Page 35 of Logan’s Way

And people were alive because of it.

Angus closed his notebook without adding anything more, then stood and moved through the house with Scout at his heels.

In the guest bedroom, the investigation wall was gone—evidence locked away, photos removed. The room had been restored to its innocent appearance, while truth lived on in filing cabinets, coded journals, and places where knowledge couldn’t be casually discovered.

Angus had done that. He’d hidden what he knew. Had protected his investigation from those who wanted it to stop. Had chosen to operate in the shadows because operating in the light would have meant exposure, seizure, and the elimination of evidence.

He’d become like the person he was investigating, working outside official channels because official channels were compromised. He’d decided his pursuit of truth justified breaking rules meant to protect institutional integrity.

The irony wasn’t lost on him.

He returned to the kitchen table, where the files still lay spread across the surface—evidence of systematic intervention, documentation of lives saved through means that violated every principle upon which Angus had built his career.

And he understood, with a clarity that felt like grief: continuing this investigation meant making a choice that would have consequences beyond his badge, his career, or the pressure being applied to make him stop.

It meant deciding whether the truth was worth undoing something that had kept people alive.

Whether exposing Logan—if Logan was the one who’d done this—would serve justice or merely satisfy Angus’s need to know. Whether finding his brother would mean dismantling the work his brother had built. Whether family loyalty outweighed the lives that depended on continued invisibility.

Outside, darkness gathered. Inside, thoughts gathered within Angus as he sat with his files, the moral weight, and the question that had no easy answer.

He thought about prayer. About bringing it to God. About asking for guidance when the path ahead looked like a choice between two kinds of wrong.

But he wasn’t ready to give words to the conflict splitting him open. Wasn’t ready to hear what God might say about pursuing a truth that would wound people already hurt enough.

So he sat in the dark kitchen with Scout at his feet, his documented evidence, and the terrible understanding that had been building since he’d first noticed the pattern.

The truth wouldn’t come without cost.

And Angus was the one who had to decide who would pay it—the people depending on his brother’s continued invisibility, or the brother he’d mourned for eighteen years, who might be alive but unreachable for reasons Angus was only beginning to understand.

He pulled the nearest file toward him. Elena Martinez’s case. The woman who’d said, “He told me I didn’t have to be afraid any more,” and then refused to say anything else—protecting someone because exposing him would end his ability to help others still trapped in darkness.

Angus closed the file slowly. Deliberately. And left it closed.

Then he wrote one line in his notebook:

Finding him may destroy what he built. Truth may cost lives he’s saved. I have to decide if that’s a price worth paying.

He underlined the last sentence twice.

Then he closed the notebook and sat in the dark, choosing not to turn on the lights, choosing not to pray yet—just sitting with the weight of understanding that some questions had answers that hurt, regardless of which choice you made.

Chapter Thirteen

The address was in the outskirts of Portland—a storage facility where Moira Reid’s remaining belongings had been kept after she’d moved to Sunset Manor. Angus had been putting off the trip, letting grief and the investigation consume the time he should have spent sorting through what remained of his mother’s life.

But the facility had sent a notice: final payment was due. Items needed to be claimed or they’d be disposed of according to standard policy. A simple, emotional task that could no longer be delayed.

Angus drove north in the late afternoon, with Scout in the passenger seat. The route was straightforward—the highway north, the exit near the industrial district, then two miles to the storage complex. He’d mapped it the night before, estimated ninety minutes round trip, and planned to be back before dark.

The highway was clear with light traffic. The winter landscape passed in shades of gray and white—fields locked under ice, trees skeletal against an overcast sky. An ordinary drive on an ordinary errand.

Then, three miles from his exit, traffic slowed.

Not gradually. Suddenly. Cars braked, merging into a single lane, orange cones appearing where the shoulder should have been. Angus followed the flow, expecting construction or an accident ahead.

Instead, there was a roadblock.