Chapter 4 #2
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.
And now he understood why.
If Logan had crossed paths with something like this—
if his life had brushed against consequences this severe—
then Angus had been asking the wrong questions for years.
Into a life that had somehow intersected with this world — trafficking, predators, victims like Elena Martinez — in ways Angus couldn't yet define.
Whether Logan had been a victim of it, a witness to it, or something else entirely, he couldn't say. Not yet.
The law was right. Justice through proper channels was right. Angus believed that with every fiber of his being.
But Marcus Volk was gone. And Elena Martinez was free. And somewhere between those two facts lay a truth that made Angus’s faith in the system feel inadequate.
He pulled out his notebook and wrote a single line:
If Logan had been anywhere near something like this, then finding him wouldn’t just bring answers.
It would force Angus to confront what justice looked like when the law arrived too late.
And whether some truths came with a cost that couldn’t be undone once spoken.
The words sat on the page, undeniable and troubling.
The ATM withdrawals Murphy had traced moved west. Nevada was west. Las Vegas was west. Volk's network had operated out of Las Vegas.
It wasn't proof — it wasn't close to proof — but it was the kind of geographic alignment that sheriffs learned not to dismiss.
If Logan had ended up in that world somehow, if his path had crossed Volk's network at the wrong moment or the right one, then eighteen years of silence suddenly had a shape Angus could almost recognize.
And if that shape was what he feared — or what he hoped — then finding his brother meant confronting a cost Angus wasn't sure he was ready to measure.
Because the question wasn’t whether they broke laws.
It was who bore the weight of that choice.
The question was whether the people he’d saved would have been better off if he’d followed it.
And Angus didn’t have an answer to that.
Before closing the laptop for the night, Angus pulled out one more folder—a compilation of regional cases Miguel had sent over earlier in the week.
Similar patterns across New England. Predators who’d relocated suddenly.
Victims who’d reported feeling safe after months of documented fear.
Craig Mercer. Bangor. Three restraining order violations against Amy Doyle.
The file showed escalating behavior—showing up at her workplace, her gym, her apartment building.
Each violation documented, each response inadequate.
Then four months ago—nothing. Mercer quit his job, abandoned his lease, left the state, never contacted Doyle again.
Her follow-up statement to Bangor PD: "I feel safe for the first time in years.
I don't know what changed, but something did. "
The pattern fit. The timing fit. Someone had stepped in where the law had failed. Another gap filled. Another victim protected. Another intervention. He added Mercer's name to the list before closing his laptop.
Outside, Weyport settled into winter silence. The questions multiplied faster than the answers.