Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Angus pulled into Murphy’s driveway just after six o’clock Thursday evening, his headlights cutting through the winter darkness.
The drive back from Augusta had been long and cold, his mind circling the same truths over and over until they’d worn grooves into his thinking.
Someone had manipulated the vital records system.
Someone with authority and access and the willingness to make Logan Reid officially dead without bothering to prove he’d actually died.
The question was not yet who. The question was why it had been necessary.
Murphy’s porch light came on before he’d made it halfway to the door. She opened it with Scout at her side, the border collie’s tail already wagging at the sight of his person. The dog bounded down the steps and pressed against Angus’s legs with the uncomplicated joy of reunion.
“Hey, boy.” Angus crouched and ran his hands through Scout’s thick coat. The contact was grounding—warm fur and steady breathing and loyalty that asked nothing in return.
Murphy stood in the doorway, arms crossed against the cold. “Long couple of days?”
“Something like that.” Angus straightened, Scout staying close. “Thanks for watching him.”
“Anytime. You know that.” She studied his face in the porch light, and Angus felt the weight of her medical examiner’s assessment—the way she could read fatigue and stress and things people tried to hide. “You want to come in? I’ve got coffee on.”
“I should get home.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Angus hesitated, one hand resting on Scout’s head.
He wanted to tell her what he’d found. Wanted to lay out the pieces—the missing source file, the system override, the deliberate manipulation that shouldn’t have been possible.
Murphy would understand the implications immediately.
She would help him think through what it meant and where to go next.
But saying it out loud would make it real in a different way, turning suspicion into accusation.
This would move from a private search into something that required decisions about formal investigations, official channels, and all the machinery of law enforcement that Angus wasn’t sure he wanted to activate yet.
“How’s it going?” Murphy asked quietly. “The search.”
“Complicated.” Angus managed a tired smile. “But I’m making progress. I think.”
Murphy’s expression showed she heard everything he wasn’t saying.
She stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and pulled him into a hug that was warm and solid, exactly what he needed without realizing it.
Angus wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin briefly on the top of her head, breathing in the familiar scent of her shampoo mixed with the antiseptic she never quite washed away from the morgue.
“You don’t have to tell me everything,” she murmured against his chest. “But don’t carry it alone too long.”
“I won’t.” He meant it, mostly.
She pulled back just enough to look up at him, then kissed him—brief and warm, a reminder that whatever he was chasing didn’t have to be done in isolation. When she stepped away, her hand lingered in his for a moment.
“Go home. Get some rest. When you’re ready to talk, I’ll be here.”
Scout pressed against his leg again, ready to go. Angus squeezed Murphy’s hand, then walked with the dog back to the truck. When he looked in the rearview mirror, she was still standing on the porch, silhouetted by the light from inside.
At home, Angus fed Scout and made himself eat something that tasted like cardboard.
His mind was already elsewhere, sorting through what he knew and what he still needed to understand.
The documents had told him that Logan’s death was manufactured.
Now he needed to know why someone had gone to that trouble.
What had Logan been involved in that required official erasure?
Angus sat at his kitchen table with his laptop and a legal pad, Scout settling at his feet.
He’d been chasing paper trails and signatures and filing protocols.
But documents were just reflections of actions.
If he wanted to understand what had happened to Logan, he needed to look at consequences instead of records.
He needed a different approach.
He needed to find the ripples.
Angus opened his laptop and pulled up the missing persons database he still had access to through the sheriff’s office network.
He wasn’t looking for Logan directly—that file had been his constant companion for eighteen years.
Now he looked for patterns. Cases from Las Vegas and the surrounding Nevada counties.
Cases from the time period when Logan disappeared.
Cases that had ended in ways that didn’t quite make sense.
He started with Las Vegas Metro Police records, then expanded to state databases. Open cases, cold cases, unexplained disappearances from the years around Logan’s vanishing.
The results populated slowly—dozens of files, each representing someone who’d vanished or died under circumstances that left questions unanswered.
Angus began reading through them methodically, looking for anomalies.
Deaths ruled accidental that seemed too convenient.
Disappearances that aligned with ongoing investigations.
Outcomes that suggested intervention rather than coincidence.
Three hours later, he found one that made him stop.
Marcus Volk. Known associate of trafficking networks operating through Las Vegas and the Southwest corridor. Subject of an FBI investigation that had been building for years. Multiple warrants for assault, intimidation, and conspiracy to traffic minors across state lines.
Volk had vanished from a motel outside Henderson. His vehicle was found abandoned at a rest stop along I-15. No signs of struggle. No witnesses. No body.
The case was still technically open, but the file notes suggested it had gone cold within weeks. Last entry was years old: “No new leads. Subject presumed to have fled jurisdiction or to be deceased. Investigation suspended pending new information.”
Angus read through the file twice, paying attention to what wasn’t there as much as what was.
No follow-up interviews after the first month.
No forensic analysis of the vehicle beyond basic processing.
The investigation had simply…stopped. Like someone had decided Volk’s disappearance didn’t merit continued resources.
Like someone had decided Volk’s disappearance was the best possible outcome.
Angus pulled up the related case files—the trafficking investigation Volk had been a part of.
FBI jurisdiction, multi-agency task force.
The operation was disrupted when Volk disappeared.
His network had fractured. Several victims were recovered in the weeks following his vanishing.
The lead investigator’s notes mentioned that sources had become more willing to cooperate once Volk was no longer a threat.
The case was considered a success, even though they never found Volk.
Angus sat back, Scout’s warmth against his ankle steadying him.
The dates didn't line up the way Angus expected.
Marcus Volk had disappeared years after Logan vanished—long after Angus had accepted that his brother was either dead or lost to somewhere unreachable.
Long enough that connecting the two felt like a stretch rather than a lead.
Which made the connection harder to dismiss, not easier. It could be coincidence.
Except Angus had stopped believing in coincidences about three days ago.
He pulled up news archives from that year, searching for any mention of Volk’s disappearance.
Found a brief article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Local Man Missing, Foul Play Suspected.” The article was thin on details but mentioned that Volk had connections to organized crime and that his disappearance was under investigation.
Then, a few weeks later, a follow-up: “Missing Man’s Vehicle Found, No Body Recovered.” After that—nothing. The story had simply faded from coverage, replaced by other news, other concerns.
Angus thought about the file Murphy had shown him. The autopsy discrepancies. The body that had been buried as Logan but wasn’t. The careful manipulation of records to make a living person officially dead.
If someone had gone to that trouble for Logan, what kind of life would require that level of protection?
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?