Chapter 17
Ace
Ihated unfinished things.
Unanswered questions.
Loose ends.
And staring at the frozen traffic footage on my monitor, I had one hell of a loose end sitting right in front of me.
The second vehicle.
Grainy image.
Partial plate.
Enough.
Blaze’s voice echoed in my head.
Registered to the Reynolds family.
I leaned back slowly in the chair and dragged a hand across my jaw.
“Alright,” I muttered. “Let’s see what you’re hiding.”
The Ranger office stayed dark except for the glow from the monitor while I dug through records.
Ownership transfers.
Family connections.
Registration history.
Piece by piece, the puzzle started shifting into place.
Then—
there it was.
Daniel Reynolds.
I went still.
Same last name.
Same family.
But not Cathy’s father.
Not her brother.
I clicked deeper into the family tree.
Brother-in-law.
A slow, humorless laugh left me.
“Of course.”
I kept scrolling.
Current position:
Sheriff — Gable Ridge County.
My jaw tightened hard.
Suddenly the entire case snapped into focus.
The missing footage.
The wiped logs.
The perfectly clean reports.
Not incompetence.
Control.
My phone buzzed against the desk.
Blaze.
“You seeing this?” he asked immediately.
“Yeah.”
I stared at the sheriff profile on the screen.
Middle-aged. Clean-cut. Campaign smile.
Golden boy.
Guys like him always thought the badge made them untouchable.
“He’s buried right in the middle of this,” Blaze muttered.
“Not buried.” My gaze hardened. “Built it.”
Silence crackled briefly across the line.
“You run his history yet?” I asked.
“Already did. Clean record. Decorated. Sheriff for four years.”
I scoffed quietly.
“Of course he is.”
Another pause.
Then Blaze’s tone changed slightly.
“There’s something else.”
Every instinct in me sharpened instantly.
“What.”
“He was on duty the night of the crash.”
I stopped moving completely.
“What?”
“Patrol logs put him near that intersection ten minutes before impact.”
Cold anger settled low in my chest.
Not explosive.
Worse.
Controlled.
“So he wasn’t some random driver.”
“No.” Blaze exhaled slowly. “Looks like he was already there.”
I stared back at the footage again.
At the moment the second car blew through the intersection.
“He hits them,” I said slowly.
“And comes back in uniform.”
“Takes control of the scene.”
“Controls the report.”
“Deletes the footage.”
“Lets Tessa take the fall.”
Silence stretched heavily between us.
Ugly silence.
Because now there was no pretending this had been an accident.
“He knew,” I said finally.
“Yeah.”
“He knew she wasn’t driving.”
“No doubt.”
Rage climbed steadily higher beneath my skin.
Not because Tessa went to prison.
Because somebody watched it happen—
and decided she was acceptable collateral.
“That’s not fear,” I muttered. “That’s cruelty.”
Blaze didn’t argue.
Because he knew it too.
“And men like that,” he warned quietly, “don’t usually sit back while people expose them.”
My mind went straight to Tessa.
Still raw.
Still fragile in places she tried hard to hide.
“He knows the truth is out now,” I said.
“Most likely.”
I grabbed my keys off the desk.
“Where you headed?”
“To her.”
Blaze sighed softly. “Figured.”
I headed for the door.
“Be careful, Ace. Guys like Reynolds have connections.”
I shoved the office door open.
Cold wind hit me instantly outside.
“He already destroyed her life once,” I said. “Not happening again.”
The truck engine roared to life beneath me as the first dark edge of unease settled low in my gut.
Because this wasn’t about clearing Tessa’s name anymore.
Now?
It was about keeping her alive long enough to take her life back.