Part 9

Around the table they sat amidst files and pictures and post its with notes hastily scribbled on them—Keith Mars, Duncan Kane, Wallace Fennel and Logan Echolls. The air around them was tightly strung with tension that emanated from the two men who had long been the closest friends in the state. Duncan would often glance up at Logan as the other scoured through the clues available in front of them.

"I can feel it," Logan mumbled. "Come on, Cynthia Lattimer. Where are you?" he whispered, having found out the fake name given to Veronica when she was still in hiding together with Wallace. "We're getting so close I can taste it."

Duncan's eyes flickered over to the older man, who smiled as if he was pleased with the comment. "Don't you just feel it throbbing in your veins, Logan?" Keith asked, clearly impressed by the methodical way that Logan assessed each picture, and paired it with the category partitions provided by the post its. "I have to say that I never thought you'd make a good PI. Too hotheaded."

"Time has mellowed me, Keith," Logan said.

Duncan shook his head and focused on the multitude of things that just did not make sense to him.

"Maybe it's the case. I doubt I'd have the patience to solve anything else."

"You did take your time to come forward in this search, didn't you, Logan?" Duncan interjected. "But we all understand given the fact that you were releasing projects left and right. What is that called again—evasion?"

Wallace almost growled at the Kane heir for disrupting what could have been a perfectly peaceful chore. "If you two are going to start a fight, do it another time. Agent Dawson's about to arrive. I put my neck on the line for him to agree to this meeting so you two better play mature people doing mature work."

Logan moistened his lips and looked at his former best friend from the corner of his eye. "I called it surviving."

"You survived the hell out of a lot of starlets," was Duncan's comment.

Keith sighed. "Duncan, please just—"

"What they did to me was so much worse that this," Duncan said in light defense.

"Let it go, Keith." Logan smiled in the same way he always did when he was trying not to let his emotions control him. "He's right."

Wallace looked up at the door a split second before they heard the bell. He turned to Duncan specifically and warned, "Not a word." He then proceeded to the door to let the guest in. "Agent Dawson, thanks for coming." He shook the hand of the agent and escorted him inside.

"Well Wallace, given the fact that you left our protection without informing us, and misleading us in the whereabouts of the kid, we felt that we needed to run when you came calling," the agent said derisively.

"Well now, Agent Dawson, no need for sarcasm here. We asked you to come because we had questions for you." When the agent nodded curtly, and took a look at the occupants of the room, Wallace gestured to each one. "This is Mr Keith Mars, Veronica's dad."

"The PI? Why don't you try looking for Cynthia Lattimer then? You're good at tracking people, or so I've heard."

"I've tracked her down. Cynthia Lattimer lives in an old age home in Florida. You and I both know the first thing you would have done when Wallace split was change everything pertaining to any witness that had any interaction with him." Agent Dawson nodded in appreciation of Keith's knowledge.

"Duncan Kane."

"The fiancé," the agent said, for the first time his lips curving to a smirk.

"The one you framed for murder," Duncan said testily.

The agent chuckled. "Fair enough. If we wanted to really frame you though, you wouldn't be running free."

"Depends if your definition of running free is being trapped for two years in a hell of suspecting yourself of murder."

The agent turned to the other occupant in the room. Wallace said, "Logan Echolls."

"And he's needed in this conversation why?"

"Because you owe me," replied Logan. "Now where is Veronica?"

Agent Dawson turned slowly to Wallace. "Good job, Mr Fennel. You've run away and now you've broken your oath to keep safe all of the people who were left."

Keith shook his hands at the agent. "Wallace had very little to do with the investigation as we embarked on it. He merely confirmed what he had already been on the verge of uncovering." The older man walked over to the agent and laid a firm hand on his shoulder. "Now would you care to tell us where you hid my daughter, because she needs to come home now?" Keith's voice was calm and soft, yet held a touch of danger as he demanded for information.

"So," the agent said, looking at Wallace, "this is the purpose of your call. Did you people actually think we would reveal such privileged information because you've pressured us into doing so?" The agent moved to leave.

Logan finally sprung up from his chair and dove to the agent, grasping his shirt. "Where is she? Veronica needs to see her daughter."

The agent grasps Logan's wrists and disentangles his clothes from the young man's fingers. "The nobody suddenly talks." Agent Dawson put on his firmest and most authoritative stance as he tells Logan, then the rest of the people in the room that, "Veronica Mars' safety is paramount to our investigation. So was the protection of Mr Fennel, who chose to flee. We will never, and I repeat, never, reveal her location before the last member of the drug syndicate has been apprehended." He looked at Keith. "I have a baby daughter, Mr Mars, and I know that if it became a choice between having her around at home in danger and isolating her somewhere safe, I would choose her safety. I'm unselfish like that."

Logan, frustrated, hissed in his breath. "Get the hell out if you're just going to tell us how to deal with this. We've been dealing for two years!"

The agent stared at Logan for the longest time, then at the pissed off yet passive Duncan Kane seated at the table. He frowned in confusion, then turned to leave. He opened the door and stepped outside. Before he closed the door behind him, he told Wallace, "We will still expect you at the arraignment when we find the last suspect. Stay safe, Mr Fennel. I know Ms Mars is apprehensive about your safety."

Wallace nodded and waited for the door to close. He looked back at Keith, who seemed to have been impressed by the agent, despite Dawson's lack of courtesy or humanity, as Wallace liked to call it. Duncan stared at his fisted hands as he clenched them on top of the clues. When Wallace glanced at Logan, the other man was not fuming as Wallace had expected. Instead, Logan's back was flat against the wall, and his eyes were shut tight and his head was thrown back.

In front of his eyes, Logan transformed. He straightened and shook his head clear. Then Logan proceeded back to the table and sat down, lifting Duncan's hands out of the way as he reached for more of the pictures. Keith followed suit and walked over to his seat, slapping Logan on the shoulder as he passed.

"This is the diner where someone claimed to have seen someone who fit Veronica's description, right?" Logan said quietly. When Keith nodded, he put it on the stack of witness sightings. "Wallace, are you sure you have no idea where they could have possibly taken her?"

"No, man. I knew where we were then. When I ran, they moved her. Only contact I had with her was with the lawyer. She could send me her gifts for Betty, you know, like the bear. The lawyer would take them to his house where I could pick it up." Wallace rubbed his chin, then said, "Since I already left the program, they wouldn't let me contaminate the rest. If someone's already following me, contact with the witnesses still inside could mean their death. People would find out. Bad people can track me."

Logan covered his face with his hands. For a long time, he breathed in and out in that position. When he took off his hands, he saw Duncan staring at him with the same inscrutable expression he had perfected in high school. Logan tried to nod, as if to acknowledge that there was no ill will, but Duncan looked away instead.

Just when Logan was about to delve again in the clues that seemed impossible to crack, and Logan had newfound respect for how the FBI had set up the elaborate pattern to hide Veronica, the door opened to reveal Alicia carrying Betty strapped to her back. "Hey," Alicia greeted, "can we drop by to say hello?"

Keith immediately waved her in. "Hey Alicia! Hey Betty boo," was the happy exclamation of the grandfather.

Logan stood up immediately and waited for Keith to finish kissing Betty. He walked over to Alicia and helped her unstrap the baby from her body. Then, Logan beamed as he took off the contraption hanging off Betty. "There's my baby girl! Daddy missed you so much." Logan raised Betty up high above him and whirled her around. "Who missed you, baby?" The baby giggled. Logan embraced her and kissed her neck. "Baby powder," he commented, smiling at Alicia. "Looks like little Betty's been living in the lap of luxury!"

Alicia laughed. "We had to drop by before we left for Washington."

At that, Logan sobered. He and Keith had spoken at length about sending Alicia with Betty to one of Logan's apartments in Seattle. With the full search that they would be conducting, and what could possibly be a criminal trial that would involve Wallace and Veronica, Keith felt that it would be better to send Betty somewhere else for the meantime. Logan had wanted to keep Betty with her. There was so much to make up for. However, Keith's points had all been valid. He felt it would also be better to spend that time with Betty when they were a whole family. He was on a mission to fulfill that.

"Alicia, would you mind if I took little Veronica over to the room first? I'm going to talk to her about all the rules she has to follow if she's going out of town."

"Ugh," Wallace said, lightening the mood, "don't call the kid little Veronica. Call her by her name."

"Look at that face," Logan argued. "If that isn't a little Veronica, I don't know what is."

Wallace was taken aback when he saw the baby glaring at him. "Woah! Okay, call her little Veronica. Might get rid of that Echolls attitude she's got down pat."

Logan grinned at Wallace. When he glanced at Duncan, his friend was still staring at him emotionlessly. He went into the room.

At that, Duncan stood up. "I'm leaving," he announced. Without waiting for anyone's answer, he walked out of the door.

Duncan strode to his car and slammed inside. There, he yelled as loud as he could. He screamed his pent up frustration, his anger at the men who planted him at the scene of Veronica's fall, his rage at being cuckolded by the two people he loved most in the world. He hit his steering wheel with his arms and allowed the tears to run down his cheeks. "AAaaaahhhhh!" He released his pain at the betrayal of his mother that started Veronica and Logan down that path. He and Veronica had such a perfect relationship. Had it not been disrupted by his mother's lie, Veronica and Logan would not have discovered what lay underneath the friendship, the sparring, the attraction thinly disguised by hatred. Seeing Keith and Logan interact stuck to his gut, because until now he still called Veronica's father Mr Mars. Most of all, he despised the fact that Logan adored a pretty little girl who could have been his, if he took the chance to sleep with her and she hadn't been treacherous enough to repeatedly cheat on him.

Without the lie, Duncan could have had everything.

He firmly believed that.

Duncan laid his head on his hands and sobbed. How long he had been crying there, he would not know. Time seemed to stop when you didn't give a fuck. When he glanced back towards the house, he saw Logan standing by the doorway watching him with concern. On one arm sat Betty, playing on the pink teddy bear sitting on Logan's other arm. Duncan closed his eyes briefly at the sight, because underneath the feelings of being betrayed, Duncan still loved Logan the way he would probably have loved his own brother had he one, and the sight of Logan standing with his daughter in his arms was heartbreaking in its own way.

Duncan pulled down the sun visor and glanced at the picture tucked by the mirror. Perfection gone in deception – Lilly and Logan, so vibrant and playful; him and Veronica, so innocent and hopeful. Those people in that snapshot in time were the people he would care about forever.

Duncan steered the car out of the driveway and started down the road, where the sight of Agent Dawson getting into his car after exiting a convenience store would penetrate his grief-stricken brain. He tailed the car and smiled, because he thought he heard Veronica's voice insist, i"Don't tail him close. You have to be at least two cars behind./i"

"Yes, ma'am," he murmured. When Agent Dawson turned right and into an exclusive subdivision, Duncan also did.

In the apartment that he had left behind, Logan handed Betty over to Alicia with a plea for the woman to look after his daughter. "I promise, Betty, that next time I come get you, mommy's gonna be with us in the car."

Logan lifted the bags that Alicia had packed, mostly Betty's toys and knick knacks lying around Keith's apartment. He brought them over to Alicia's car and loaded them in the trunk. He kissed his daughter one last time. "And Alicia, would you mind if I keep the pink bear?"

Alicia shook her head. "Keep it until you have the baby back," she told Logan.

As Wallace's mother drove away, Keith tapped Logan on the shoulder. Logan turned around clutching the bear to his chest. "Why'd you take the kid's toy?"

Logan smirked. "Because Veronica will always be Veronica, no matter what fake name they plaster on to her. She'll always be resourceful no matter how much they limit her." He ran up to the house and put the bear on top of the table, messing up the clues they had already gathered there. He went to the sink and drew a knife. Wallace was about to protest the meaningless vandalism when Keith held up his hand to stay him. "This was the only way she knew that would go to her daughter," Logan stated. "Veronica's not going to let the chance pass. She's resourceful. That picture of the diner where the witness was standing when she saw someone who looked like Veronica?" Logan reminded them.

Keith's eyes widened. "I've seen that place. Never been to that diner, but I've seen that place and it's close to one of the shops I go to for stock."

"What stock?" Wallace prompted.

Logan butchered the bottom of the pink bear and inserted his hand inside. He felt for the object he needed to find.

"That is a disgusting image," Wallace muttered.

"Eureka!" Logan exclaimed. He drew out a tiny black piece of equipment and handed it over to Keith.

"It's a tracking device," Wallace said, astounded. "You mean Veronica placed a tracking device of her daughter's toy."

"She wants out," Keith concluded. "And she planted that so she knows which direction to run." He took the device from Logan and turned it over with his fingers.

"Now I need to know if it's possible to reverse the tracking signal," Logan stated.

Keith looked at Logan and said, "Nothing's impossible these days." He glanced at the poor bear with the ribbed butt. "You might want to cover up the bear's ass. I'll ship it to Alicia and she can sew it up. Keep the toy. Sentimental value." Keith then took the device with him to see how he can work on finding out where Veronica was.

Wallace slowly applauded for Logan, who was grinning wide. Logan grabbed the bear and kissed it smack on its plastic nose.

"We're on our way, Veronica. Just you wait."

tbc