After he was gone, the story I’d lazily assigned him collapsed under the weight of facts I’d never bothered to see. There was no supervisor counting his deliveries, no company tracking his shifts. The office he “reported” to wasn’t a newsroom, but a front—an anonymous node in a web of investigations that stretched far beyond our town. Catherine laid it out with the detachment of someone used to secrets: Patrick had spent years following dirty money, tracing shell companies, and hand-delivering evidence so fragile it couldn’t risk a network or a name.

Now, when I remember him pedaling into the gray dawn, I don’t see a man clinging to relevance. I see someone who chose obscurity on purpose. While I chased titles and scoffed at his, he was dismantling lives built on stolen futures. The route I pitied was a battlefield I never recognized, and he rode it without bitterness, without applause, until the very end.