For perhaps the first time in her life, Veronica does a legitimate, full-on, out of a Saturday morning cartoon triple take -- The second for the shirtlessness, and the third for the face.

"Are you fucking shitting me," she says under her breath as she comes to a halt in the middle of the dirt road. He's angry and wet -- Not that the first is anything new, from what she recalls -- and she knows without asking he just hauled himself out of the fountain. All this time, she's wondered if he disappeared because he was so insistent on diving in there and screwing with it.

Her coat is small, but she whips it off anyway, jerking herself from her astonishment so that she can hold it out to him as she hurries over. Shit, what was his name? Cougar would know.

"Where have you been?" she asks, all wide brown eyes and already shivering.