Chapter 12
Ace
I hadn’t even blinked at it in the last hour.
The Ranger office sat dark except for the desk lamp glowing over the files spread across the table in front of me. Empty coffee cups littered the corner beside my laptop.
Tessa’s face wouldn’t leave my head.
The tears.
The disbelief.
The way she whispered I didn’t do it like she was afraid the words themselves might hurt her.
“I know you didn’t,” I muttered.
Now I just had to prove it.
I reopened the case file and started over from the beginning.
Not the headlines.
Not the public reports.
Everything.
Dispatch logs.
Evidence records.
Scene photos.
Time stamps.
If somebody buried the truth, they missed something.
People always did.
Hours blurred together while I dug through file after file. The office stayed silent except for the clicking of keys and the low hum of the old heater near the wall.
Then something caught my eye.
A single line buried deep in the evidence log.
Nearby traffic camera footage collected.
I stilled.
Collected.
Not reviewed.
Not entered into evidence.
Collected.
Slowly, I leaned back in the chair.
“Well… that’s interesting.”
I clicked deeper into the evidence archive.
Nothing.
No footage attached.
No processing notes.
No mention of why it disappeared.
My jaw tightened.
That wasn’t sloppy police work.
That was deliberate.
I grabbed my phone and hit Blaze’s number.
He answered on the third ring sounding half dead. “Man, do you know what time it is?”
“I need traffic cam footage from six years ago.”
Silence.
Then—
“Tessa Bloom?”
“Yeah.”
Another pause.
“Alright,” Blaze muttered. “Give me a minute.”
The line disconnected.
I rubbed both hands down my face and stared back at the screen.
Outside, wind rattled lightly against the office windows.
Inside, anger settled low and steady in my chest.
Because somebody saw this evidence.
Somebody chose to ignore it.
My phone buzzed nearly forty minutes later.
“I found traces of the footage,” Blaze said immediately.
I sat forward. “Traces?”
“The original file was pulled from evidence storage.”
“By who?”
“Access logs are wiped.”
Of course they were.
“Can you recover it?”
Keys clicked rapidly in the background.
“I’m trying.”
A long pause followed.
Then suddenly—
“Wait.”
Every muscle in my body locked.
“What?”
“There’s a partial backup.”
My pulse kicked hard.
“Send it.”
The file hit my inbox seconds later.
I opened it immediately.
Grainy black-and-white footage flickered onto the screen.
A dark intersection.
Rain-slick pavement.
Headlights cutting through the night.
Then a car rolled into frame.
The car Tessa was in.
Steady.
Controlled.
Not speeding.
Not swerving.
I leaned closer.
Another set of headlights appeared from the opposite direction.
Fast.
Way too fast.
“Wait…”
The second car blew through the intersection without braking.
Impact.
Metal exploded across the screen as it slammed broadside into Tessa’s car.
The vehicle spun violently—
straight into the tree.
Driver side first.
I sat frozen for half a second.
Then rage surged so fast it made my vision sharpen.
“That wasn’t an accident.”
I rewound the footage.
Watched it again slower.
And this time I saw it.
A flash of red hair visible through the passenger window before impact.
Passenger side.
Tessa.
Not driving.
Not even close.
“Jesus…”
I paused the frame and stared at it.
Six years.
Six years she carried this alone while everyone called her a killer.
My phone buzzed again.
“That second vehicle?” Blaze said. “I ran the plate.”
I already knew I wasn’t going to like the answer.
“And?”
“It’s registered to the Reynolds family.”
Everything in me went still.
Cathy’s family.
My grip tightened around the phone hard enough to creak the plastic.
“You’re telling me the car that caused the crash belonged to them?”
“Looks that way.”
Rage rolled through me hard and hot.
Not explosive.
Worse.
Controlled.
Calculated.
I stared at the paused image on the screen.
“She buried herself to protect them,” I said quietly.
“And they let her.”
Or helped make sure it stayed buried.
Either way—
Tessa paid for all of it.
I shoved back from the desk and grabbed my keys.
“Where you headed?” Blaze asked.
“To her.”
Because this wasn’t just evidence anymore.
This was six years of stolen life.
And I was done letting her carry it alone.