Chapter 10
Ace
Isat in my truck long after the engine went cold.
Main Street blurred beyond the windshield while Tessa’s voice kept replaying in my head.
Six years.
Not one letter.
She didn’t believe me.
I scrubbed both hands over my face and leaned back against the seat.
None of it fit.
Not the woman I knew.
Not the way she carried herself like she was waiting for the ground to give out beneath her.
And definitely not the look in her eyes when she said people stopped believing her.
“No,” I muttered.
Something was wrong.
Bad wrong.
The Ranger office in the back of the saloon sat empty. Dark except for the dim security lights glowing down the hallway.
Good.
I wasn’t in the mood to explain anything.
I headed straight for the back office and flipped on the desk lamp. Light spilled across scattered files and old coffee cups as I dropped into Blaze’s chair and pulled the keyboard closer.
If the truth existed—
I’d find it.
I typed in her name.
Tessa Bloom.
The screen loaded slowly.
Then headlines filled the monitor.
LOCAL GIRL RESPONSIBLE FOR DEADLY CRASH
DRUNK DRIVING KILLS YOUNG WOMAN
TESSA BLOOM SENTENCED TO SIX YEARS
My jaw tightened harder with every article.
Same wording.
Same version.
Over and over again.
Too clean.
Real cases weren’t clean.
There were always contradictions. Witnesses disagreeing. Missing pieces. Somebody talking too much or not enough.
This?
Looked packaged.
Like everyone decided the story before they finished asking questions.
I opened the official report next.
Driver: Tessa Bloom.
Passenger: Cathy Reynolds.
Cause: intoxication. Hit a tree.
I stared at the screen for a long second.
Then started scrolling.
Witness statements were almost nonexistent.
Nobody actually saw the crash happen.
Only the aftermath.
My eyes narrowed.
That alone felt wrong.
Then one line stopped me cold.
Primary impact: driver side.
I leaned forward slowly.
Read it again.
Driver side.
My pulse kicked harder.
I pulled up the crash photos next.
The grainy images loaded one by one across the screen.
The car wrapped around a tree.
Metal folded inward violently—
on the driver side.
I sat back slowly.
“Damn it.”
Because if the impact crushed the driver side—
then the person sitting there never walked away from that wreck.
My gaze snapped back to the victim report.
Cathy Reynolds.
Not Tessa.
A sharp rush of anger burned through my chest.
I pulled up the toxicology next.
Cathy’s blood alcohol level sat significantly higher than Tessa’s.
There it was.
Not proof by itself.
But enough to make the whole damn thing crack wide open.
“She took the fall.”
The words came out low.
Certain.
Not theory anymore.
Fact.
I shoved back from the desk so hard the chair rolled into the wall behind me.
Six years.
Six years carrying guilt that never belonged to her.
Six years believing nobody would ever hear the truth and stay.
My chest burned hotter the more I thought about it.
About her mother turning away.
About the whole town deciding she was easier to blame.
About Tessa standing alone while everyone else walked away.
I grabbed my keys off the desk.
Because suddenly there was only one thing that mattered.
Getting to her.
She deserved to hear it from somebody.
Somebody who believed her.
I headed for the door, rage simmering low beneath my skin.
Because whoever let that girl drown alone for six years?
I was done letting them get away with it.