Page 19 of Logan’s Way

What would you do? he thought. Not to Scout. Not to anyone specific. Just the question hanging in the quiet of his house.

What’s the right choice when both options compromise something you believe in?

The answer came quietly, certainty rather than epiphany: He couldn’t unknow what he’d learned. Couldn’t pretend the fabrication didn’t exist. Couldn’t go back to believing the official story now that he’d proven it was built on lies.

The system had lied. And when he’d started uncovering that lie, the system had called to suggest he stop.

Which meant the truth was dangerous enough to protect.

Angus looked at the investigation wall—Logan’s photo, the documents that didn’t quite add up, the registrar who’d never existed, and the careful construction of official fiction.

Then he sat down and opened his laptop—his personal laptop, paid for with his own money, connected through his home internet, leaving no trail through official networks.

He pulled up the photograph of Logan’s death certificate he’d scanned weeks ago. The document that had started everything.

And he saved a copy to an external drive. Then another copy to a secure cloud storage account he’d set up years ago for personal files. Then he printed a physical copy and filed it in his own records, separate from anything connected to the department.

If someone wanted this investigation to stop, they’d need to do more than flag his database searches. They’d need to prove he’d done something wrong. And copying public documents to his personal files wasn’t illegal—just suspicious, if anyone noticed.

Angus had spent two decades learning how to build cases that would hold up in court. He knew how to document evidence. How to maintain chain of custody. How to separate personal knowledge from professional investigation.

And he knew how to recognize when someone was trying to bury the truth under bureaucratic warnings and polite suggestions to let things go.

Then he did something he’d never done in twenty years of law enforcement.

He went to his filing cabinet and pulled out Logan’s original case file—the one from the sheriff’s office, the official record of his brother’s disappearance. It should have stayed in evidence storage as part of the departmental archive. Moving it without authorization was technically theft of official documents.

But if someone was watching his database searches, they might also be watching what files he accessed at the station. And if this file disappeared from evidence storage during an audit, questions would be asked that Angus wasn’t ready to answer.

He placed the file on his desk next to everything else.

Outside, Weyport kept its ordinary Monday morning rhythm. Inside, Angus sat in his guest bedroom, coming to terms with the line he’d crossed in secret.

He’d taken an official file without authorization. Had moved evidence out of proper channels. Had made copies of documents that were technically still part of an ongoing personal inquiry, using systems he had been advised not to access.

Not because he was grief-stricken and irrational, but because he was a sheriff who’d uncovered evidence of systematic fraud, and when he’d tried to investigate properly, the system had warned him to stop.

Which meant the system itself was compromised.

And if the system wouldn’t protect the truth, then Angus would have to protect it himself.

He closed the file and looked at his notes. At the timeline of Logan’s disappearance. At the connections between traffickers who’d vanished and victims who had been freed and records that had been carefully altered to make a person officially dead.

Someone had gone to enormous trouble to erase Logan Reid, creating an institutional conspiracy that spanned multiple agencies and involved people with enough authority to manipulate vital records without triggering safeguards.

They’d done it carefully. Professionally. With just enough legitimacy to satisfy anyone who didn’t look too closely.

But Angus had looked closely. Had found the cracks. Had proven the fabrication.

And they’d noticed.

The warning call wasn’t concern for his grief or worry about departmental liability. It was a message: Stop asking questions. Accept what you’ve been told. Let the lie stand.

But the lie had already fallen. Angus couldn’t rebuild it, even if he wanted to.

So he’d continue. Carefully. Quietly. Using resources they couldn’t monitor and documentation they couldn’t seize. Following the evidence not as Sheriff Reid, but as Angus Reid, brother of a missing person whose death had been manufactured by people with enough power to make the system protect their fiction.

He looked at Logan’s photo one more time. Then wrote a final note in his journal: