Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
The investigation wall came down piece by piece.
Angus worked methodically in the hours after Hammond’s retraction, unpinning photographs and documents, sorting them into categories that made sense only to him. What could stay visible. What needed to be hidden. What should never have been written down at all.
Logan’s photo went into a drawer. The death certificate copy—the one with J.
Brennan’s fabricated signature—went into a folder that went into a locked filing cabinet that had always held personal records.
Nothing unusual about that. The timeline he’d sketched across the wall came down entirely, reduced to cryptic notes in his leather journal, where dates and connections existed without names attached.
Scout watched from the doorway, tracking Angus’s movements with the patient concern of a creature who understood distress even when it wore the mask of productivity.
What remained on the wall looked innocuous.
A few old family photos. A calendar. Nothing that would raise questions if someone walked into this room and looked around.
Nothing that connected to fake registrars or fabricated documents or witnesses who’d retracted their statements within an hour of providing them.
Angus stepped back and studied what he’d created: the appearance of a guest bedroom returned to normalcy. A man on bereavement leave, putting away the remnants of grief-driven inquiry, accepting what he had been told and moving forward.
Except the truth was in the locked cabinet, the coded journal, and the external drive hidden in a box of his mother’s belongings, where no one would think to look.
And the realization went through him like ice: he wasn’t documenting the truth anymore. He was managing exposure. Protecting evidence from people who had the authority to seize it. Hiding what he knew because revealing it would make it disappear.
This was what criminals did. What people with something to hide did.
Angus had spent twenty years building cases against people who operated this way—keeping secrets, destroying evidence, and making sure no one could prove what they knew to be true.
Now he was doing the same thing—for different reasons with different intentions. But the actions were identical.
The thought disturbed him more than the State Oversight call. More than Hammond’s retraction. Because this—hiding evidence, managing information, operating in shadows—was a line he’d never imagined crossing.
But he’d crossed it, and was still crossing as he organized his files into categories of exposure risk. And he wasn’t going to uncross it, because the alternative was letting someone destroy what he’d discovered.
Scout joined him, nudging his hand until Angus reached down and ran his fingers through the thick fur. Angus ran his hand through the dog’s fur, anchoring himself in something real and present, and untouched by lies.
His phone buzzed. A text message from Murphy:
Checking in. Haven’t heard from you in a few days. Everything okay?
A simple question. Normal concern. Exactly what someone in a relationship would send when their partner had been unusually quiet.
Except Angus realized he had been avoiding her calls.
Not deliberately. Not consciously. Just…
not answering. Not reaching out. Letting distance accumulate because talking to Murphy meant either lying about what he was doing or telling her a truth that would implicate her in something she hadn’t chosen to be part of.
He typed a response: I’m fine. Just needed some space to process. I’ll call soon.
Vague enough to be honest. Distant enough to maintain separation. Murphy would understand—she was good at reading between the lines, at knowing when Angus needed solitude to work through complicated things.
But she’d also recognize avoidance and would wonder why he was pulling away now, after weeks of letting her help with the initial investigation. She’d eventually ask questions he wasn’t sure how to answer without making her complicit in what could become an unethical investigation.
The phone buzzed again almost immediately:
Okay. I’m here when you’re ready.
No pressure. No demands. Just availability. That was Murphy—patient and present and exactly the kind of person Angus didn’t want to drag into proximity with whatever was happening around his investigation.
Because Sandra Hammond had been patient and present too, willing to share what she remembered, to confirm what Angus suspected, to be helpful in a way that seemed harmless.
And within an hour, someone had made sure she understood it wasn’t harmless at all.
Angus set his phone on the desk, opened his personal laptop, pulled up his email, and started drafting a message.
The recipient would be Gerald Moss, a retired FBI agent who’d worked trafficking cases in the Southwest. Angus had found his name in the case files connected to Marcus Volk’s disappearance.
Moss had been the lead investigator, the one whose notes mentioned that sources became more cooperative once Volk was no longer a threat.
If anyone had noticed the pattern of interventions, it would be someone like Moss. Someone who’d worked multiple cases. Someone who might remember details that never made it into official reports.
Angus typed:
Mr. Moss,
My name is Angus Reid. I’m a sheriff in Maine, and I’m reviewing some old case files related to trafficking networks operating in Las Vegas during—
He stopped. Read what he’d written. Deleted it.
He tried again:
Mr. Moss,
I’m conducting research into victim extraction patterns and came across your work on the Volk investigation. I’d appreciate a few minutes of your time to discuss—
He stopped again. Deleted it.
The cursor blinked on the empty screen. Steady. Patient. Waiting for words that wouldn’t come.
Because sending this email would put Gerald Moss in the same position as Sandra Hammond— noticed, questioned, and vulnerable to the inevitable call advising him to reconsider.
Hammond’s voice echoed in his memory: “I was mistaken. Please don’t contact me again”.
Not angry. Not hostile. Just afraid in a way that made Angus understand exactly what his inquiry had cost her.
The email sat in drafts, unfinished and unsent. He closed the laptop. Gerald Moss would never know Angus had considered contacting him. Moss would never have to make the choice between confirming what he remembered and claiming confusion to make unwanted attention go away.
Scout’s tail thumped against the floor—not excitement, just acknowledgment of Angus’s presence. The pup understood that sitting together was sometimes enough.
Angus pulled out his notebook and wrote:
Cannot risk additional witness contact. Hammond retraction proves pattern of suppression. Anyone who confirms investigation becomes target.
Then, after a long pause:
No more civilians. No more witnesses. No more people caught in proximity to something they didn’t choose.
The rule settled, and with it, the certainty of decision. He would continue investigating—that much was certain—following the evidence, documenting the truth, and proving that Logan’s death had been manufactured.
But he wouldn’t put anyone else at risk to do it. Wouldn’t call retired caseworkers or FBI agents or county clerks who might remember details. Wouldn’t create more Sandra Hammonds—people who’d tried to help and learned too late that helping meant exposure.
Whatever came next, Angus would pursue it alone. Using resources that couldn’t be monitored. Following threads that didn’t require anyone else’s cooperation. Building a case that existed only in his locked files, coded notes, and the evidence he could gather without implicating others.
He thought about Hammond in her Scottsdale home. She’d done nothing wrong. She had simply answered questions about a case from nearly two decades ago. Had confirmed what the file suggested and provided context the official record omitted.
And Angus had put her in that position. He had called her number and asked his questions and drawn attention that followed her even into retirement, even across state lines, even in conversations she’d thought were private. And she’d been put on notice almost immediately.
The guilt wasn’t theoretical. Wasn’t abstract. It was specific and personal, fixed in his chest, unrelenting.
He’d hurt someone by asking questions. And if he kept asking questions of people who weren’t protected, he’d hurt more.
So he’d stop asking. He’d work with what he already had, following trails that existed in documents and databases and public records—sources that couldn’t be retracted with a phone call.
The moral calculus was simple: Logan’s truth wasn’t worth Sandra Hammond’s fear. Wasn’t worth the next person who got contacted and warned and reminded that some memories were safer left unshared.
Angus would find another way. He had to. Because the person he had been for twenty years—the sheriff who believed in procedure and evidence and protecting people from harm—could not justify creating casualties in service of truth.
Even when the truth mattered. Even when the lies were institutional. Even when his brother’s life hung in the balance of what he could—or couldn’t—prove.
Some costs were too high. Some people deserved protection from his investigation, even if that protection meant working harder, slower, more carefully.
Outside, Weyport had settled into evening quiet. Inside, with Scout’s head resting on his foot, Angus sat in a room that no longer looked like an investigation command center. Just a guest bedroom. Just a man on leave, trying to process grief and move forward.
Except the investigation wasn’t over. It hadn’t even slowed. It had just gone underground—into locked cabinets and coded journals and the places where evidence could exist without being visible.
Angus looked at his notebook. At the rule he’d just written. At the boundary he’d set between what he would and wouldn’t do.
Then he added one final line:
Different approach. Same destination.
Because the truth about Logan didn’t change just because the path to it had become more dangerous.
The fabricated death certificate didn’t become legitimate just because witnesses were being silenced.
The pattern of interventions didn’t disappear just because people were too afraid to confirm what they remembered.
The evidence existed. Angus had found it, documented it, hidden it where others couldn’t seize it.
Now he had to figure out how to follow it without creating more casualties.
Scout’s breathing settled into a sleep rhythm. The house was quiet except for the familiar sounds of wind moving past the windows. Everything ordinary. Everything normal.
Except Angus Reid sat in the darkening guest bedroom, a locked filing cabinet holding evidence of systematic fraud and a rule in his notebook binding him to a path that would only make the search harder.
No more people who’d learned the cost of helping.
Just him and the truth and the brother who might still be alive somewhere, living a life that required this much protection, this much silence, this much institutional suppression.
Angus would find him. Eventually. Somehow.
But he’d do it differently now.
Carefully. Quietly. Alone.
Without leaving casualties in his wake.