"I can't stop thinking about you."
The words kept tumbling around in his head despite the off-key rendition of the choirs James Brown 'Lets Make Christmas Mean Something This Year.'
He'd clearly lost his mind.
Logan slumped back into his chair and mulled over googling "Signs you are being Gaslighted and how to deal with it." The bottle of cranberry kisiel was doing little to quench the desire to taste Veronica's mouth since she had uttered those words.
Mars Mind Games.
He'd called his mother a little under an hour ago to inform her he was not going to be home for dinner, not that she would have made it back to the top from her the bottomless mimosas she'd been enjoying at brunch.
Who needed to parent when a credit card could raise your kids?
Glancing at his watch, it was a little after 7pm, the Boat festival would be starting soon, and his battery was almost dead.
"I'd hate to be stuck with you at an airport." she sighed changing the folder she was reviewing and speeding through some of the footage. "You are as subtle as binoculars and a trench coat."
It was stakeout rule number 3: Record whatever you see so you have visual evidence of the person or people you were looking at because often distractions could cause you to miss something during the live action events.
Logan Echolls a singing and dancing neon nicely shaped distraction ruining her focus.
"Airports have all the best clubs." he muttered tossing the candy wrapper he'd been twisting around into a small ball onto the table near her bag.
Veronica scolded him, twisting the floor plans to check if the cameras positioning covered all points of entry, exit or flight.
"Hard to be a mile high, when you're edging six feet under, Slick." she retorted, the most exciting footage she'd caught all day had been the large cake decorating demonstration as the bakery made the giant festive holiday cakes for the Neptune contests live on the mall floor for spectators.
"Who would benefit from committing this crime?" Keith Mars used to ask his daughter over their pasta dinners from Papa Marios when her mother had worked late and he'd brought work home, the two of them working over a case file.
The obvious answer would be... The thieves but were they saboteurs from the development at the new mall site or had Noelle really pulled the wool over her Mars intuition and was secretly plotting to ruin her husbands business?
"We are going to need ploughed," Logan observed.
Veronica glanced up from her work, her brow furrowing. "What do you mean, ploughed?"
Logan leaned back in his chair, a bemused expression on his face. "That maybe we will get lucky and find suspicious footprints."
Outside, snowflakes began to fall, slowly covering the ground in a pristine white blanket and by the time Veronica had leapt from her seat to open the door to their igloo shaped office, there was no way out.
They were trapped.
Like a hen caught alone with a fox.
The tension between them was palpable, the air thick with anticipation. The room seemed to shrink, their connection expanding beyond the confines of their igloo-shaped office.
Logan leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. Several calls and commotion from people outside promising that the avalanche was being dealt with came muffled through the windows.
"We'll get through this," Veronica whispered, her voice filled with determination.
"That's my girl," he smirked, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he turned the laptop around in his direction. "We won't rest until justice is served."
Logan flicked through the family portrait photographs on Veronica's camera, strategically deleting the 'good' shots with the guys he'd seen hitting on the petite Elf earlier today. She'd mostly ignored him, preferring to spend their captive time pouring over drawings of the mall layout and using bits of string to map out witness routes, and camera angles.
"I feel like a Case Widow" Logan quipped.
"I'd settle for a divorce." Veronica retorted, still not looking at him.
Logan stopped swinging back on his chair. "If it's not pickpockets, maybe its aliens?"
At this point, fatigue and frustration seeped into Veronica's voice. "At this point I am not above ruling out jolly fat men magically sneezing himself down the chimney."
The distant sounds of commotion outside indicated more failed efforts to handle the avalanche.
This must be how frustrating the families in snow globes feel.
"Cant wiggle your nose and sprinkle some holiday magic to unravel the mystery?" he said softly, reaching up to remove her Elf ears.
She raised an eyebrow at his suggestion. "Wiggling my nose? That's Halloween, not Christmas."
"I-I just want you to know.. this is still just a one-time thing... like surviving a plane crash or zombie apocalypses or something..." Logan told her quietly, but he wasn't sure who exactly he was reminding.
Despite the heaviness of Abel Koontz trial this afternoon, and the building panic of time ticking away before his father got back, and the missing necklace, a larger part of his anxiety was the return to the loneliness that always ate at him.
The loss of their connection.
He wanted to tell her everything, to make her understand why he had asked for her help, that despite the fighting between them and the whole mess of a situation, he wanted to explain how she gave him strength. Veronica Mars did more than festive songs, lies about Santa Claus and flying reindeer ever could, she helped make him believe that things can get better, that there was hope.
