Veronica Mars by Rob Thomas
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First off, thanks to Rob Thomas, for imagining a world with Veronica in it and for giving the rest of us a chance to play there.
Enormous thanks to Lanie Davis. I could not have pulled this off without your expertise and your support. Thanks as well to Bob Dearden and Deirdre Mangan, who provided invaluable help in developing this story, and to the gang at Random House—particularly Andrea Robinson, Beth Lamb, and Anne Messitte—for all their hard work.
Thanks to Matt Donaldson and Cara Hallowell for their fight choreography, to John Preston Brown for his knowledge of the criminal element, and to Jack, Donna, and Zac Graham for their years of encouragement and care. I also had a ton of cheerleaders on this project and owe particular thanks to Alec Austin, Sarah Cornwell, Izetta Irwin, Jennifer Gandin Le, Patrick Ryan Frank, and Kyle John Schmidt, all of whom kept me going at various points of the process.
—JENNIFER GRAHAM
PROLOGUE
The buses began to roll into Neptune, California, late Friday afternoon and didn’t slow up until Monday. They arrived dusty, windshields speckled with dead insects and fractures from stray flying stones, the chaos of the interstate. They pulled in along the boardwalk, trembling with pent-up noise, shivering like dogs waiting for a command.
Their routes mapped out an arterial network, connecting the little seaside town to all the university cities in the western United States. To L.A. and San Diego; to the Bay Area and the Inland Empire. To Phoenix, Tucson, Reno; to Portland and Seattle, to Boulder, to Boise, even to Provo. Bright, excited faces peered from every window, pressed to the glass.
One after another the buses’ folding doors clattered open, and students poured out into the streets. They looked around at the sand and the surf, the carnival rides lit up along the boardwalk, the foot-tall drinks. Some had just finished term papers the night before; others had stayed up all night studying for tests. Now, suddenly, they’d awakened in a fairyland that had popped into existence, just for their pleasure. Screaming with laughter, they flooded the town. They stumbled through the streets, blind drunk, trusting that the magic that had brought them here would keep them from falling.
And for exactly three nights, it did.
By Wednesday morning, the coastal town that sparkled at night looked … mundane. Not just mundane. Dirty. Pools of spilled beer collected in the seams of the sidewalk, and the rank tang of overfilled Dumpsters wafted out from the alleys. The ghostly forms of used condoms littered doorways and bushes, and shattered glass covered the street.
The Sea Nymph Motel was eerily silent when eighteen-year-old Bri Lafond stumbled in. Almost all of the guests were spring breakers, and the party didn’t get started until early afternoon. She had been at a rave on the inland edge of town, and by the time the party had wound down at 4:00 a.m. she hadn’t been able to get a cab. She’d still been high enough that the idea of walking back to the motel had seemed feasible. Now, bone tired, she trudged through the sandy courtyard to the room she and her three best friends from UC Berkeley had rented. It was one of the cheapest available, facing the Dumpster in the parking lot. Now she didn’t care, fumbling with the lock and wanting only to fall into one of the two doubles they’d been sharing all week.
The room’s blinds gaped open, letting in a ray of pallid light. Leah was sprawled across the bed with her head shoved under a pillow, still wearing a sequined dress from the night before. Her legs were bruised and smudged with dirt. Melanie sat with her back to the headboard, sipping from a paper Starbucks cup. She wore board shorts and a bikini top, her long blond hair tousled and smears of makeup caking her eyes. She looked up when she heard the door open.
“I have a surf lesson in, like, half an hour, and I’m still drunk,” she said. She looked at Bri, her eyes focusing with difficulty. “Where’ve you been? You look like shit.”
“Thanks a lot.” Bri leaned down to unzip her boots, her feet throbbing. “Where’s Hayley? Is she surfing too?”
“Haven’t seen her.” Melanie closed her eyes and rested her head back against the wall. Bri froze, one boot off, the other still pinching her toes. She looked up.
“Since when?”
“Since … since the party on Monday, I guess.” Melanie opened her eyes. “Shit.”
Bri blinked, then tugged the other boot off her foot. She sank to the bed and gently pushed Leah’s shoulder. “Hey, Leah. Wake up. Did you see Hayley yesterday?”
Leah gave a low moan from under the pillow. For a moment she curled into a tight ball, her arm circled protectively over her head. It took them a few more minutes of prodding and cooing her name before she finally pulled away the pillow and looked blearily up at them. “Hayley? Not since the … the party on Monday.”
A bleak, empty feeling expanded into every corner of Bri’s body. She scrolled back through her messages. There was nothing from Hayley since Monday afternoon.
Invited to a party in a MANSION tonight. Wanna go?