Page 55 of Logan’s Way

“I need to go,” Angus said.

“Where?”

“To see if I can do anything that doesn’t involve waiting for Derek to commit a chargeable offense.”

“Angus—”

The call ended. Angus sat in his truck with the engine idling, looking at Lena’s apartment building and thinking about paths that seemed right: choosing restraint because it honored principles, or choosing action because it prevented harm, and how both choices could feel obedient while leading somewhere destructive.

There was always a way that seemed right. The question was whether seeming right and being right were the same thing, and whether anyone could tell the difference when outcomes were the only measure that mattered to people who needed help immediately.

His phone rang again. Not Miguel this time—Carol Henderson, the county supervisor who had been monitoring his involvement despite explicit orders to stay away from active cases.

“Sheriff Reid, I need you to come to the administration building. Now.”

“I’m not on duty.”

“That’s precisely why we need to talk. I’ve received complaints from Derek Walsh’s attorney—claims of harassment and intimidation. He says you’ve been conducting surveillance, making threatening contact, using your position to interfere with his client’s legal rights.” Carol’s voice remained professionally neutral, but the message was unmistakable. “I need you to come in so we can address these allegations before they become official.”

“I haven’t made contact with Derek Walsh.”

“That’s not what his attorney is claiming. And whether the claims are accurate or not, they create liability for the department. You’ve been told to step back from this case. Your continued involvement—even observational—undermines our ability to manage the situation legally.”

“The situation needs managing. Right now. Derek is escalating and your system is too slow to stop him before someone gets hurt.”

“My system,” Carol said carefully, “is designed to protect everyone’s rights. Including Derek Walsh’s. If we act without a proper legal foundation, anything we accomplish gets thrown out, and the person we’re trying to protect ends up more vulnerable than before. You know this. You’ve built cases that depended on following procedure correctly.”

“And how many people got hurt while we were following procedure correctly?”

The question hung between them—accusation and admission simultaneously. Because Angus had built those cases, had followed those procedures, had believed the system worked when people operated correctly within it. But he’d also seen the gaps. Seen people who fell through while paperwork processed. Chosen to trust that occasional failure was an acceptable cost for a system that protected everyone’s rights most of the time.

Except now he was watching Lena Torres live in the gap, and trusting the system felt less like faith and more like abandonment.

“Come to the administration building,” Carol repeated. “We’ll discuss your options. But understand that your current path isn’t sustainable. Either you’re back on duty under my authority, or you’re completely separated from active cases. There’s no middle ground.”

She ended the call before Angus could respond. He sat in his truck, watching morning light filter through clouds that promised more winter weather, thinking about middle ground and how he’d been trying to occupy it for weeks—neither fully investigating Logan nor completely stepping back, neither working officially nor remaining entirely separate, neither embracing restraint as obedience nor acknowledging that restraint had its own costs.

The middle ground was disappearing. Perhaps it had never existed except as temporary space where decisions could be delayed but not avoided.

Someone else would not still be sitting in a truck deciding whether permission mattered.

The thought arrived unbidden, unwelcome, undeniable. Someone else—Logan, presumably, or someone who operated like him—wouldn’t be sitting in a truck, wrestling with whether following orders served the greater good when following orders meant watching Lena Torres live in fear.

Someone else would have made Derek Walsh disappear. Handled. Quietly. Through whatever means it took to make him stop being a threat to her — consequences delivered outside the courtroom, outside procedure, outside the boundaries Angus had spent his career defending.

And Lena would be safe. Not because the system had protected her, but because someone had decided the system’s failure justified operating outside it.

This was the gap. The space where law ended and harm continued. Where procedure upheld rights while failing to protect people. Where Logan’s way existed—not because it was right, but because moments like this made it feel inevitable.

Angus understood that now with clarity that felt like defeat. Not because he’d concluded vigilante justice was righteous. Not because he’d decided outcomes mattered more than principles. But because sitting in this gap, watching it widen around someone who’d asked him for help, he couldn’t pretend neutrality still existed.

Choosing not to act was still a choice. And that choice had Lena Torres’s name written on it.

He drove to the diner—still closed but visible from the street. Derek’s truck sat three blocks away, positioned so he could watch the building without technically being near it. Establishing presence before Lena’s shift started, showing that taking the morning off only delayed the outcome.

Angus parked where he could observe without being obvious, watching Derek smoke cigarettes and stare at the diner with the patience of someone certain time was on his side. The restraining order said two hundred feet. Derek was at two hundred and twenty. Legally compliant. Psychologically devastating.

The terror was quiet. That’s what made it effective. For reasons he didn’t fully understand, that kind of silence tightened his chest in a way raised voices never had. No dramatic confrontation, no explicit threats, no violence to be captured by cameras capture or witnesses. Just presence. Just proximity. Just the message that nowhere was safe and the law’s protection was theater.