We’re Having a Conversation, Pt. 4/5 (Wallace, Logan, Veronica, Max, Mac, other characters) R
Title: We’re Having a Conversation, Pt. 4/5
Author:chynaj
Pairing/Character: Wallace, Logan, Veronica, Max, Mac, other characters
Word Count: 3,337
Rating: R (language)
Summary: Wallace and Logan make their move to protect Veronica...
Spoilers: Through 3.20
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of Veronica Mars. No copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: This is AU for most of 3.20: The Bitch is Back. Thanks to all the readers who commented on Parts 1, 2, and 3. Feedback is much appreciated!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
In a few short minutes, an assistant arrived to take them to Mr. Kane’s office.
Jake Kane looked like hell. He’d grown out a scraggly beard, and his eyes looked dark and sunken, as if he hadn’t slept well in a very long time. When Logan and Wallace entered the room, he leapt out from behind his desk.
“Logan! What about Duncan? Have you heard from him?” Jake said desperately, grabbing Logan by the shoulders. Wallace felt really guilty about what Logan was about to say.
“No, I haven’t. I just needed to make sure you’d see me.”
Jake staggered backward, covering his mouth with his hand. “Get out,” he hissed. “I’m calling security.”
“I wouldn’t do that yet,” Logan said, stepping toward Jake. “I’m here because Veronica Mars is about to expose The Castle and its association with the Sorokins.”
Damn, he has got no fear, Wallace thought. Or he’s really good at making it look that way.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jake responded.
“I think you do, so you will listen to what I have to say. Gorya Sorokin recorded Veronica and her boyfriend without their knowledge and distributed it on the Internet. Now she’s pissed and looking for revenge, and that’s not going to go well for anyone.”
Wallace was sure he saw Jake Kane startle just a bit, but he recovered quickly.
“Why should I care about what happens to Veronica Mars?” he asked.
“There was a time when you cared a whole lot about what happened to her,” Logan said.
Jake grew more agitated. “She sent my son away!”
“They had to do that!” Logan said, growing louder. “Meg’s parents were abusing her little sister, and they would have done the same to Duncan’s daughter. He was protecting his kid.”
“I would have protected her!” Jake was near tears.
“Really, Mr. Kane? Really?” Logan said through gritted teeth. “How would you know if she actually needed help, or if she was just the school troublemaker?”
“What are you talking about?” Jake asked. Yeah, what are you talking about? Wallace wondered.
Logan took another threatening step toward Jake. “When Duncan and I were 10, I told him what my dad was doing to me, and he said he was going to tell you so you could help! But you told him that I was just making up stories, trying to stir things up because I was such a troublemaker at school.”
“Logan…” Jake began.
“Did you really think that all those black eyes and broken noses were from fights with other grade schoolers?” Logan was yelling now, and gesticulating wildly. “And why do you think I slept over at your house so many nights-because Celeste was such a warm hostess? You knew. You fucking knew what was happening to me, and you didn’t do shit about it! You stood idly by while Aaron whipped me bloody so you wouldn’t have to risk sullying the precious Kane reputation by getting involved! So I think you’ll have to forgive Duncan and Veronica for thinking that you might not be a whole lot of goddamned help with Meg’s family.”
Jake opened his mouth as if to say something, then simply looked down. Logan paused for a moment to catch his breath.
“Look, I don’t give a shit about The Castle, and I don’t care about the Kane reputation anymore,” Logan said, in a more normal tone. “All I care about is keeping Veronica safe, which is why I don’t want her going after the Sorokins.”
“What am I supposed to do about it?” Jake asked.
“You know that Gorya is being recruited by The Castle, so when Veronica finds that out, of course she’s going to find out about you and your fellow Castle members,” Logan explained, “and she’s going to find out about the Sorokin family business. When that happens, you’d really better start worrying about the Kane reputation.”
“Why?” Jake asked, faux-innocently.
“Don’t bullshit me, Jake!” Logan grew angry again. “You know what the Sorokins are into. When this Castle crap comes out, everyone is going to know that Jake Kane is best buds with a bunch of heroin dealers. Your stockholders probably aren’t going to like that very much.”
Jake looked resigned. “What do you want me to do?” he sighed.
“Have the Sorokins taken down before The Castle gets dragged into it,” Wallace piped up.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Veronica’s friend,” Wallace said, intentionally leaving his name out of it, since his mom still worked at Kane Software. “We know you’ve got piles of dirt on all the members of The Castle, so all you need to do is provide the Neptune Police Department with some of the information you have on the Sorokin family. They go to jail, you stay out of it, Veronica doesn’t have to get involved.”
Jake stood still for a moment, thinking. “OK,” he sighed, finally. “It might take a few days to put everything in place.”
“The sooner the better,” Logan replied. “We’re barely a step ahead of Veronica.”
“I get it,” Jake said, getting exasperated.
“Fine.” Logan and Wallace made for the door. “Always a pleasure, Jake,” Logan added with a little wave.
As Logan strode quickly and quietly through the building toward the exit, the shorter Wallace had to jog to keep up with him. When they got to the Range Rover, Logan put his arms against the hood and rested his head on them. Wallace waited, his hands in his pockets, and stared intently at his own shoes.
After a few minutes, Logan stood up, rubbed his eyes hard with the heels of his hands, and then tossed Wallace his keys.
“You should drive.”
Both were quiet as Wallace carefully maneuvered Logan’s enormous and expensive vehicle out of the Kane Software parking lot. As they drove down the main road back toward campus, Logan had one foot on the seat, resting his elbow on his knee and pulling at his hair while he stared out the window.
Wallace finally broke the silence. “Daaaaaaamn.”
Logan cocked an eyebrow at him but didn’t say anything.
“That was fucking awesome!” Wallace yelled with a huge grin, pounding the steering wheel for emphasis.
Logan tried not to laugh but couldn’t help himself. “Yeah, I guess I’ve been holding that one in for a while, huh?”
“’Don’t bullshit me, Jake!’ You have got some huge balls, man,” Wallace laughed. “You do not back down.”
“It’s a gift,” Logan said, laughing again. He took his foot off the seat and flexed his hands, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “OK, suddenly I’m starving. We need to stop for food.”
“I like the way you think. Burritos?”
“Sí. Vamonos, amigo.”
* * *
The weekend was one of the longest in Wallace’s life. All day Saturday, every phone call and text message made him jump, hoping there would be some news, but there never was; most of the texts were Darryl gloating over his latest NFL game score. Wallace kept himself busy with his impossibly difficult take-home final for engineering.
Late Sunday morning, as he hovered over his laptop, Wallace’s phone chimed with a text, startling him yet again. He looked at the screen to see a message from Max: “M&V know abt GS.” Shit. I have to find out what they know.
He met the girls for lunch at the food court, as usual. Max arrived a few minutes later.
“Max, you remember Wallace, from Parker’s party?” Mac said perkily, as Max leaned down and kissed her.
“Uh, yeah, good to see you again, man,” Max said, shaking Wallace’s hand.
“So,” Wallace said, trying to sound casual. “What’s up with the investigation into your celebrity sex tape?”
“Oo, I’m famous now?” Veronica said excitedly. “Maybe I can have my own reality show-P.I.s Gone Wild!” She mimed pulling her shirt up for an imaginary camera. “Woo!”
“We tracked the e-mail back to a student here named Gorya Sorokin,” Mac explained. “Apparently, his family has some ties to the Russian mob. We’ve been looking for him since yesterday but no one has seen him.”
“His roommate says he hasn’t been around at all since Friday afternoon,” Veronica added, “so we’re guessing he went away for the weekend.”
“Yeah, maybe he’ll turn up on Monday,” Max said, with a sidelong glance toward Wallace.
Wallace tried to ignore him. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Wallace, I don’t want you getting involved in this,” Veronica said. “It looks like it could be dangerous.”
“Oh, so it’s OK for you to risk your neck but I need to be protected?”
“It’s not that, it’s just-” she began.
“Forget it. I’ll be at the coffee counter if you need a fake hall pass,” Wallace huffed. While he waited for his coffee, Max came up behind him.
“The guy is missing?” he said in a stage whisper.
Wallace said, turning his back toward the table where Veronica and Mac were watching them with curiosity. “For all we know, Sorokin could have gone to Tijuana for the weekend. Let’s at least wait until tomorrow before we freak out.”
Max took a deep breath. “OK. Just let me know if you hear anything.”
Wallace got his coffee in a take-out cup and the two went back to the table.
“That looked like a serious conversation,” Veronica asked. “What was that all about?” Wallace didn’t answer her.
“We, uh, were just talking about the new slasher flick that opens in the theater in town this next weekend,” Max said quickly. “Anyone want to see it?”
“I have to head out,” Wallace said abruptly. He picked up his bag and walked out without looking at Veronica. Once outside the doors, he pulled out his phone to call Logan and give him the latest on Veronica’s investigation.
* * *
The next morning when Wallace arrived at sociology, Logan was already sitting in the auditorium with his feet up on the seat in front of him.
“You’re here,” Wallace noted.
“It’s becoming a nasty habit,” Logan mumbled around the pen he was chewing on. “Do anything this weekend?”
“Nothing fun-just studied for engineering. How about you?”
“Dick and I got pretty wasted Friday night, so most of Saturday was a wash, but I actually read for econ most of the day yesterday.”
“Really?”
“Try to control your surprise,” Logan replied dryly. “I do study sometimes. I can’t spend my whole life surfing and drinking, you know.”
Wallace laughed, but then grew more serious. “The suspense of this is killing me.”
“Yeah, me too,” Logan rubbed his forehead. “The longer we wait, the more I start to wonder if we did the right thing. We did, didn’t we?”
The professor got ready to begin class.
Wallace thought for a moment, then whispered, “We had to do something. We couldn’t let anyone get away with what they did to her.”
* * *
A few minutes before the end of class, Logan’s phone buzzed softly. He glanced at the screen, then held it out for Wallace to see. The message had one word: “Done.”
Wallace looked at Logan, eyes wide. Jake? he mouthed. Logan nodded.
As soon as the professor ended his lecture, they grabbed their things and bolted out of the classroom.
“We need a computer,” Logan said breathlessly.
“Student union,” Wallace said, and they took off running. As they ran across the quad, Wallace thought he saw a petite blonde watching him from the library steps, but he didn’t have time to stop and make excuses.
When they finally got to a computer, Logan slid into the chair and quickly typed the address of the Neptune Register website. With Wallace reading over his shoulder, they saw the Breaking News headline: “Judge Sorokin arrested; ties to mob, heroin.”
“Click on the article, click on the article!” Wallace directed, pointing frantically.
The accompanying story explained that the Neptune police-ably led by acting Sheriff Keith Mars, of course-had pulled off a major sting over the weekend, breaking up one of the biggest heroin operations in Southern California. It also mentioned that the judge’s son Gorya, a student at Hearst College, was among those arrested. Smiles slowly crept on to both of their faces as they realized what they had accomplished.
Wallace clapped Logan’s shoulders with both hands. “Yeah! Do you see that? Do you see that?”
“Yeah.” Logan didn’t take his eyes off the screen, but he held one palm up for a victory high-five.
“Whoo!” Wallace paced back and forth next to the computer desk, all hopped up on adrenaline. Some nearby students looked over at him.
“Hey man, we still have to keep this all under wraps,” Logan said under his breath. “If the wrong people know that we were involved…”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. I’m just kind of pumped up right now,” Wallace said, shaking out his hands to release some of his excess energy. “And relieved.”
“Yeah, me-”
“Dude! Did you delete the Veronica porn? What the fuck?”
“Hi, Dick,” Logan replied, looking over Wallace’s shoulder as his roommate approached.
“You. Do not. Delete. My porn,” Dick said, punctuating each phrase with a point of his finger. “I know she’s your ex and all, but that is seriously uncool.”
“Dude, I had to delete it,” Logan explained. “I heard she was trying to track down the original video, and she was going to check your e-mail to do it. If you told her you didn’t have it and she found out that you lied to her…” Logan left the sentence hanging, allowing Dick’s imagination to fill in the blanks.
Dick thought for a moment, then shuddered. “Well, in that case, I guess it’s OK. But for future reference: No deleting porn.”
“Got it, man. I was just looking out for you.”
“Thanks.” Dick turned his attention to Wallace, standing next to him. “Do I know you?”
“Um, yeah. We went to Neptune High together?” Wallace spoke slowly and clearly, as though to a child.
Dick studied him for a moment. “Hey, you were on the basketball team, weren’t you?” Wallace nodded. “Fennel, right? Yeah! How’ve you been?” Dick slapped him on the back.
“Uh, fine thanks.”
“Cool, cool.” Dick gestured toward the computer. “Are you guys are trying to get porn here? You know, they’ve got software on these machines that keep you from doing that.” He came around the table and peered at the computer screen. “Sorokin? Is that Gorya Sorokin’s dad or something?”
“Yeah,” Logan confirmed. “You know him?”
“Nah, not really,” Dick said. “I just know people who know him, but I always thought he was kind of an asshole. He tried to bring some hard shit to a Pi Sig shindig one time and Chip and I had to throw him out. That is not how the Pi Sigs party.” A willowy brunette passed through the lobby, catching Dick’s eye. “Gotta go. Hey, Rebecca!”
“We’d better scram too, if we don’t want Veronica to see us together,” Wallace noted.
Logan sighed. “Good point. Well, it was a pleasure working with you, Detective Fennel.”
“You too,” Wallace said. He started to walk away and then turned around. “You know, Max said that there’s a new horror movie playing at the Neptune Cinema. I was gonna see if he wanted to catch it this weekend. You in?”
“Yeah, cool. Just give me a call after you talk to him and let me know when,” Logan answered.
“OK, later.”
* * *
By the following afternoon, Wallace still hadn’t lost the spring in his step. After engineering, he bounced across campus to meet up with Veronica and Mac and walk to lunch with them. As he waited outside the building for them, Max arrived.
“Hey, Wallace,” Max said.
“Did you see the news?” Wallace asked excitedly.
“I did! Very nice,” Max said. “But I have to tell you-”
Before Max could finish, Mac slid up next to him and slipped her hand into his. “Hey, guys,” she said, looking nervously between them.
“What did you do?” Veronica appeared next to Wallace, making him jump.
“What?”
“I watch the news, Wallace,” she said, her arms folded angrily. “I saw what happened to the Sorokin family. What did you do?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he replied.
“Really? Can I ask your good buddy Logan and see if he knows?”
Wallace opened his mouth to respond, but before he could say anything, Veronica cut him off.
“Don’t insult me by lying to me,” she spat. “I saw you two together more than once, and you acted all jumpy and weird every time I mentioned my own investigation, so I looked at your phone and saw that you two have been calling each other a whole lot since last week. So since I don’t think you and Logan are secretly dating, my next guess is you got involved in the case even though I told you not to.”
“You looked through my phone?” Wallace asked in disbelief. “You were spying on me?”
“That’s not the point! You could have been in some real danger!” Veronica said, trying to keep her voice under control.
“So could you! We were trying to protect you,” he answered. “And we wanted to punish whoever made that video of you and sent it out.”
“If I had wanted your help, I would have asked for it,” Veronica said. She spun around and stalked off.
“Yeah, right!” Wallace shouted after her.
“OK, I know she’s good,” he said to Mac and Max, who were still standing there. “But even if she knew Logan and I had been talking, how did she figure out what we did?”
Max looked guilty. “I’m sorry, it was me. After I showed you guys those printouts of the research I did, I threw some extra copies in my recycling bin and then Mac saw them. She managed to wring the whole story out of me.”
“Wring the story out of you?” Mac laughed. “All it took was a stern look from me and you sang like a canary.” She turned toward Wallace. “Max clearly has no future in espionage.”
Wallace frowned at Max, shaking his head.
“What can I say? I’m her bitch,” Max said with a shrug.
“You are,” Wallace agreed, “but it’s not your fault. Damn, I can’t believe she looked through my call list like that. How did she get my phone?”
“It was when you and Max went to the coffee counter at lunch on Sunday,” Mac said. “I want it noted that I objected to said spying and my objections were overruled.”
“I’m sure,” Wallace said with a sigh. “Well, I’m just going to get lunch at the hot dog cart then. I’ll see you two later.”
When Wallace was still within earshot, he heard Mac giggle. “You’re my bitch, hmm?”
“You know I am,” Max growled. There was a pause in the conversation and Wallace didn’t want to turn around and witness the PDA. “Whose dorm room is closer?”
“Yours,” Mac said breathlessly. Wallace shook his head as the two scampered past him.
* * *
Logan was again already in sociology the next morning when Wallace arrived.
“Thanks for the heads’ up about Veronica being on the warpath,” Logan said by way of greeting. “I didn’t answer my phone when her name popped up, but she really ripped my voicemail a new one.”
“I bet,” Wallace said. “Sorry, man.”
“It’s OK,” Logan said, tapping his pen idly on his shoulder. “She’s already holding so many grudges against me, what’s one more?”
“You know what really pisses me off?” Wallace ranted. “All she can think about is how I disobeyed her orders. I mean, I don’t expect a medal or anything, but would it kill her to say, ‘Thank you, Wallace and Logan, for risking your own asses to save mine.’”
“No, but you’re going to wait a long time before you hear that, my friend,” Logan chuckled.
As the rest of the students settled into their seats to begin class, Wallace decided that he was going to take his biggest risk yet. He was going to confront Veronica Mars.
* * *
Continue to the fifth, and last, part!