have gotten a tenant family hurt by winter.”

Denny’s face started to sweat.

“Now hold on.

There are subcontractors.

Paperwork errors.

You know how these things can—”

Savannah didn’t raise her voice.

“I know fraud when I see it.”

Every man in the garage looked at Denny.

He looked back at me.

There it was.

That flash.

Not guilt.

Calculation.

“Cole handles field repairs sometimes,” he said.

“If there’s confusion, maybe he forgot to log—”

“Don’t you dare,” I said.

My voice came out louder than I meant, but I was already angry enough not to care.

Savannah’s lawyer slid another paper out of the folder and set it down.

It was a time sheet from six months earlier with my forged initials on it.

Then another.

Then another.

The room seemed to narrow around me.

Denny had been using my name.

Not because I was important, but because I was invisible.

A mechanic with no money, no lawyer, and no power.

The perfect person to put between himself and consequences.

Savannah turned toward me.

“My north tract needs a full rebuild.

Houses.

Equipment sheds.

Irrigation lines.

The old dairy barn.

My own foreman recommended starting over because he no longer trusts a single service record connected to this shop.”

I still couldn’t quite process what she was saying.

“Why me?”

“Because you stopped in a storm with your son asleep in the truck and asked for nothing,” she said.

“Because you fixed what was in front of you instead of selling me a bigger problem.

Because I know what people do when they think nobody important is watching.

That’s the only test that matters to me anymore.”

Denny stepped forward.

“This is ridiculous.

You’re going to hand a multimillion-dollar restoration to a grease monkey who lives in a trailer?”

The words hung there.

A few guys in the shop looked down.

I should have been embarrassed.

Instead, I was just tired.

Savannah’s expression didn’t change.

“I was going to offer him oversight of the rebuild,” she said.

“Now I’m also offering him something else.”

Her lawyer placed one final document on the bench.

Savannah looked at Denny.

“A formal notice of audit, breach, and civil action.

Effective today, Row Farms is terminating every contract with Buck’s Garage.

The county fraud unit will receive copies of these records by five o’clock.”

Denny went white.

He started talking then.

Fast.

Loud.

Excuses, denials, blame.

He named suppliers, office managers, dead mechanics, anybody who might carry a piece of the weight.

The more he spoke, the more obvious the truth became.

He wasn’t shocked.

He was cornered.

Then he made his mistake.

He jabbed a finger at me and said, “This is because of him? Because some nobody changed a battery terminal in the rain?”

Savannah took one step closer.

“No,” she said.

“This is because a nobody, as you put it, showed me more honesty in thirty minutes than your business has shown in three years.”

Nobody had ever spoken to Denny like that in front of his own men.

He lunged for the papers.

The suited man nearest Savannah caught his wrist before he touched them.

Not violently.

Just firmly enough to stop him.

Denny jerked back, cursing.

By then someone had called the sheriff’s office.

I don’t know who.