her) and pours a sizable portion into the waiting palm of her hand—anyway, a wingman in the front seat isn’t her worst idea ever.