Page 39 of Logan’s Way

He looked at what he’d written. Looked at the photograph. Looked at Scout, who had given up waiting and fallen asleep with his chin on Angus's foot.

Understanding struck like grief: Someone was choosing who would get hurt.

Someone was weighing his need for reunion against others’ need for salvation.

Someone was tallying costs Angus hadn’t wanted to acknowledge.

And that someone wasn’t him.

Someone else was playing the game—making the moves, managing the board. While Angus had thought he was investigating, he’d been observed, contained, and managed by someone who understood what was at stake far better than he did.

The midpoint twist settled into place: Angus wasn’t the hunter. He was a pawn on a chessboard. And continuing as he had been would cost lives he couldn’t see but someone else was actively protecting.

He closed his notebook and stood in his dark kitchen, Scout at his side, a childhood photograph in hand, and the terrible awareness that finding his brother might destroy the very reason he had stayed hidden.

Chapter Fourteen

Saturday morning arrived without resolution. The phone number sat where Angus had left it, written in his careful handwriting on a page torn from his notebook.

Gerald Moss. Retired FBI agent. Lead investigator on the Volk trafficking case. The man whose notes mentioned sources became more cooperative once the threat was removed. Someone who’d worked multiple cases across the region, someone who would have noticed patterns if anyone had.

Angus had found the number days ago. Had verified Moss was still alive, still accessible, living in Tucson with a landline listed in public directories. He’d drafted the call in his mind—how he’d introduce himself, what questions he’d ask, how he’d frame the inquiry as professional interest rather than personal investigation.

The number had been sitting on the table for three days now.

Angus hadn’t called.

Not because he feared what Moss might say. Not because calling would trigger more surveillance or administrative pressure. Those concerns had once been real but now felt distant, secondary to something larger pressing against his chest.

He couldn’t call because calling meant putting another person in proximity to something that had already hurt Sandra Hammond. Meant potentially exposing operations that were currently keeping people safe. Meant prioritizing his need for confirmation over someone else’s need for protection.

It meant choosing to continue when continuing itself might be the greater wrong.

Angus picked up the paper, looked at the number, then set it down again.

The investigation hadn’t stopped. The evidence still existed—locked in filing cabinets and coded notebooks and an external drive hidden among his mother’s belongings. The truth was still there, waiting to be pursued.

But Angus was starting to wonder if pursuing it was the right thing to do.

He thought about prayer. About bringing this to God. About asking for guidance in the way he had been taught—bring your burdens, seek wisdom, trust that answers would come if you waited in faith.

Except God felt quiet. Not absent. Not distant. Just … waiting. Like the answer was already there if Angus was willing to see it, but seeing it required acknowledging truths he had been avoiding.

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”

Angus had always believed the verse applied to people who chose obviously wrong paths. Criminals. Predators. People who rationalized evil.

But now he wondered if it applied to him. To his pursuit of truth. To his conviction that exposing lies and finding his brother was inherently right because truth was always better than deception.

What if truth itself could be a wrong path when its end brought harm?

What if seeking what seemed right—reunion, justice, resolution—led to something darker than living with uncertainty?

Angus ran his hand through Scout’s fur, taking comfort in the dog’s steady presence, and thought about Logan.

Not Logan the pattern. Not Logan the intervention. Not Logan the mystery that had consumed eighteen years of searching.

Logan the boy who’d hated being singled out for praise.