Page 13 of Logan’s Way

And what kind of choices would make erasure seem like the safest option?

The answer was starting to take shape, and Angus didn’t like it. Logan hadn’t just disappeared. Someone had decided he needed to be dead on paper.

Who made that decision—and why—was still an open question.

Which suggested someone believed Logan’s continued absence mattered.

Volk’s file sat open on the screen. A trafficker. A predator. Someone the law had built a case against for years without success. Someone who’d vanished and whose disappearance had directly resulted in victims being freed and networks being disrupted.

The law had failed to stop Marcus Volk.

And yet Volk was gone.

Angus closed his eyes, feeling the moral tension building in his chest. He represented the law. He’d spent nearly twenty years believing the system worked, even when it was slow, even when it was imperfect. Justice through proper channels. Evidence and warrants and trials. That was the foundation everything rested on.

But what about when it didn’t work? What about when predators slipped through legal nets and continued hurting people while investigators built cases that never quite had enough evidence to prosecute?

What about when the law protected the wrong people?

Logan had been sixteen when he disappeared. Young, vulnerable, still figuring out who he wanted to be. Whatever he’d become in the eighteen years since—whatever path he’d chosen or been forced onto—it had started with a decision that someone had thought was worth protecting him for. Worth making him officially dead so he could continue doing whatever needed doing.

Angus opened his eyes and looked at Scout. The dog was watching him with patient brown eyes, sensing his person’s distress but not understanding its source.

“What do I do with this, boy?” Angus murmured.

Scout’s tail thumped once against the floor. No judgment. No answers. Just presence.

Angus turned back to the laptop and searched for one more piece. He pulled up victim services records from that same period, cross-referencing with Volk’s trafficking case and found a case file for a woman named Elena Martinez, age 23. Elena was recovered from a trafficking network weeks after Marcus Volk’s disappearance.

The intake notes were brief, clinical: “Subject unwilling to provide details about rescue. Claims ‘someone helped’ but refuses to identify. Uncooperative with investigation into network operations. Requests protection but not prosecution.”

The social worker’s follow-up, dated months later: “Elena Martinez has relocated out of state with assistance from victim services. She maintains her refusal to discuss the circumstances of her escape. When pressed, she stated, ‘He said I didn’t have to be afraid anymore. That was enough.’ No further cooperation obtained.”

He said.

Elena Martinez was helped.

By someone she refused to name. Someone she wouldn’t describe. Someone who’d stepped in—and then stepped out of the story before the law could follow.

Angus read the notes again, slower this time. The social worker had clearly been frustrated by the lack of cooperation and had noted that without Elena’s testimony, they couldn’t build a case against the remaining network members. The investigation had ultimately closed with several arrests but no convictions beyond minor charges.

The system had failed Elena Martinez. Failed to protect her initially, failed to give her justice afterward. But someone had given her freedom. Someone had removed the threat that the law hadn’t been able to eliminate.

And Elena had chosen silence over cooperation. Had chosen protection over justice.

Because maybe she understood that whoever had helped her had operated outside the law. That exposing him would end his ability to help others still trapped in the darkness.

Angus closed the laptop and sat in his dark kitchen, the only light coming from the hallway where he’d left a lamp on. Scout was sleeping, breathing steady and deep. Outside, Weyport was quiet, winter settling over the town like a blanket.

He thought about Logan at sixteen. About the boy who’d vanished without explanation or farewell. About the brother Angus had searched for with every tool provided to law enforcement, never finding a trace, never getting closure.

Until someone had provided closure in the form of a manufactured death certificate, filed through official channels to ensure Angus would stop looking.

Not to hurt him.

To stop the questions.

Angus had spent eighteen years mourning a brother who might have been alive this whole time. Eighteen years believing he’d failed to find Logan when really, someone had just been very good at keeping Angus from succeeding.