I wish I owned Veronica Mars. I also wish I could own all the Star Trek DVD's and go to the moon. I don't see any of it happening soon. So don't sue me.

Veronica wasn't quite right. Lilly didn't just run out of the house with the tapes. She went to Aaron's office first, where he kept all his really important memorabilia of how awesome he was (such as that damn Oscar trophy) and left him a little note. The note read:

Lover,

I have the tapes, you sick bastard,

And I won't be giving them back.

If you ever try to get them,

I'll make sure the press finds them.

Luv

Lilly

Aaron, of course, didn't take it well. But it took him a long time to find the note – almost an hour. By which point Lilly had sped through an intersection and gotten home safely, then grabbed a magazine and gone out to the pool to sunbathe. And Duncan had come home, too, but he was inside, pigging out after soccer practice.

So he didn't notice when Aaron came bursting into the backyard, carrying the statue and note in his hands.

"Where are they?" he demanded.

"Tough," said Lilly, "I'm not giving them back."

"I could kill you," Aaron whispered to her. Lilly felt a chill down her spine. So she changed the rules, the only way she knew how. She kissed him.

God, he was a good kisser.

He dropped the statue to the ground as he kissed her.

But it didn't stop him from suddenly pushing her away from him and bashing her skull in with the ashtray on the table mere seconds later. Which, unfortunately for Aaron, was about the time Duncan decided to go see what Lilly was up to.

Duncan's scream was almost completely incoherent. The ashtray went flying out of Aaron's hand and into the pool. He and Duncan wrestled on the ground, rolling over leaves and grass, and the Oscar statue. Aaron was seriously worried at this point and when Duncan began to pick up a rock and aim it for his skull, and Aaron could hear other cars in the driveway (he was very glad he had walked from down the street) he decided to run for it.

He didn't see Duncan turn back to the pool, and pick Lilly up, and hold her to him as though he could magically fix her.

That night, as Jake and Celeste were inside trying to get their stories straight, Clarence Wiedman looked around the pool. He found a statue lying in the grass – an Oscar statue with Aaron Echolls' name on it.

Clarence was under strict orders – cover up anything that might lead the police to Duncan. He knew that it was possible that Duncan could have stolen the statue from his best friends' home – however unlikely. He also knew that trying to destroy it was no good – there was no easy way to get rid of it, and the police had already been called – he was running out of time. The only thing to do was hide the statue, where no one would look.

Clarence carefully carried the statue over to a flower bed, and buried it under a rosebush. He was careful to make the ground appear undisturbed by recovering it with fresh bark chips.

Aaron was ready to leave town. He had done everything but purchase a plane ticket – he would go by private jet, and had told his pilot to be ready to leave at a moment's notice. He sat, watching the coverage of the investigation, until the police reached a statement – "there is no suspect at this time."

Duncan should have told them by now…unless he didn't remember. How many times had Aaron played that part? Too many. It was clichéd and it was boring, but, just possibly, it was true.

He called Jake.

Not for nothing had Aaron won an Oscar. "Jake, I just heard, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do? No, no, I don't suppose I would know what that would be, but I just had to offer, you know? I just don't know what to say, it's just so…how is Duncan? I know Logan would like to know…oh, I'm sorry. Please let me know if I can help."

"Duncan's not talking," Jake had told him. "He's totally withdrawn."

And Aaron's thought at learning that was, I'm free.