No cliffhanger this time around. But I'm guessing you won't miss it . . . and we hit part of Kanes and Abels, though it will obviously be severely altered.

Disclaimer: Veronica Mars belongs to Rob Thomas. Only this particular storyline is mine.

X X X X X

Best face forward, Veronica.

Logan instinctively moved to get in front of me. I held him back. One thing I knew about Clarence Weidman was that if he wanted us dead, we'd be dead.

Don't get me wrong. I still loathed him with a fiery passion. But I had him pegged as having a sense of honor. Not the kind of sense of honor I could live with, but a sense of honor anyway.

"Hi, Clarence," I said. "Fancy meeting you here. Nice night for a stroll in front of my apartment building, isn't it?"

"I have a question for you."

"For you, Clarence? My life is an open book."

"What exactly did you tell Mr. Kane that got him asking me questions about who killed his daughter?"

"What?" I said in mock disbelief. "You weren't listening in the entire time? Shame, shame. No bonus for you this month."

"Contrary to popular opinion, Miss Mars, I am not in fact Superman. I can't be everywhere at once. So once again, what did you tell Mr. Kane?"

"In the course of another discussion, I told him that Duncan hadn't killed Lilly. He asked me if I knew or it was just my belief in his son. I refused to tell him. He pressed me. I told him that, since you were so good at doing other things, why not ask you?"

He frowned. "That violates our deal."

"It does no such thing. You told me to stop looking for Abel Koontz and stop trying to prove Logan not guilty. I've kept my word to the letter."

"I also," he said, "Told you to stop stirring things up."

Logan said, "Jakey boy was the one stirring things up. We didn't come there to talk to him, and we weren't talking about Lilly."

"Yes, Mr. Echolls. Mr. Kane told me about how Miss Mars thought Duncan had raped her."

I was beginning to get a little angry. "Thought nothing, Clarence. Legally, he did. But I already promised not to press charges or anything. So there's no need to threaten us again."

"You misunderstand, Miss Mars. For that, at least, I was going to express my sympathies."

Clarence Weidman was going to express his sympathies. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or throw up.

"Anyway," I said tightly, "In the middle of all of this I suddenly got kind of pissed at his lack of faith in his son."

And finally Clarence Weidman expressed some emotion. He laughed. "In the middle of accusing Duncan Kane of rape you get angry because his father was accusing him of murder?"

"I'd already decided he wasn't morally responsible for the rape," I said.

"I see."

After a silence, Logan asked, "So. You happy with our answers or do I need to buy a one-way ticket to Madagascar?"

"Madagascar?" I asked.

"I've always liked lemurs."

Weidman said, "Fine, Miss Mars, Mr. Echolls. I'm not going to go back on my word because of one minor lapse. But I want you to know you've caused me a great deal of trouble." I must have looked like I was ready to laugh, because he said, "I realize you don't care about that."

"I wouldn't care if you fell into a blast furnace," I said.

"I know. And in the same circumstances, I'd feel the same way." After a second, "I said I had something for you."

"I'd assumed it was a hard time." I knew it couldn't be the paternity results. No lab in the world was that fast.

"No." He went into his SUV and took out a sealed package and a mailing envelope. "My advice to you is to look at what's inside briefly, then burn the contents and the envelope." He bowed slightly. "Have a good day."

He left.

Logan and I didn't say a word until we were both inside the apartment.

Logan went to sit down on the couch while I took Backup for a fast walk, fed him and changed his water.

Then, and only then, did we open the envelope.

There was a note from Clarence Weidman – basically repeating what he told us outside, burn this stuff as soon as we were done with it. He told us "the part of the tape you will be most interested in occurs 27:18 in." He gave no other specifics and didn't sign it. Smart of him.

Underneath it was an official inventory list of all evidence connected with the Lilly Kane murder case.

The originals from the Sheriff's office. Somewhere down the second page it mentioned the "Baked in Ensenada" shot glass. There were also similar lists from the Balboa County District Attorney's office.

There were two things inside the package. One was the aforementioned shot glass. The other was a videotape whose label read 100303 0830-1130.

We popped it into the VCR and watched it. It seemed be a surveillance tape of the US-Mexico border from the morning of October 3, 2003. The day of Lilly's murder.

Knowing what we were going to see, we still fast forwarded to the 27 minute mark of the tape. And Logan passed over the border exactly 18 seconds later. After watching him drive off, Logan switched off the TV and took out the tape.

Then we sat back down.

"Who the hell is Clarence Weidman that he can get this?" Logan asked, holding the videotape.

I knew what he meant. "I have no idea. I mean, infiltrating the Neptune Police Department is one thing. But this? This would involve the Department of Homeland Security."

I looked at him. He looked at me. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"We need to get rid of this stuff as of yesterday," I said. "If we're caught with these," I said, holding up the shot glass and the inventory lists, "We go to jail for a while. If we're caught with that –" I pointed to the videotape – "We go get to spend time in a little room while men with a constitutional right to no sense of humor who make Jack Bauer look like a wuss ask us a lot of pointed questions."

I went over to the stove and carefully burned first the letter, then all the inventory lists. I dropped the burning sheets into the sink, waited until they were ashes and turned on the water. To the best of my knowledge, Dad had the only copy left in existence.

And I wasn't getting to that one unless I stole his entire safe. Which was something I wouldn't do unless things were really going to hell.

We couldn't burn the shot glass. Not with any fire we might able to get going. But of the two items we had left, I was least worried about that.

I grabbed the can of lighter fluid and went outside to the barbecue. A little charcoal, a little poking, and soon the videotape was a charred mess. This charred mess I picked up with an oven mitt, snapped into pieces (with little bits of ash floating away in the light wind), and pointed Logan in one direction and told him to find a dumpster for his half while I went in the opposite direction.

When we got back, we disposed of the glass by smashing it to pieces in the parking lot, then sweeping up the pieces and driving to the beach in Logan's X-Terra, where we poured them into four different trashcans.

By the time we sat down on the couch for the last time it was well past 10 PM. Logan gave me a kiss on the front porch and told me he had to go. "After all," he said, "your father, guns, all of that . ."

I opened the door and pulled him inside. "What my father doesn't know won't hurt him."

Once I shut the door I looked at Backup. "Say anything and no kibble for a week."

Logan looked at me like I was crazy and said, "So, what –"

I shut up him up the best way possible: by kissing him as hard as he'd kissed me on the Kane front lawn.

When I was done I said, before he could ask, "Because you deserve it."

I walked back to my bedroom.

Logan didn't follow me.

"The idea," I called out, "Was for you to come back here with me."

He took a couple of steps closer. Dear god, was I going to have to drag him? "Are you sure about this?" he asked.

I took a step up to him and said, "Yes!" while kissing him again.

Another step – another kiss – another step – another kiss – and finally I had him where I wanted him.

"Are you sure you're sure?"

Me pulling his shirt off was the only answer he got.

He got the idea and pulled my shirt off immediately after that.

And we spent much of the night exploring each other . . . fully.

Yes, that means we finally had sex.

You want more details than that?

Well, you're not getting them.

But as we lay there, after, I told him, "That was as nice a first experience as I could have imagined."

"You weren't so bad yourself, Machiavelli. But –"

"Shh," I said, pressing my finger to his lips. "As far as I'm concerned, that was my first time. Nothing else counts."

X X X X X

The next morning Logan dressed and got out of there quickly. With my blessings. His X-Terra was still in the driveway and he was wearing yesterday's clothes.

I took my time washing, getting dressed, and walking Backup, and was practically whistling the whole way.

I know, I know: Never invite disaster like that. But I was in a really good mood. I'd more or less solved my rape. I'd read Jake Kane the riot act. I'd gotten Clarence Weidman yelled at. I had destroyed the evidence pointing towards Logan. Dad was, maybe, on the verge of proving Abel Koontz not guilty.

And I'd had sex.

And – though I didn't have a wide range of experiences to draw on – I'd had a really good time. And unless Logan was a better actor than his father, so had he.

So. Off to school.

Midterms started today. It wasn't like I'd had a whole lot of time to study, but these classes were ones I was so caught up on I could have done none at all and coasted to a B. Of course, that wouldn't get me the coveted Lilly Kane scholarship that Celeste and Jake had recently announced.

I was actually invited to their house in a couple of days for the "official announcement." That would be fun.

For fun read "not fun."

Anyway, I was still in a good mood. And when Sabrina Fuller asked me to help prove that Caz Truman was stalking her to get her midterm grades to drop, and was willing to pay me $500 to do it, I was in an even better mood.

No, it wasn't going to last. We still had the Casablancas brothers to worry about, and proving Aaron killed Lilly, and finding out who dosed my drink.

But my extended good moods are rare. Let me enjoy them.