Broken

Chapter Two

-

"SHAWN!" Burton Guster, Shawn Spencer's long-time best friend and "Psych" partner came stomping into the room with his arms crossed over his chest, brow furrowed in a scowl, a tell-tale sign that Shawn had some thing to piss him of. Instantly Shawn's brain loaded five possible things that he had done recently that might cause that expression, and he pulled an innocent little smile as he tilted his head.

"Listen, buddy, I. . ."

"Do you idiots have some sort of deficiency right now that's rendering you unable to answer your phones?!" Both Shawn and Gus looked up as Henry Spencer walked into the office with matching looks of confusion, and both rifled through their pockets to check their phones. Henry waited until they both made their oops faces before he continued. "Shawn, I've been tryin' to call you since yesterday."

"I'm sorry, Dad, I had a date. . ." He was about to throw in a joke when he looked into Henry's face more closely, noticed the twitch of the corner of his mouth, and the pressed line of pink as he pursed his lips. He knew that look, that look was never good. "Dad. . What happened?"

Henry didn't even second guess Gus' presence in the room, the other young man so much a fixed part of his family that he rarely thought of him as anything else. He moved to one of the chairs, passed a hand over his face and rubbed his temples as he considered his words. "Look, kid, there was. .Sort of an accident last night. With your sister."

Shawn was aghast at that. Tess had been born toward the latter part of his parents marriage and she had gone with Madeleine most of the time. He'd started to get to know her in her adult years, as Psych had been growing up from his crazy idea following his first run-in with Chief Vick. As he processed what his father had said, he immediately started to build a wall in case his father was about to inform him that he didn't have a sister anymore. "What um, what kind of accident? Is she ok?"

"She's bumped up but yeah, she's okay. I just got off of the phone with your mother, and, while hysterical she seemed to be. . She seemed relieved."

"Okay." Shawn relaxed visibly and Gus cleared his throat, unsure of how to respond up until this point.

"Uh I, you didn't say, but, is her baby okay?" Shawn threw him a look, his usual I totally was going to ask, look. And Gus gave him a brief glare and tried to smile supportively at Henry, just in case.

"It's okay." The subject was sore for Henry, so he kept his response brief and then cleared his throat, hands fiddling nervously in his lap. "Look I never ask you for anything but. . I don't trust this boyfriend of hers, he's got a record, he's pretty wealthy, who knows if he was trying to get rid of her so he wouldn't have to spend his money on a kid. Who knows? Not like I've gotten to meet the. . ." He took a deep breath and presented Shawn with a folder.

"The sheriff out there is a pretty nice fellow, he gave me everything they knew. Some loony the kid used to date walked out into the road, he swerved to miss her. She's been admitted to the psych ward. His car was wrecked but I assume he has a garage of them so, I guess just. .figure out exactly what was going on. Sheriff Mars' daughter is going to meet up with you. He insisted she represent his own interest in the case. But something tells me she'll be pretty easy to ditch. Just figure it out and get it taken care of out there so that your mother and I will be. . .able to sleep."

Shawn's response surprised Gus to an extent, he was attentively scanning the pages and he just nodded. Said, "Ok." To his father before handing the folder to Gus' and grabbing his friend's car keys. "Looks like we're going to Neptune."

-

"Shawn, will you stop that? We have to meet this girl any minute and you've gotten us lost!"

"Gus, don't be a smelly banana peel. We're not lost, I have simply placed us into an unfamiliar territory of which we are taking advantage of. This is exploration!" Shawn sipped the milkshake he had just bought and looked around, noticed a familiar street sign and pulled Gus into that direction. "It's right over here, okay?"

"I don't know why I always listen to you." Gus noticed someone up by the shop they had agreed to meet the Sheriff's daughter at that hadn't been there when Shawn had dragged him off to explore during their free time before the meeting, and he nudged his friend. "You think. .that's her?"

Shawn assessed her, the serious look on her face, the watch on her wrist, her clothes and he just smiled, walked in her direction a little quicker. "Veronica Mars. I cannot begin to tell you how glad I am to meet you." He watched the quirk of her brow, the way she kept her arms crossed over herself as she watched him approach with an outstretched hand, and she watched it as he came near enough to shake with her. So he kept going. "I can see you're in between classes, we can keep this initial meeting brief. My name is Shawn Spencer. I'm a psychic, I work with the Santa Barbara police."

"You're Tess's brother." She said smoothly, finally freed up a hand to shake his. "Veronica, yeah. Uh. That was a really great guess, Mr. Spencer, very impressive. I just don't buy into the psychic crap, but I can't argue with your record, you've solved a lot of very impressive crimes. I'd be happy to work with you, but I don't personally think any sort of conspiracy put your sister into the hospital."

Veronica lead them to a picnic table located in some shade nearby and drew out a folder of photographs she had stopped to take on her way home from the hospital. Logan's SUV still hadn't been towed, with emergency crew's still investigating the site, so everything was pretty much the way it had been, she let Shawn examine them and he couldn't help but notice the car parked on a little fork to the right of everything, walking distance, Veronica was explaining the official accident report to them as he examined it.

"Logan wasn't really paying attention to the road at the moment, he said he and Tess were talking and she saw her first but when he served they hit this uneven hilly area off the side of the road and the momentum of that is what made the SUV flip."

"Of course it is," Shawn agreed, with a surprised look from Gus, which he ignored, eyes still steady on the photograph in hand. "But the girl didn't not know they weren't paying attention, she wanted to walk out in front of that car, she drove all the way there because she knew that intersection was on their way home."

Veronica looked at him with surprise. She didn't think Tess knew much about all of that, much less her brother. And she leaned back in her seat, watching him suspiciously. "It's entirely possible, Parker was Logan's girlfriend a couple of years back, she was never the same after the breakup but I doubt she was waiting to get hit by his car, she just didn't see that he wasn't looking when she was flagging him down for help. Her car wouldn't start."

"Who flags cars down in the middle of a three-lane road?" Shawn asked quietly, and was met with silence. He set the folder down. "What's her condition? Can she talk to anyone?"

"She's declined to talk to anyone but my father. And probably only because he's the law around here." With a swift glance at her watch she half stood. "I really have to get to class. Would you mind if we talked again soon?"

"Not at all, have fun in math." He reached to the pictures. "May I take these with me to read?"

She was surprised again that he had known what class she was heading to, but it could be a relatively simple guess. Math was a part of any college student's life. "Sure, knock yourself out." She bent to grab her messenger and slung it over a shoulder, paused and opened her mouth to speak but then shook her head, bit her tongue and walked in the direction of her Saturn.

Gus looked to Shawn. Then to the photos in his hand. "I don't know, dude, maybe she's right, maybe this chick was just dumb enough to stand in the road to try and get some help. It's not all of that crazy o an idea."

Shawn kept looking at the photo where the car was visible and he shook his head. "It's never that simple, Gus, don't you know by now? It's never that simple."

-

"Thanks, buddy." Logan let Tess out of the cab and made sure she stood firmly on her feet before scooting to slip a fifty into the cabbie's hand. The man looked at the money with wide eyes and then grinned at him.

"No, thank you, Mr. Echolls!"

Logan slid from the back seat and took Tess' hand before he led her into the Grand, stopped at the desk for his mail before he led her to the elevators. He kept a firm, protective grip on her hand, watching all around them for anyone that might look suspicious enough to post a threat. Logan had never expected that some day he'd ever be in such a position, but he was. And he's grown to care for Tess and the little monkey swimming around inside of her. His own insecurities be damned. This wasn't about him now.

They were silent in the elevator, and once they got up to the suite, Logan scooped her up just to hear her giggle and carried her to the bedroom to lay her down. "No more time on your feet today." He told her gently, brushing some hair out of her face. "Do it for the fetus. I am your humble slave tonight." He bent to kiss her cheek. "I'm just gonna go check my messages, I'll order pizza and breadsticks, we'll have a no-no night after that hospital garbage, how's that sound?"

She nodded, eyes already closed, poised to nap. "Sounds good. Lots of meat. Pepperoni, sausage. No fishies. I hate the fishies."

"I know." He stood from the room and made the phone call for pizza before dialing the prompt to be connected to his voicemail. He hadn't talked to anyone about the investigation in the hospital, had been calm and focused and supportive of Tess, but right now he needed to know who had caused all of this, so he could start thinking about how to make them pay. Went through a half dozen messages of worried people before he hit it.

"Hey Logan, it's me. Uh, I feel like I should have ignored your message, so don't. . .do what you do. But it was Parker on the road today, she got a little scraped up when she threw herself to the curb, but, she's otherwise okay. They're calling it an accident, she said she was trying to wave you down."

Parker.

Things had never been good with Parker, and Logan hung up the phone with a reflective sigh. She never had sat down to listen to what he had to say. That despite still being in love with Veronica he had cared for her, deeply. And she had started to be maybe a little less cold and bitchy, until the news about Tess and the baby hit.

Logan glanced inside from where he stood on the balcony, looked to where he knew she was asleep. He had never meant for Tess to become what she had. He wasn't sure enough to know he loved her, he wasn't sure he could ever love anyone the way he had loved Veronica. But she was giving him something. . .that was an incomparable gift. Yeah, fatherhood terrified him. He wasn't sure he would be any better of a father than Aaron was, but, it was a chance. A chance to have a family that he could be proud of. A kid, a girl. Maybe a dog and a white picket fence. It wasn't Veronica, but it was better than any notion of family that he had had before her.

Logan hung up the phone and returned in time for the pizza to arrive, moved to set it on a counter and slapped two pieces onto a paper plate. He returned to the bedroom, and slid into the bed next to her, mindful of the bump between them. Logan fed her dainty bites until she awoke to chomp her slice down and then he lay with her in his arms, his chin on top of her head. Thought about the concerned look on Veronica's face and the pathetic thought that even with him in this predicament, she had been willing to do anything for him, even check up on his baby mama.

He knew it was probably wrong to think about her with Tess there, but unfortunately, he didn't care.

That might have been where it all started to go wrong.

-

Shawn sighed as he moved to the filing cabinet near Gus' desk and opened the drawer to fish around and stick the manila folders wherever they seemed to belong. Henry hot on his tail, angry, and well, Henry-ish. "Shawn I told you to go there and find out the truth!"

"Dad, it all checked out. I wanted to find some reason to throw the girl behind bars but it just. . It didn't happen, okay? Tess is okay. The baby's okay. Everyone is sorry and promises to be more careful next time." He shut the drawer in time for his father to nearly reach out and choke him, watched him apprehensively as he wrung his hands.

"Dammit Shawn, you don't even believe it, you're just giving up. I don't know why your sister's welfare isn't as important to you as nabbing art thieves and murderers, maybe it's our faults for raising you two so apart, but this is the biggest mistake you ever made in your life." He grabbed his ball cap from the desk nearby and glared at his son. "And you've made some pretty big mistakes before."