Page 65 of Ranger's Wildflower
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.
