The best words Logan could come up with to describe Roseville, Virginia were "perfectly fine." There was a small downtown, with a tiny gazebo at the center, like so many of the Middle-American towns Logan had visited on the campaign trail. There was a pharmacy, facing the gazebo, that was established eighty years ago, and a young man at the counter who had probably worked there his entire life. There was an old movie theater that looked like it was desperately in need of repairs. In the middle of a weekday, all the shops were open, but none of them had customers. Who would patronize this little town besides it's residents? Logan, he supposed. And the Gallagher Girls. But who else?
Logan didn't have time to truly consider the target market of Roseville, Virginia, because a tiny earpiece was filling his head with the voices of the entire sophomore class, and it was distracting as hell.
It was difficult to think with Abigail Cameron quizzing the other sophomores in his ear, and the girls rattling off responses with pinpoint accuracy, let alone "notice everything" as he had been instructed.
But when Abigail Cameron asked him the name of the druggist, Logan heard himself rattle off the name "Josh," even though he hadn't yet been inside the drug store.
"Good," Agent Cameron responded, seeming satisfied. "Ms. Palmetto, you just passed a house numbered 130. What's the current hair color of the woman who lives there?"
"Dark Red," Tiffany responded confidently.
After twenty minutes or so, Logan found it easier to separate the voices in his head from the voices around him, while still listening for his own name to be called. Next to him, Maddie rattled off the tag numbers of the last three cars they had passed.
Maddie accepted a fake wallet from Irene and casually slipped it into Logan's back pocket, letting her hand linger there. Then she smirked at him.
Logan couldn't decide if the smirk was about the affectionate hand-in-the-back-pocket gesture, or the fact that Maddie knew it would be a challenge for Logan to stealthily move the wallet out of his back pocket. Knowing Maddie, it was probably the latter.
But Logan wasn't the kind of person who let opportunities pass him by.
Logan placed a hand on Maddie's opposite hip and spun her to face him, then planted a soft kiss on her lips. A shiver ran through Maddie's body, and Logan felt very, very satisfied.
Then he gently extricated her hand from his pocket, palming the wallet back out.
"Your classmates are going to see us," Logan whispered conspiratorially, gently pushing Maddie away. "I thought you didn't want them to know we were dating." Out of the corner of his eye, Logan saw Casey skid to a dead stop across the street, her eyes just about bugged out of her head.
Maddie shrugged in response. "Guess that cat's out of the bag," she said calmly.
Logan couldn't hold back a smile as he noticed that his comms unit had gone silent while the entire sophomore class tried to decide whether or not Maddie and Logan's relationship was real or part of their legend.
Everyone except Tiffany, who was eyeballing a young man in front of the gazebo with dark brown hair and green eyes who didn't quite fit in. He was too old to be a student at the high school, and too young to have children in town. And he just didn't have a middle-class small-town look to him. That was the best way Logan could think to describe it. This man looked far too worldly to belong in Roseville, Virginia. He could have been a teacher at Gallagher, but the ice in Tiffany's gaze told Logan that he wasn't.
The man casually licked an ice cream cone, oblivious to all of the teenagers circling the town square. Too oblivious.
"Mad," Logan started, but Maddie was already taking his hand and dragging him over to Tiffany and Casey on the other side of the street. Perhaps she thought there would be safety in numbers.
"I'm starving," Maddie exclaimed in her best annoying teenage girl voice. "Do you guys want an ice cream? There's a soda fountain over there. I'd love to grab one right now!"
Maddie caught Tiffany's eyes and gave the tiniest shake of her head. If Logan didn't know her so we'll, he never would have seen it.
Tiffany caught Maddie's cue, and Logan did too. For whatever reason, Maddie wasn't concerned about the man with the ice cream. And Logan knew Maddie well enough to trust her on this issue.
Tiffany knew it too, and she and Casey joined them en route to the soda fountain. Along the way, Logan passed the wallet to Casey using what he thought was a pretty solid brush pass.
Maddie and Logan ordered a sundae to share, but promptly wandered down the line of shops and into the movie theater before they could eat much of it. Nothing was playing, but Maddie asked if she could see the historic screening room, and the young woman in charge, who was wearing an unbelievable amount of pink, let them into the auditorium.
As soon as "Dee Dee" (what kind of name was that anyway?) left them alone and went back to her post, Maddie dragged Logan behind the screen and through a "staff only door," down a cinderblock hallway, and out a back exit.
"Maddie," Logan started, but the look in Maddie's eyes silenced him. Logan had seen that look before. It was a look that said Maddie was trying to save his life, and he had better not get in her way.
They turned toward a small park, off the main square.
"Look!" Maddie squealed, in a voice that was totally inconsistent with the look she'd given Logan. "A squirrel! And he has such a fluffy tail !"
At Maddie's words, Logan's comms unit went silent again.
"Ladies and gentleman, there's a storm rolling in and we're going to be returning to campus a little early today," Abigail Cameron said calmly in his ear.
But Maddie was already dragging Logan to the other side of the park at breakneck speed. She practically threw him into the back of the school van, and then breathed an audible sigh of relief. 22 other girls promptly followed behind her.