I’m licking my finger, previously stuck into my homemade salad dressing (it’s not half bad), when Dad knocks on the door. He has an extra pair of keys, so he could’ve just walked in, but there are boundaries he won’t cross, no matter what. He’s a classy act.

I stick my finger back into the salad dressing for one more sample, then go open the door.

“What’s with the drop-in?” I demand with a faux frown. “I could have been having sex.”

Dad shakes his head, his expression angelic. “What are you saying, honey. What is this about sex? You’re not married yet.” Then he drops onto our orange couch. “Have you been watching the news?”

I huff, going back to the kitchen counter. “People downstairs asked me not to.” Logan should be home any minute now, so I take the steaks out of the fridge. “I don’t know if it was the screaming of the profanity they couldn’t get used to.” I shrug.

Dad smirks and picks up the remote. “Things just got more interesting on our case, and not in the best way.”

I roll my eyes. “Sweet.”

“Wait till you see who pops up on Drew Process.” He turns on the TV and I move to the back of the couch.

“You watch murder porn, too? I knew it.”

He waves my words away, fiddling with the remote. “This week’s story: Spring Break, Spring Slaughter.”

Should I break out my pom-poms? If I owned any, that is. “Ooh.”

The distinguished looking, silver-fox wannabe on the screen is talking to someone off camera, while the chyron at the bottom of the screen shows the number of dead and injured in the Sea Sprite bombing.

“...so you’re saying Representative Maloof, progressive darling, until recently a man whose name was being floated as a senatorial candidate, tried to murder his younger brother’s fiancée?”

And then the person the anchor is talking to is revealed. None other than Penn Epner. The guy sure is milking his five minutes of fame. The chyron announces he was the last to leave the motel reception.

“I’m saying Congressman Maloof did murder his brother’s fiancée,” Epner intones, a slight smirk on his lips, a strange light in his eyes.

I drop heavily on the arm rest, my mouth hanging open, while dad merely shakes his head.

“His brother was standing right next to her,” the anchor tries to keep the expression of someone who’s dealing with a nutcase off his face, but failing. “Are you saying he wanted to kill his brother as well?”

Good luck trying to be the voice of reason while dealing with a lunatic.

“No.” Epner agrees. “The bomb was in the makeup bag which showed up unexpectedly at the last minute. It was supposed to go off in the room where all the college girls were staying.”

He sure has it all figured out, doesn’t he? Case solved and we can all go home. What a moron.

The anchor drops all attempts at hiding his derision. “This is really a provocative claim. I assume you have something to back it up.” Which is just a nicely put ‘you’re full of shit’.

Epner looks to be floundering, but only for a second, then the bravado is back. “Well, I was there.” Like that’s all we need to blindly believe him. “And I know for a fact that the Maloof family tried to pay Tawny Carr to end her engagement to Alex Maloof.”

He might’ve lost the anchor and half of the audience, but a niggle of suspicion sparks inside me. There’s a smidgen of a truth in every lie and the tidbit about paying off the girl sure does ring true. He must’ve overheard it at the reception or someone was gossiping. And if that ends up being true… “Huh.”

Dad nods. “My thoughts exactly. USNN is rerunning this interview every 30 minutes.” He looks at me. “Tomorrow is going to be a very interesting day.”

I sigh and go back to fussing over my salad. “Guess one of us is gonna need to follow pizza guy on Twitter.”

“That’d be you,” Dad quickly relinquishes the dibs privilege.

I shudder. Why me? “You don’t really think the Middle Eastern JFK decides to murder his brother’s fiancée with a bomb.”

“Then hires,” Dad continues, “arguably, the best father-daughter private detectives in all of greater Balboa County, to do what, not find out he did it?”

I hand-shrug. “Come on. Makes no sense.”

“No,” Dad agrees. “But there’s something about him, that’s off. He’s being cagey.”

I nod, glad I wasn’t the only one who had the strange feeling yesterday. “He’s a politician. They’re all hiding stuff and being cagey.” I point my wooden spoon at him. “Maybe he’s being blackmailed or something. Would sure explain—”

The front door opens and Logan walks in, his white T-shirt spattered with blood. “Hey, gang.”

I’m in front of him before he finishes, inspecting him for injuries. “Logan, oh my God.” He looks whole and healthy, no obvious wounds. So where did the blood come from?

“Don’t worry,” he says, presenting a folded piece of paper tucked between his index and middle fingers. “I got the check.”

On autopilot, I take the offering, turn as he walks into our kitchen nook, drops his keys onto the counter and grabs a non-alcoholic beer from the fridge.

Jesus, what happened? He looks too relaxed, sounds too flippant. Something bad happened. His gaze is flittering all around as if he’s refusing to look at either of us. This is so, so bad. He was in a fight, directly contradicting his claims of having changed in his mind. He probably thinks he’s just proved everything he’d said in the past is pure bullshit, that he’s reversed back to his previous, destructive course at the first opportunity.

He couldn’t be more wrong. Both Dad and I know that while he might have gone off and attacked, fought everything that walked every opportunity he got in the past, he now refuses to engage even when directly provoked. He’s been working on his self-destructing rage and anger, channeling it into his work. He would only fight to the blood if in danger...Or when protecting someone. Something must’ve happened when he was at the Maloof’s. There’s no other explanation. Did Epner’s interview make a bigger mess than we’ve expected?

“I didn’t want you to murder him for it,” I blurt, then wince. Where did that come from? Is this really the time for jokes? For reminders of the past?

“Logan,” Dad says calmly with a chiding side-look at me. “Whose blood is that?”

“Some hillbilly’s.” Logan takes a few deep gulps of his beer, then finally looks at us. I shudder slightly at the look in his eyes. They’re hard and bleak, he’s in a post-fight adrenaline crash, with a heaping of guilt and desperation. He thinks he’s failed himself. Failed us. “So guess what, we’re kinda co-workers now.” He smirks, but it looks more like a sneer. “I just accepted a job as the head of Congressman Maloof’s one-man security detail.”

I’m out of words. Fear after seeing him covered in blood, mixes with relief that it’s not his blood, recrimination of letting him think he might not be good enough, and the surprise at hearing his words. Dad looks to be just as speechless. It must be a first for both of us to have nothing to say, so we just glance at each other. Then at Logan.

He looks from me to Dad and back. “What?”



“The bomb was in the makeup bag which showed up unexpectedly at the last minute. It was supposed to go off in the room where all the college girls were staying.”

I growl and turn off the TV. No good is coming out of me watching the fucked-up interview on repeat, but if I don’t think about Epner and fantasize of getting my foot stuck up his ass as I kick it repeatedly, I’ll think about my two best guys (Pony being the exception, since he’s beside me on the couch, drooling in bliss at getting his belly rubbed almost to the point of losing skin) out there, somewhere, talking.

I don’t want them to be talking right now. I know Dad needs to clear things up with Logan, explain what was implied, or what he thought was implied. Words help a lot, I learned. You cannot simply stay silent and expect the other party to, I don’t know, read your mind or automatically understand the deeper meaning behind the silence. Words were needed. Especially with Logan, whose past taught him to equate silence with avoidance, anger, and prelude to violence.

Damn it, Dad needed to explain, to make things clear, but I need Logan in my arms right now. I need to hold him, to make sure he’s okay, not just physically, but mentally, after what he probably considers a slip in his strict self-control. It wasn’t a slip, he was protecting the Maloofs from their redneck almost-in-laws looking for a missing engagement ring. Like that was important right now, when the Carrs just lost their sister to a yet-anonymous bomber. People and their skewered priorities. Everything always came down to money and greed.

My stomach rumbles. At least I have yet another thing to do to occupy my mind.

With Dad determined to get the convo over with, he dragged Logan out the door the moment the explanation of the blood and fight was delivered in a few clipped, terse words. He claimed they needed to do it in privacy, hence I was not invited to tag along. He’s just too embarrassed to talk about his feelings in front of witnesses, being a Mars and all, so I relented and let them go, let Logan go.

But that left me without anyone to fire the grill and make me a juicy steak just shy of still going ‘moo’, and because I’m too lazy to do it myself, I’m hungry. Not really feeling like going all Michelin star for what is bound to be dinner for one—Dad will want to have something to eat after the convo, if not during it—I decide on the ultimate comfort food—mac and cheese.

Pony, although having already inhaled his dinner, parks himself beside me, looking up with his patented ‘feed me, I’m a poor lost puppy’ gaze that always gets to me. He knows it, too, yipping happily when I add two additional fistfuls of pasta into the boiling water just as the front door opens.

And there’s Logan, looking shell-shocked, his eyes shiny, as he leans back against the door and my heart literally skips a beat as I turn off the gas—no extra dinner for Pony tonight—and rush to him.

“What happened?” I whisper, of half a mind to call Dad and demand an explanation as to why my man came home looking so sad and broken. And it better be a good one or else. “Logan?” I say a little louder as I don’t get a response. “Baby, please, talk to me.” I cup his face in my hands. “Look at me.”

His eyes meet mine and I see I was mistaken in thinking I see sadness in them. He looks shell-shocked, yes, but not sad. Then, he slowly drops his face against my shoulder and hugs me gently.

“What happened?” I repeat.

“We talked,” he says, his voice muffled against my shirt. “He explained. You Marses sure are proud people.”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know that,” I say wryly and am rewarded with a watery chuckle.

“He accepted my help. The money. I’ll ask around for a good doctor.”

I brush my fingers through his short hair, uncomprehending. This is all good news, so why does he look so shell-shocked? I take a step back and once more cup his face to force him to look at me. “That’s not it, what happened?”

“He—” His eyes are shiny again and he has to swallow before he can continue. “He told me he considers me his son.”

It comes out of his mouth as a broken whisper, a mix of plea, thankfulness and shock and my heart breaks for this wonderful man who still can’t see his true worth, while my rage for the man who broke him all those years ago boils anew. If Aaron Echolls wasn’t dead, I’d happily commit murder.

“Because it’s true, Logan.”

He shakes his head, his eyes pleading. “He never said it before. I thought he—” He shrugs. “He wasn’t my biggest fan.”

“He is now,” I tell him. He should know we Marses are taciturn people, letting our actions speak instead of words.

“He hugged me. Told me he was sorry for making me think I was less.”

I bite down hard on my lower lip, blinking rapidly to keep tears at bay. Dad might not be good with words, but when he decides to use them, he packs a wallop. “You’re not less, you never were and you never will be,” I say vehemently. “You’re Logan Echolls, the man I love, the man Keith Mars considers the son he never had. You’re you, nothing more, nothing less. You’re just you. And I never again want to hear bullshit about not deserving something or being less than someone coming from your mouth, you hear me?!”

He’s silent, staring at me intently, his gaze delving into mine, eyes probably searching for a lie, a hidden truth, and beside kicking Aaron’s rotting corpse, I also want to kick myself for having allowed things to come this far.

“I love you,” I repeat softly, dropping the last mask, that last barrier, allowing everything I feel for him, everything I could never put into words, into my eyes. “Never doubt it. Never doubt me.”

His jaw tightens and his eyes ignite before he lowers his head and kisses me. Our tongues tangling together, he lifts me and I immediately lift my legs around his waist. The world tilts as he spins me around, pushing me flush against the door. He rips off my panties—God, thank you for giving me the presence of mind to have changed for bed earlier—while I work frantically at his fly...And then everything stops for a second as we stare at each other, our panting breaths mixing…

His eyes on mine, he thrusts deep and out of the blue I realize we’re mirroring the position, the frantic need, the urgency and the silent communication, of our first time after those long nine years of radio silence. I still can’t walk past the pillar in Dad’s house without blushing.

Then Logan’s mouth is on mine again, the thrusts of his tongue mirroring the thrusts of his body against mine, and the memory disintegrates under the force of reality, of the present, as passion and instinct take over.