I don't own Veronica Mars. This is set in the time of Season 1.

Hope you guys like the fic!

Prologue

On the outside, it seemed like the perfect plan.

Oh sure, they had heard rumors about the girl being the daughter of a P.I. An investigator who was good with a gun, and an even better tracker after all his years on the force. They knew several people who had been put away by Keith Mars, and it seemed even better then. The plan was foolproof, so why not also get the added benefit of pissing off the most hated P.I. in town? Hell, by kidnapping his smart mouthed daughter, they'd be heroes.

But people just kept warning them. Don't trust the girl, everybody said. She's dangerous.

She was five foot one. If you had tripled her weight, it couldn't have matched up to their combined ones. Her muscle mass was virtually non existent. The only problems were the taser and the dog. Knock her away from the taser, drug the dog. Easy.

But still the warnings kept coming. She was a spy for her father. She was responsible for solving at least half the cases that came their way. She had learned everything she knew from him. And her father adored her.

It wasn't as though they had been the first to think of kidnapping the daughter. Keith Mars had been singlehandedly responsible for putting away some of Neptune's most elusive criminals. Most of them had thought of grabbing the kid every once and awhile. Hide her away, watch Keith Mars sweat for a change. But no matter how many times they had said they were going to do it, nobody ever got around to it. Why?

Keith Mars scared the shit out of most of them.

He had put away criminals, tracking them endlessly and waiting for them to slip up, make a mistake. He was always there when they did. And that was without the added factor of taking away the most important person in his world.

There were rumors once that someone had tried to grab her when she was 5 years old. Trying to hold her hostage to get a lesser prison sentence for their brother. At age 5 the girl had screamed so loudly the entire neighborhood was outside in less than a minute, and the kidnapping was impossible. Keith Mars had found the man two hours later, and nobody heard from him again.

He was probably just in solitary, away in a prison somewhere.

Probably.

But those were just rumors, and Drew and Nick didn't believe any of them. Besides, even if they were true, Keith had been kicked out of the police force. He didn't have half the resources that he used to. The fact that he was a P.I. now actually helped, as it require him to leave his daughter alone for long hours at a time. Days even.

And the girl was the easiest target. Duncan Kane was too well surrounded constantly. By security, by family, by friends. Breaking into his house would be like trying to storm a fort. Taking the girl would require them to just kick in a weak door in a seedy neighborhood and grab her. They'd drag her out, take her away, and make a very public demand for money.

Jake Kane would have to pay up, even if he didn't give a rat's ass about his mistress' kid. Public approval would fall once people realized that Jake Kane had an affair with Lianne Mars. Public approval would plummet if he refused to pay his own daughter's random.

He'd pay the ransom, they'd get millions, and they'd figure out what to do with Veronica Mars later. If she behaved, they'd probably return her in one piece.

Probably.