CHAPTER SIX
Veronica, Keith, Weevil, Cliff, and Mac polished off the Scotch, discussing strategy for hours. It was agreed that Keith would take point on any further legwork, since, as he put it, “the resident big-shot has her own case to deal with.” Veronica noted the wink with which her father delivered this jab. She smiled wanly, but she was grateful.
It was after ten when they finally dispersed. Keith and Cliff went off in search of greasy, gluten-rich food—they’d invited Veronica but she declined—and Mac was meeting with some old Sun Microsystems colleagues at a bar. Veronica was ready to go home. She’d spent the last week in knots of anxiety. Now, with Weevil exonerated, she just wanted to sleep.
The silver RAV4 she’d purchased after the Hayley Dewalt case was parked on the street below the office. She’d opted for the little crossover to help with surveillance. Dearly as she missed streaking up the coastal highway in Logan Echolls’s BMW convertible, the SUV made it easier to see over and around traffic. She pulled away from the curb, still chewing over the details of the new case, and headed south.
Most of Neptune’s sparkling shoreline belonged to the city’s elite. Movie stars and captains of industry had mansions looking out over the Pacific. Yacht clubs, private beaches, and five-star resorts took up the rest. But Dog Beach, a four-mile stretch of golden sand and crashing surf, had always belonged to the hoi polloi. It had long been home to the oddball assortment that gravitate to any public beach: surf bums, earth mothers, buskers, carnies, bikers, burnouts, and street artists, along with the rest of Neptune’s trust-fund-impaired. And now it was home to Veronica. Once the doctors had finally given Keith a clean bill of health, she’d moved out of his little bungalow and into an apartment just a quarter-mile walk from the shoreline, in a fading beauty of a building with a Spanish tile roof and deep casement windows.
She parked her car and started up the open stairs. Moths batted stupidly at the porch lights as she passed. Behind one door she heard the low murmur of a TV. Faintly, she caught the sharp salt smell of the ocean from a few blocks away.
The air in her third-floor apartment was close and heavy as she opened the door. The little window-unit AC just blew dust through the rooms, so she usually didn’t bother with it. When she was home she left the windows open wide for the Pacific coast breeze to move through. Now she turned on the ceiling fan and a lamp, stepping gratefully out of her heels and onto the hardwood floor.
The unit was small but cozy, decorated with a combination of secondhand finds and one or two things she’d pilfered from her dad’s house. A gray-and-white striped sofa sat across from a low walnut bookcase, flanked by floor lamps with vintage-store shades. The walls were lined with reprints of WPA travel posters, advertising Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Crater Lake in bright blocky colors. Half-melted candles sat on an end table, between a phrenological head and a framed photo of her half brother, Hunter.
When she’d been living in her father’s house, it had been inevitable that she’d feel in some vague way like a teenager again, as if she’d been tugged backward in time toward everything she’d tried to walk away from. But here was the evidence that she’d chosen this town, this lifestyle, this career. It didn’t hurt that the apartment was better than anything she could have afforded in New York. The entire Brooklyn studio she’d had through law school would have fit in the bedroom here.
The kitchen, tiled in white and cherry red, was visible on the other side of a high counter lined with stools. She opened the fridge and grabbed last night’s take-out. She didn’t even bother heating it. Grabbing a fork, she took it back to the bedroom. A single light shone under the door.
“You’re still awake?” she said softly, pushing the door open.
Logan sat up against the headboard, bare chested, the blankets pulled up across his lap. The TV on the top of the dresser was tuned to The Daily Show. The sight of his military-grade biceps sent a flutter through her sternum.
Okay, what first? Binge-eat sesame chicken, change into pajamas, or jump straight into bed with the half-naked boyfriend? She compromised by taking a bite and then setting down the container to undress while she chewed. The half-naked boyfriend, after all, would be a lot more enjoyable if she took the time to get out of her suit.
“You’re home late,” Logan said, and she could feel his eyes on her as she wiggled out of her skirt and hung it carefully back on its hanger. “But I should have guessed. Your family throws the best after-acquittal parties.”
“We still had some leftover balloons from yours, so we just reused them. Weevil didn’t seem to mind.” She turned around, still in her camisole and underwear. His eyes tracked her closely, but she picked up the take-out container and took another bite, standing just out of reach and feigning obliviousness to his gaze. “What’d you get up to tonight?”
“Not much. I got home late myself.”
“Another homoerotic-beach-volleyball emergency?” She put a hand on her hip. He smirked.
“Whatever it takes to keep Am’urca safe,” he said, saluting smartly.
“I thank you for your service.”
The novelty of seeing him there in her bed still gave her a little thrill, even though he’d been more or less living with her since he’d returned from his naval tour in the Persian Gulf two months earlier. Before that, they’d been apart for six months. And that was nothing to the nine years they’d been apart before that. It was no wonder she was constantly startled by the simple, shocking pleasure of waking up to find him within arm’s reach, of coming home to find him there. The domestic bliss was…well, blissful. Neither of them had been prepared for that, lifelong adrenaline junkies that they were.
Logan had been reassigned to San Diego for his shore rotation, where he flew F/A-18 Hornets for the Fleet Readiness Center, helping them run diagnostics. “Basically, I try to help them find out what’s busted before it’s too late to fix it,” he’d told her. Veronica didn’t love that job description, but it was definitely better than picturing him running missions over enemy territory. Definitely better than trying to grab snippets of conversation with him long distance, never knowing if the connection would be good enough, or if he’d be called away and unable to meet her online.
For a moment she almost blurted out the details of the new case—leaving them sketchy to keep the girl’s privacy, of course, but filling him in on the basics. Instead, she set down the take-out box and went to the adjoining bathroom to brush her teeth. They had a no-cases-in-the-bedroom policy. Too often her jobs involved other peoples’ infidelities—not the best pillow talk. But it became especially necessary in cases like these, when she was looking into something truly ugly. She already had a habit of carrying her work around with her, lodged in her mind. She wanted at least this boundary.
After she washed up, she went back into the bedroom. Logan had turned off the TV. He leaned back against the pillows, hands behind his head, watching as she crossed the room. She slid under the covers next to him.
“You could have joined us,” she said.
“Sure. That wouldn’t have been awkward at all.” Logan slid his arm around Veronica and pulled her toward him. She caught a whiff of the cedar and sandalwood of his aftershave as she rested her head against his shoulder.
“Come on. They wouldn’t have minded.”
“Oh, yeah? Is Mac still calling me ‘Not-Piz’?”
“That was just a joke. Besides, you and Weevil are cool, right? I thought you guys had some kind of edgy-outlaw-mutual-respect thing going on after all was said and done.”
“Right…” Logan said. “That was his verbatim comment when I friended him on Facebook.”
“I’ll bet you favorite all his Tweets too,” Veronica replied, propping herself up on her elbow and looking at him.
“Favorite? I retweet every word that man posts.”
Their tone was light, but the conversation wasn’t a new one. Veronica had no doubts about Logan’s place in her life, but there was still so much awkwardness between him and the other people she cared about. He’d spent half his high school career as a cynical, entitled jackass, which hadn’t endeared him to her father or her friends. Since she’d moved back to Neptune and gotten back together with Logan, everyone had made a sincere effort at acceptance. Logan and Veronica went to Keith’s once a week for dinner, and Logan had taken them both to a Padres’ game for Father’s Day. Among her friends, there’d been some cordially awkward get-togethers. Everyone got an A for effort, but she still sometimes found herself wondering if it’d always be this hard—if Logan could ever sync smoothly with her other relationships.
He smiled, tracing the line of her cheek with a fingertip. She went quiet then, all thoughts of the case and her friends and her father, all the vague anxieties she had about making this relationship work, in spite of all the differences between them, banished. How could any of it matter, when he was here, when they were together? She leaned up and kissed him.
His arms tightened gently around her.
“Welcome home,” he whispered.