A few hours into the journey Veronica was tired, her thighs burned, her backside was numb. They'd crossed a small stream, only ankle deep, and she'd held on for dear life as the horse found its footing on the river stones beneath. The fields faded out quickly, and they ventured into nature's canopy. The trees formed an arch overhead, meeting in the center and blocking out the sky. Occasionally they passed a low-hanging branch and Logan reached out a hand to push the spiky fronds from his face. He spun on Banjo, holding it back until Veronica cleared past. Opie followed Logan's trail instinctually, head down, as though he wasn't even looking. There is no discernable path, at least not to Veronica. Logan seemed to snake them in and out of places like he was reading from an inbuilt GPS.

The surrounding forest creaked and groaned, the towering trunks of the pines reaching to sunlight and their sway making music. The bed of pine needles below blocking the sound of their footfalls. They walked in silence, letting it sit between them. At times it felt comfortable, other times it screamed in her ears. The sheer madness of this situation settled on her shoulders. A few days ago she was in Neptune and now she is here, with vistas like nothing the mind could conjure with none other than Logan Echolls. She'd ripped him from his own sheltered existence and brought him out here, away from his daughter, to seek a bounty. And for what?

Her own personal gain.

He'd accepted it all with relative ease. Now he sat upon his horse, smiling his casual smiles and occasionally studying her the way he did on that Xterra hood all those years ago. It puzzled her for many reasons, but mainly because she felt little to no connection with that girl she once was. As if she was a ghost who floated in and out of her body at whim, haunting her.

They finally stopped for lunch in a clearing by a small brook, its torpid flow struggling to pass over the dull, gray rocks. Logan tied the horses and retrieved packed sandwiches.

He comes closer and drops one in her lap. "Your options are ham and cheese, or ham and cheese…"

"I would eat dirt wrapped in leaves right now," she replies.

"Hungry?"

"Sitting down for hours, you'd think I'd be refreshed. This is hard work." She stares at the horse and points to it accusingly.

"The core workout will sneak up on you. First you think your legs are the worst, but tomorrow, you won't want to sneeze or laugh, it will be agony."

"You're really selling this lifestyle."

"I try."

He kneels down, brushes at the leaf litter on the forest floor and sits on the cleared spot, taking a bite of his sandwich. They eat in silence, listening to the gentle trickle of the brook beside them.

The food vanishes quickly, and Veronica takes a long drink from her water bottle. Logan reaches into his backpack, pulling out some fresh white bread and a small jar of honey.

"Want some dessert?"

She looks at him with excitement and nods enthusiastically.

He cracks the lid and tips the jar, letting a trickle of the golden liquid cover the bread.

"This honey is from my bees," he says, handing it to her.

" Your bees?" Veronica cocks her head to the side, staring at the bread. "Who even owns bees?" she asks, taking a bite. It's sweet on her tongue with floral notes. It tastes like heaven on her still hungry lips.

"Bees are incredible pollinators. They're arguably the single most important species to humans. I have about thirty hive boxes in various locations. They're really important to the ecosystem and since I've brought them in they've increased my summer crop yield significantly."

"Who are you?" she asks, fascinated.

Logan laughs, and replies with a slightly smaller voice, "sometimes I don't even know."

"Do you wear those creepy white suits to get the honey out?"

He nods, grinning.

"And you don't get stung?"

"I do sometimes, but it's not too bad. Once I got stung on my ass, not sure it was worth the honey that day."

"I would spend all my time running away from the damn things, not propagating them!"

Veronica takes two more big bites, "Well, it's delicious, but I'm pretty sure it would still be delicious if I bought it from Walmart."

"Yeah, but when you buy it there, do you get to walk through the fields where the bees collect their nectar? When we left this morning, all those fields, that is where the bees collected their nectar, the wildflowers growing in the forage. Bees rarely travel over two miles from their hive. There is something about knowing where your food came from."

To this, she almost schools him on his reality, feeling it on the tip of her tongue. His money presents him with choices and freedoms that most cannot even fathom, especially her. She buys the Walmart honey, because that is all she can afford. You don't walk through fields in Neptune, you walk the thin line of your existence.

Swallowing away her comments, she changes the subject.

"Do you keep in touch with anyone from school?"

"Yeah, Dick Casablancas is still a good friend. We sometimes stay with him when we go back to visit my mom."

"And what does he think of all this? You being a mountain man now?"

"I thought you said I was a cowboy?" He looks disappointed, furrowing his brow until deep lines form, but a lazy smile lurks beneath it all.

"Isn't it the same thing?"

"Not really."

"You're right, you shaved your beard, you can't really be a mountain man anymore," she says, pointing to his smooth cheeks and he can't help but raise his hand and run it across his jaw again.

"Dick thinks I'm crazy. I think he used the words 'certifiable' which is quite a word for a guy such as him. Who does this?" he asks his own question and answers it immediately, "I don't know. Who upends their entire existence for something so left field, so far out of their comfort zone?"

"Are you crazy?" She had to ask it, it was a legitimate question.

"Probably," he shrugs, "But at the same time I think, just maybe, I'm the happiest I've ever been."

The statement seems strange for someone who lost his wife, but she leaves it be.

"Isn't it lonely, being away from everyone, so far from where you grew up? So far from people?" Veronica asks and hears the hypocrisy in her words. She lives in her hometown and it hardly feels like a cocoon of support.

"I learned a long time ago that you can be surrounded by people all day, every day. You can have your family, you can be married, and still feel utterly alone."

She dusts the crumbs of the honeyed bread from her fingers and looks at him, but he rapidly changes the subject before she can reply.

"What about you, do you have someone back in Neptune?"

Veronica shakes her head vehemently, "No, it's still just me and my dad."

He nods and a shadow of something changes in his face before he asks, "Have you ever been married yourself?"

"It's not my thing."

"Marriage, or relationships?"

"Both," she says, a naked honesty in her admission.

Logan nods, and places some more pieces of her together in his head, but it feels like a 5000 piece jigsaw. He's pretty sure someone like Veronica is going to hide them, or chew them up and swallow them before he gets a chance to see the final picture.

Zipping up the backpack, he makes to leave, but she speaks again.

"How's the dating pool out here?"

Logan sighs, "Sparse."

"So you're not dating any cowgirls?"

"No."

"Cowboys?" she tilts her head to the side and he chuckles.

"No cowboys either."

Sandwiches and honey long gone, it's time to resume the walk. They stand, brushing the dirt from their behinds and stroll over to the horses, who calmly rest as if they're having a siesta with their eyes open.

While checking all the buckles and ties, Logan peers up at the sky and a flash swoops overhead. A Golden Eagle on a rising air current soaring above them. Brown plumage from beneath, with a glint of white under the wings. The bird cranes his head back and forth looking for his own lunch. It's an incredible sight, and he looks to Veronica to witness it, but she is busy noting down their locations from the GPS reader. So he keeps quiet and places it in his memory bank for the day. It's become subconscious now. After Lilly died and Piper struggled to function, they went through a revolving door of grief counselors. Piper would sit despondently in the sessions and ignore all of their advice. Until one middle-aged woman with a tight bun and a stern brow asked only one thing of the then ten-year-old, to find one good thing in each day. They walked out from the practice hand in hand and it wasn't until Logan was preparing dinner that Piper came downstairs after a long bath and softly said, "The best part of my day was that bath."

Logan smiled. "The best part of my day was you, finding the best part of yours."

And so began a tradition over dinner each night that was ingenious in its simplicity. It didn't require endless self-books about grief or healing, or years of therapy. It required a girl to identify only one positive thing each day, and in finding it, she learned to find herself again.

The shared daily observations were rare now in the Echoll's house since Piper had grown. They would only pop up occasionally after a particularly eventful day, but it didn't mean that Logan didn't continue to spot those electric moments that he wanted to tell Piper about, those moments that made him feel good again, too.

Veronica finishes her notes and walks to Opie peering up at the saddle in a challenge. Logan chuckles as if he can hear her thoughts.

"Need a hand?"

"I'm considering if, with no prior training, I can defy the laws of physics and propel myself up there unassisted," she does a little jump as if assessing her abilities. They fall well short of the requirements.

"By all means, feel free to try. I'm here if you need a hand."

She takes a corner of the saddle, places her foot in the stirrup and summons all the bounce she can, but her hand slips and she is no closer to the top. Logan doesn't move, just watching her with a lopsided smile. He's no stranger to stubborn women.

He raised one.

He was married to one.

"Can Piper get on him without help?" she asks.

Logan nods and she groans in frustration. "So it's not impossible."

"Not impossible, just unlikely."

"Hey!" she scolds.

"Piper's been riding for years. It takes time to build up to it. She practiced on a small trampoline."

"Don't suppose you brought one for me?"

"Fresh out of trampolines, sorry."

"Well, I guess you'd better give me a hand."

Logan walks toward her and she braces ready to be lifted, but he stops, holds her left hand and puts it on top of the saddle, to the rounded handle towards the front.

"This is the horn, technically it's for holding a lasso, but it also makes for a good pull up point," his warm fingers wrap around hers, ensuring she has a solid grip on the leather, then quickly releases.

She arranges her left boot in the stirrup and tries to focus on the task. His proximity is disorienting.

"Okay, now placing all your weight on this leg, try to pull your entire body up."

Veronica takes a deep breath and heaves herself almost to the top, but as she gets there, her riding-weary leg gives out from underneath and she goes right back down.

"Again," Logan says, and she tries, but to no avail.

She leans backward towards him, prepared for him to lift her, but this time he kneels down and makes a hammock from interlocked fingers.

"I'll give you a little boost, you do the rest," he says.

Placing her foot back into the stirrup and her other into his hands, she grabs the horn and lifts herself in one smooth movement onto Opie's back.

To his credit he was helping her, a training maneuver to ensure her own equine independence on this journey. But she couldn't help but feel a pang of disappointment that he didn't wrap his arms around her waist and raise her into the saddle.

"That was 90% of an independent mount right there," he looks up at her with teasing brown eyes.

She smiles back, taking the reins and wiggling into the seat, "Quit your slacking and get on that horse."


Logan notices Veronica walks with a distinct waddle as she collects an armful of firewood. He removes the saddles and packs, perching them on a hollow log before fixing a highline between two cottonwood trees and securing the horses to the line. They happily feast on the tips of the luscious grass beneath their hooves and wander the permitted length of rope. They can access a good track of feed and reach the shallows of the river for much needed refreshment.

It's only mid-afternoon, but Logan could sense that Veronica was struggling with the seat, rearranging herself in the saddle every few minutes and pulling her feet from the stirrups to stretch. Even he, a seasoned rider, felt the familiar tightness in his back and thighs and thought it best to call it a day and set up camp for the evening.

They'd made decent progress, following the brook until Logan recognized the point where it forked out into the river. Crossing it, they headed west, watching it grow in width with each step. This was the last of the flat ground before the incline began, tomorrow they would start a gradual climb towards the cabin.

"How's your ass?" he asks.

"Fucking sore," she replies, picking up another log and placing them all in a pile, then stretching again and rubbing out the tender spots. He chuckles.

Logan drags up larger river stones to create a circle and lights a fire within it. Veronica lays herself flat on the cool ground, wipes her brow and despite being motionless, she can still feel the invisible roll of the horse beneath her. Staring up at the sky filtered between the shimmering green leaves it's only a few minutes before her eyes flutter closed and she naps upon the grass.

When she wakes, it's almost completely dark. Logan has opened the bags and pulls out silver vacuum sealed packages and a collapsible pot. Pulling open each one, he tips in the contents and places it onto the edge of smoldering coals.

With the sun now gone, the temperature has dropped considerably. Logan is wearing a large jacket, and Veronica collects her own from her backpack, putting it on and rubbing her frigid hands together for warmth.

They watch the logs in the fire, the way they've blackened and the orange brickwork glows as they gradually fade to ash. Hypnotized by the flames, the blue that sits at the bottom and licks its way skyward, popping and crackling as it burns. The liquid in the pot bubbles and he takes it off, pouring it into small bowls and handing one to Veronica with a fork.

Peering into the thick brown liquid, she pokes at the indistinguishable contents. Logan has already started eating and when she finally puts it into her mouth, she breathes a sigh of relief.

"This is actually delicious," she says, digging into more of the stew.

Logan forks something that resembles a carrot and replies, "Don't let Piper fool you, I can make a mean pre-packaged, vacuum sealed dinner."

"It was all in the way you opened it."

"I'm glad you understand, a fellow foodie I'm sure."

"Is it beef?" she asks, spearing something from the brown.

"God, I hope so," Logan replies, and Veronica creases her brow quizzically.

"Piper is a vegetarian. I'm mostly plant based when preparing food at home, so I'm always excited to eat some protein when out of the house."

Veronica chuckles, "A vegetarian on a cattle farm?"

"Don't even…" he shakes his head.

"I think if I did that to my dad while in my teens he would have spontaneously combusted. He'd be one of those people who says, 'sure you're a vegetarian, but you still eat lasagna, right?'" Just speaking about him makes her touch her pocket, checking for her cell phone. She didn't call him this morning. It was just over twenty-four hours since they'd last spoken.

Finishing the bowls, they both use extended fingers to collect the dregs of the sauce before Logan heads into the darkness and washes up in the river. Veronica takes the moment he's gone to escape as far as she's able to and relieve herself behind the trunk of a tree. When finished, she pulls out her phone, but there is still no cell reception. Her battery is sitting at forty percent, so she turns it off to conserve power.

Back at the camp, dishes put away, Logan unravels two bed rolls and places them under the shade of a pine, so if it rained overnight, it would give them extra protection if the canvas failed. He is careful to place them at least six feet apart and he can see Veronica watching him cross-legged by the fire as he arranges them.

From his own unrolled bedroll, a rifle is exposed, still in its khaki green case. Veronica considers it in the firelight.

"Didn't realize you were packing..."

"Just a precaution."

"Are you worried something might happen?"

"If you're asking if I want to shoot someone, even in self-defense, the answer is a resounding no."

"So what's it for?

Logan shrugs. "It's for whatever it needs to be for. Honestly, I don't want to think too much about it."

"Is it for bears? Wolves?" She asks and then wishes she didn't.

"It could be." He replies, looking out into the still darkness before returning to sit by the fire, long legs outstretched near the stones.

"Okay, I'm done talking about this now. Bad guys I can handle, the Montana wildlife, not so much."

"Creeping yourself out?"

"Maybe."

"I could tell some good fireside ghost stories to help distract you?"

She reaches for the closest thing she can find, a three-inch twig, and throws it at him, hitting his jeans.

"That feels like a no."

"I've never camped like this before, in the wilderness, cut me some slack."

"Okay, we change track and plan for tomorrow?"

She nods, infinitely glad for a distraction.

"We should reach his place by the afternoon. We're a little behind where I thought we'd be, but not too bad," he says, reaching across and selecting a stick from their wood pile. He then smooths out a patch of dirt between them and draws in it with the pointed end.

A box for the cabin surrounded by some circles for the trees, a squiggly line for the river.

"This is the layout, from what I can remember. I approached from the east, following along this river line, that's where I saw the smoke. Of course, that's downhill from him so I had to walk up the incline to see closer, but from that vantage point it's reasonably clear to the cabin without getting too close."

"How far away is it from the river?"

He thinks for a moment, "800 yards, maybe a little more?"

"Should we approach on the horses?"

"No, we will tie them up a few miles out, he has a horse himself and if he winneys, ours will do it right back and blow our cover."

Veronica nods, staring at his rudimentary mud map.

Logan looks at her. "Have you got a game plan? What if he isn't home, or doesn't come out?"

The truth was she had nothing, and she didn't know why. Night after night of pouring over those maps, of considering the angles of approach, of playing out each scenario in her head and she had still come up dry. Maybe it was the total removal from her comfort zone, or the terrain, or the compounded situation with her high school crush sitting beside her, cooking her dinner?

She gives an animated shrug. "Wait. I guess?"

Logan cocks an eyebrow. "Wait? "

"Yeah."

"I thought you were a Private Investigator Extraordinaire?"

"I never said that."

"It was implied," he replies. "You searched me out and tracked down the murderer and all of that sneaky shit."

What he doesn't say is, and you were determined enough to find out my dad was luring underage girls into his web. He doesn't need to. The memory of it is still so fresh for both of them it doesn't bear mentioning.

"Are you relegating my entire profession to sneaky shit? " she puts the last words in air quotes with a wry grin.

"Is it not accurate?"

She can't hold it in anymore and lets herself laugh. Logan joins her, because he can't not. Today he got the first smile and the first laugh from her.

"No, it's completely accurate. I think it's time for me to amend my business cards to include it. Veronica Mars, Sneaky Shit."

"I'll spring for the re-print, considering it was my brainchild."

"Should it be capitalized?"

"It is an official title…"

"Although, if I'm being honest. I'm doing a lot less sneaky shit than I'd like these days back in Neptune."

"How so?"

"Nine nights out of ten, I'm chasing men sticking their dick in places they shouldn't be. Or men, dodging bail, hiring sex workers, while I wait outside their seedy hotel room until they're finished, sticking their dick in. It hardly requires much sneaking, only patience to wait them out and finally catch them in the act. It's just a big revolving door of dicks where they shouldn't be. So maybe this whole hanging in the creepy woods with you in the middle of nowhere is just me excited that this assignment in no way seems to revolve around dicks." She cringes, "Well, I hope not anyway."

Logan smiles, "So you're not going to go with Veronica Mars, Dickhunter, on your business cards, then?"

And she laughs again, throwing her head back, blonde hair dancing from her ponytail and skimming her jacket. Suddenly he knows that while a golden eagle on the hunt is an incredible sight, this moment is the best part of his day.


Veronica crawls into the bedroll without taking off her jeans or shirt, only removing her boots. It hardly seems appropriate for her to change into the Daria pajamas Mac bought her last Christmas. Logan busies himself with a final check of the horses and the lines. She can hear him talking to them, the indistinct murmur of his voice from the darkness. Inside the bedroll it's cold, but there is a blanket and when she places her head down, she snuggles in and it's not half bad. Sure, she can feel most of the bulges and bumps of the forest floor, but they're nothing to her tired and sore body.

After a few minutes, Logan returns, dragging a large dead stump onto the fire and waiting until the flames slowly grow. Veronica watches him, the swoop of a broad back in his jacket as he squats down, doing the final few pokes of the coals. Finally, he comes to his bedroll, removes his boots and climbs inside.

Shuffling in the canvas, he says, "It's not really the Hilton, is it?"

"More like a Best Western?"

"A Motel 6?" He responds and they both laugh.

"I think it's the manure that knocks off a star," she scrunches up her nose although he can't see her.

"So, four stars then?" he replies.

"Goodnight Logan," when she speaks, little puffs of vapor expel from her mouth in the cold like a cloud.

"Goodnight."

They lay together side by side. As tired as they are, neither can find sleep. Veronica fluffs the thin pillow, switches sides and repeats the process. Each time she closes her eyes, a sound comes from the forest. First it's a hoot, then some kind of strange gnashing. She's hypersensitive to it all as her mind rages. It's the definitive crack of a branch from underfoot that sends them bolt upright in their beds.

"What the fuck was that?" Veronica whispers to Logan, staring at him wide-eyed.

Logan doesn't answer, instead climbing out, pulling on his boots and reaching into his bag for a flashlight, unzipping the rifle bag and taking it out in complete calm. Standing, he walks a few steps outwards from their camp and turns the flashlight on in the direction of the sound. The light illuminates the area in a beam, it's picking up the slight fog in the air and not much else. Veronica doesn't look where it's pointing, for fear of what might appear in the light.

The noise comes again, louder this time. A distinct snap and Veronica holds her breath. This time the horses hear it too. One of them makes a snort and Veronica can see their ears pinned back, facing the sound. Logan walks towards it.

"Is that the sound of a person?" she whispers again and he places out his hand to shush her, going closer again.

Veronica isn't sure what she dislikes most, the fact that he's walking towards whatever the hell is out there, or the fact that he's leaving her alone, exposed. Why didn't she bring her taser, or her own handgun?

Logan searches fifty feet from the camp, making a perimeter around it, carefully pointing the flashlight around.

"Hello?" He calls out into the black.

There is no response but still the sense of movement out there, or maybe it's her imagination.

He pads back to his bedroll and then looks out into the darkness again.

"It was probably a coyote, smelling the food."

"Probably?" she asks, voice strained. "Damn big coyote."

Logan sits down on the top of his bed, not climbing inside just yet, and rests the rifle across his knees. Although he's showing calm, Veronica can sense his unease. The firelight illuminates one side of him in a glow, the other side remains darkened.

"Should we take turns to keep watch?" she asks, voice hushed.

Logan shakes his head with a smile. "We don't need to do that."

She humphs unconvinced, and says, "I'm sorry I dragged you out here."

"Why?"

"I don't know, you've come here into the unknown with me, and I'm not really sure why. Now we're probably going to get eaten by wolves or murdered by hillbillies."

He chuckles, "I don't really know why I'm here either, but it just felt like the right thing to do."

"And Piper pretty much told you that you had to," she adds.

"There's that. I am ruled by a teenager."

"She seems like a good kid."

"She is. What scares me is that she's only a few years younger than I was when she was born. I'm not sure how that happened."

"Were you scared?" she asks, remembering how the rumors of Lilly's pregnancy spread like wildfire around the school. They weren't a couple, as far as she knew, having never seen them together during lunch or sucking each other's faces off in the usual secret corners of the school library. So at first, Veronica just relegated the talk to gossip. It wasn't until Lilly left in the last semester of senior year that she took it seriously.

"I think terrified would be an understatement. You see, she didn't find out until she was six months pregnant. We'd only slept together once. I was raging about what had happened with dad and we were right in the middle of the media circus when the other girls came forward. Everything was a nightmare. I'd been falling behind in school and drinking until I couldn't remember my own name. I barely even remember having sex with her, it's just weird flashes of that night from a party at Gia Goodman's."

Veronica listens, momentarily forgetting about the things that lurk in the surrounding darkness.

He continues, "Lilly came to me and told me she was nearly six months pregnant. She'd had some irregular periods and hadn't thought too much about it. You couldn't even tell, she just looked like she'd eaten a big lunch."

"That's not much time to prepare for such a big life change."

"No, it's not. And I didn't take it too well, to be honest. I'd demanded a DNA test, which she did. And when I found out that baby and I had the same DNA, I was both angry and relieved. Celeste wanted us to adopt out the baby, and she almost had Lilly convinced. I was worried that my life had ended but it was nothing compared to Lilly's worries. She was a beautiful, young, aspiring actress. The last thing she wanted was to be saddled with a baby. Saddled with me."

"But you stepped up, clearly?"

"I did. It was easier when Piper came, because she was adorable and distracting and I could happily spend all day with her instead of in my own destructive mind."

"And clearly you and Lilly worked everything out," she says, recalling his comments earlier about loneliness, hoping he'll elaborate.

"We did. Spending so much time together looking after Piper that we got swept away by it all. We were kids really, playing parents. I was going to senior year, bringing home calculus homework and doing it while bottle feeding at 2 am. Eventually we ended up together because we were together all the time anyway. Celeste and my mom joined in cahoots to push the whole marriage idea. Mom was so paranoid at this stage that the press would catch onto the whole thing. The last thing she wanted in her life was another scandal."

Logan glances around the forest again, but there is nothing but silence around them and continues, "So I was a dad at eighteen, and a husband at twenty and a widower at twenty-eight."

"Wow," says Veronica, trying to comprehend the way his life deviated after those innocent moments they'd spent together. He looks at her, letting his brown eyes properly hit her own and smiles sadly.

"We're all dealt a different hand of cards. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. At the end of the day, I have Piper, I'm lucky enough to have an inheritance that will support me and my crazy, beekeeping, organic farming schemes. Things could be worse."

Veronica nods, but says nothing.

Sensing that she wasn't about to divulge any of her own history in return, Logan stands with the rifle and flashlight and does another silent sweep of the land. Finding nothing, he comes back, takes off his boots, lays the rifle beside him and climbs into bed.

"I think whatever was lurking out there has been frightened away by my life story," he says.

Veronica settles in the blankets again and says, "I'll save mine for another time. It should scare them off for good."