AN: Sorry this chapter is so late. School has been keeping me busy, I will try and update as quickly as I can, this WILL be completed, so please stick around.

AN:2: Troy's fathers' name is Lawrence Vandergraff. In the last chapter I had called him Julius. From now on he will be referred to as Lawrence. Just to clear that up. (Thanks to jacedes for pointing that out!)

Previously….Veronica is investigating her mother's murder; she overheard Jake Kane and Lawrence Vandergraff fighting at the Echolls' Christmas Party. She confronts Jake, asking if he had an affair with her Mom. Jake is adamant that there is no way he is her father as they began their affair when Veronica was five. Logan comforts Veronica and they share a very brief kiss, which is stopped with the revelation that Aaron Echolls has been stabbed.

Chapter Five

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

So she had kind of-almost-semi kissed a guy, no big deal right. Wrong. This is Logan Echolls we're talking about.

What is a girl to do when the guy she strongly disliked up until recently is heading her way?

Logan walks towards her, with far more confidence than any teenage boy should have. Veronica subtly notes how nice he looks today his green shirt complementing him nicely. Since when did she start thinking about how nice incredible hot Logan looked, she was not sure. But she had a feeling it was a little while before the moment she has dubbed "library incident".

Attraction she may be ready to admit, but real feelings…most likely not.

She looks around wildly, searching desperately for a distraction that will get her away from the extremely awkward conversation that is going to take place.

Think fast Veronica.

Hopeless. The hallway was fairly deserted, she couldn't even do the –Oh-look-there's-my-friend-I-got-to-go shtick, as she had only really made one friend, and Wallace was no where to be seen.

Crap

"Hey." He stands in front of her, hands jammed into his pockets and she thinks he almost looks nervous, for about a millisecond.

"Hey." She says giving him a little smile.

Afraid of what he may or may not want to talk about Veronica rushes into a safe, well safer, topic of conversation, "How is your dad?"

"He's swell. The stitches won't take long to heal and I am sure he'll be back in the sack in no time. His publicist is working overtime to make sure he doesn't loose any of those adoring fans, I'm sure there will be an extremely large Christmas bonus in there somewhere." His voice is laced with bitterness and Veronica feels an overwhelming desire to console him, which surprises her. She isn't supposed to care this much.

"Logan-"

Veronica is interrupted by Lilly who had glided up to the pair and planted herself right in front of Veronica, completely ignoring Logan.

"Can we talk?" She says anxiously. Veronica knows it must be something big if she is approaching her in public and there is no immediate sign of public humiliation.

Logan makes a coughing sound from behind Lilly and eyes her suspiciously.

Lilly turns around as if she has just become aware of his presence.

"God, Logan. I'm not going to maul her." She says rolling her eyes dramatically before adding with an evil smile, "That's what you're here for isn't it?"

Veronica blushes a deep crimson wondering if Logan told Lilly about the semi kiss in the Library. They haven't exactly been on friendly terms lately and from the look of his cool exterior she is guessing no.

Thank god.

Lilly gives him a hard stare, non verbally telling him to piss off. Logan, of course, does not back down easily.

"Is there going to be mud wrestling involved somewhere in the near future?," Logan quirks his eyebrow, "…Cause I might stick around."

"You really are sex starved. Too bad you won't be getting any Lilly loving, I've moved on to bigger and better things." She emphasizes the word bigger smirking up at him.

Logan glares before walking off angrily.

Lilly turns back to Veronica, "He is like a little pest sometimes, if it wasn't for his stellar performance in bed I would never have-"

"As fun as this is, can you get to the point. What do you want?"

"Yeesh V you really need to lighten up. I was just having a friendly rap session."

V? What the hell? I didn't realize we had come to the point in our relationship where we could use nicknames. Unless slut and Trampy-McBitch count.

"Look I needed your help with something. Word around here is that you do some Nancy Drew act."

Veronica rolls her eyes at Lilly's description of Veronica's line of work and waves her hand in a 'go on' motion.

"I went to a frat party at Hearst about three weeks ago. I got fairly wasted and was hanging with this guy. We started fooling around and he had this camera which we were taking "pictures" on. I totally forgot about the whole thing until I was googling myself today in second period and came across these pictures on the net. Which doesn't bother me at all, but my parents will completely flip if the pictures get to the press. So do you think you could get the pictures off the website and track down the originals?"

God, not asking for much. I'll play the harmonica and save the dancing circus bears while I'm at it.

Veronica shakes her head in wonder at this girl. She really is Neptune's own Paris Hilton.

"Fine, but it will cost you."

"Wallace, you wouldn't happen to know how to single handedly shut down a web site and track down a ….IP address."

"Umm…No." He raises one eyebrow.

"Damn girl, do you ever ask me anything normal." He pauses, thinking it over for a second.

"I think I know someone who can help you though. You should talk to this girl in my physics class…I think her name is Mackenzie. Apparently she is a real computer wiz. I would check the computer room."

"Thanks Wallace, you're a prince."

The computer room was fairly empty, two guys sat huddled in the corner, no doubt trying to unlock the porn. A few people Veronica recognized from Journalism were typing furiously on the computers and a girl with dark brown hair and a startling purple streak was in a heated discussion with a guy that can only be described as a nerd. Or so that's what his t-shirt states. Veronica walks closer barely understanding a thing they are saying, it's almost as if they are speaking another language. She coughs loudly. They finally notice her and look perplexed by her presence.

"Cindy Mackenzie?" She says looking at the girl.

"Yeah, but I just go by Mac."

"I was wondering if you would be able to help me with something."

The computer nerd drifts away over to the back row of the computer lab and Mac takes a step closer.

"Ok, the website is down, temporarily. We still need to find the guy with the originals which is why I have brought you this to look at." Veronica produces a large yearbook out of her bag and pushes it across the lunch table to Lilly.

"God, I was off my head. I could have been making out with a garage door for all I know." Lilly says dramatically dropping her head onto the table.

"You could at least try to remember." Veronica says getting slight irritated.

"I'm sorry, I didn't ask for his name and social security number before when we fucked."

Veronica grimaces but Lilly begins scanning through the photographs. Her finger stops on a skinny Asian guy.

"He looks familiar."

Finally we're getting somewhere.

"So the guy was Asian."

"I said he looked familiar, not that it was him."

Or maybe not.

Veronica groans dropping her head down on the yellow lunch table, just as Lilly had done minutes earlier.

This is definitely going to be a long lunch.

Why would a person take a one million dollar payout for a fake alibi if they could never spend the money?

This was just one of the many questions that had been plaguing Veronica ever since finding out about Michael Adams from her fathers investigation of Lianne's death. There were all these clues, the only problem was none of them seemed to fit. If only she could find the link, if only this part of her and her father's life could finally be resolved, if only….

"Veronica."

Damn, he was sneaky.

"Hey, Logan."

"Can we talk."

"Aren't we doing that right now." She can't help but be a smart ass, after having to deal with Lilly Kane twice in one day.

He sighs, frustrated running a hand through his hair and fixing her with an exasperated glare, "You know what I mean."

"No I don't. Look I'm really busy so unless you have something dire to tell me…" She didn't mean to be so snappy but now was not the time for a heart to heart, truthfully she didn't think there would ever be a time.

"Are you ok, I mean you were upset in the library and I just wanted to make sure you were fine."

She tried not to visibly flinch at the mention of "The Library" but she couldn't help it and Logan seemed to notice.

"I'm great." She's quiet for minute before gaining the courage to speak again.

"Can we just forget everything that happened that night?" She rushes out, she isn't ready to trust and open up yet. It's all too soon and the wounds left by a certain ex-boyfriend are still too fresh.

"Yeah. Whatever you want." He says walking off abruptly leaving Veronica feeling as if she has done something terrible.

Lilly had been useless at identifying the guy and she wasn't even sure if he was a college student or just some random townie. This now meant she would have to find someone who had a clear perception of that night.

What is the likelihood of finding a sober person at a Frat party? One billion to one.

Veronica knocked on the door of the frat house. It looked like a shack and she could tell these guys weren't particular about the maintenance of the place. Crushed beer cans littered the front lawn which was overgrown with weeds and shrubbery. She heard a rustling coming from inside followed by what sounded like a crash and something breaking. Finally the door was opened and Veronica came face to face with an unshaven, disheveled young man.

He looked at her appraisingly and Veronica thanked god that she had worn her most conservative outfit that put nuns to shame. A girl always needs protection from ogre-like, leering frat boys.

The guy casually leans against the door frame and runs a hand through his hair which looked like it hadn't been washed in weeks. "Hey, how you doing?"

These guys must take courses on how to make a simple greeting sound sleazy. Bravo.

"Hi, my friend was at one of your parties a couple of weeks ago; I need to find out who she was with that night. This is so embarrassing …but she like got this deadly STD and she now has to call up everybody she has been with to tell them so they can seek medical treatment, or else they could die or something. It's really sad." Okay so it was a little over the top and extremely non-realistic but these were frat guys for goodness sake.

The guy looks at her slightly worried and bleary eyed. She would honestly be surprised if he could string two intelligible sentences together.

"Umm...right. Come in. You can ask the guys."

Veronica steeps gingerly in to the house, taking note of the pizza boxes and cans covering the floor and all available surfaces.

"I've got a picture of her, if anybody recognizes her and could tell me who they saw her with it would be great."

The guy takes the picture off Veronica and begins showing it to various guys.

One guy recognizes her and after several crude comments chucked around by the surrounding guys he drags the beefy looking male specimen over to Veronica.

He looks kind of nervous, the other guy must have debriefed him…"Yeah, I was with Lily Kane at the blowout? What's the deal?"

"The good news is bucko that you're not going to die from a deadly STD. The bad news is you could be faced with charges of defamation of character."

"Hey look girly-

Girly?

"Yeah I was with Lilly that night and yeah we did fool around taking a few happy snaps but I never saw the photos, she took the camera with her."

"Damn, I wish I had a copy of those photos though…" He adds as an afterthought.

A few frat guys around him nod in agreement and start stating their chauvinistic-pig headed comments that were generally degrading to all women.

Looks like I need to have a little chat with Miss. Lilly Kane.

Veronica pushed the Lilly Kane case aside; she was worried about something more important than that. It was time to get some answers, to finally make the pieces come together. She had spent the last three days trying to figure out where the money deposited into Mike Adams bank account came from but she was having no such luck, this had only left her with one option. Veronica walked boldly into the San Diego Penitentiary, her overly conservative business attire giving her a sense of security.

After going through the whole process of getting into the prison, Veronica finds herself sitting in front of her mother's "killer", according to California state law,- "alleged killer" according to her and her father. Was this really the guy that strangled her mother to death, leaving the body lying on the living room floor for her husband and daughter to come home to?

"Hello Veronica." Mike Adams voice crackled out through the glass window, the only barrier between herself and the truth.

Forty minutes later Veronica sat in her car in a state of shock. Could what Adams have said been true, had Jake lied to her at the Christmas party to save his own ass? Had her mother and Jake really been having an affair for that long?

flashback

"Why did you take the fall? Its not like you'll ever be able to see the one million dollars ever again?"

"I heard you moved to Neptune, Veronica. Did you do it to be closer to your father?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Jake Kane. You can't tell me Lianne never told you about her High school sweetheart."

"It doesn't matter, my mom and Jake weren't together when she was with my father…not until the end."

"Is that what you believe? Sweetheart, they were never not together."

end flashback

When did I start believing in crazy people? It can't be true; I don't think I would be able to survive if it was.

The shrill ring of her phone broke Veronica out of her daze.

"Hey Mac"

"No I'm fine"

"Really?"

Well seems like not everybody lies, well, only some people.

Veronica took one last look at the penitentiary in her rearview mirror before putting the Le Baron into gear and driving off. She hadn't even got the answers she needed, only more questions.

She stormed into Lilly's bedroom, the anger and emotional stress from today being unleashed on this far from innocent girl.

"I hope you're happy, you've had your cheap thrill or laugh or whatever at my expense but it's over now."

"What are you talking about, did you forget to take your meds?" Lilly looked up from her lounging position on her bed, the latest issue of Sassy laid out.

"I'm talking about how you sent me on a wild goose chase, looking for the guy who put those photos of you on the net. I should have known if Lilly Kane was getting exploited it would only be under her terms." She spat out venhemently.

"Veronica it wasn't a joke or anything. I just wanted to spend some time with you. Get to know you."

"Why?" Veronica shouted incredulously. Lilly had never given two hoots about Veronica, why was she starting now.

Lilly was getting slightly pissed at Veronica's attitude and shouted,

"Because you're my sister dorkus."

End Chapter Five

Let me know if anyone is still reading this and review, please!

-Sarah