Chapter 4

Once I had the answer I needed, the weight I'd been carrying finally settled.

I opened a cloud folder on my phone.

Looking at what was inside, I knew that in this life, I wasn't going to walk the same road again.

Nine thirty the next morning.

I'd calmed my mother down and gone out, meaning to clear away the tables she hadn't been able to pack up the day before.

But the moment I got there, I saw a whole crowd of online influencers already gathered.

They'd come to ride the wave of the story.

And standing dead center in the square was Wyatt Lambert.

Althea Chavez sat beside him in a wheelchair, her head wrapped in thick bandages, whimpering loudly for effect.

Wyatt's voice was full of grief and outrage.

“Yesterday, something truly appalling happened here in our park. Our employee, Willow Swanson, not only assaulted an elderly woman in her seventies and caused her to fall, she also destroyed an extremely precious red rock formation.”

As he spoke, he produced a document stamped with a red seal, the picture of a man in anguish.

“This is a damage assessment drawn up overnight by an independent appraisal firm. Because of Willow Swanson's violence, that section of red rock strata suffered irreversible damage, with direct economic losses of up to three hundred thousand dollars.”

A sharp intake of breath rippled through the crowd.

“Three hundred grand? Can this woman even pay that?”

“Serves her right. Thought she could throw her weight around, and now she's hit a wall.”

”Three hundred thousand is getting off easy. Red rock like that takes tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years to form.“

”Why only that much? She should be paying a hundred million!“

Wyatt kept feeding the mob.

“This park has always put visitors first. When it comes to a bad apple like this, we will show no mercy.”

Then he pointed straight at me, clearly certain all along that I would show up.

“Willow Swanson, you actually have the nerve to come here!”

Every eye in the square snapped to me at once.

In an instant, dozens of older men and women, along with some young people calling themselves righteous netizens, closed in and surrounded me.

“That's her! The animal who beat the old lady!”

“Shameless! And she still dares to show her face!”

”Thick skin, no wonder she had the gall to frame an old woman. Where does a piece of trash like this get the face?“

I was jostled backward, step after step.

“Willow Swanson, at this point, what more do you have to say?”

Wyatt pressed closer, a thick settlement agreement in his hand.

“All you have to do is sign this compensation agreement, admit that you shoved my mother down and caused the damage to the formation, and the park will consider letting you pay the three hundred thousand in installments.”

“Otherwise, you can wait for the park to sue you and rot in a cell!”

In the wheelchair, Althea broke into a smug little laugh.

The crowd around me kept up the frenzy of abuse, and the camera flashes were so bright I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Looking at Wyatt's face, so thoroughly pleased with itself, I couldn't help but laugh.

“Manager Lambert, do you think that just because you deleted the park's surveillance, you can flip black and white however you like?”

Wyatt's face froze for a beat, then hardened again.

“Surveillance? When did I delete any surveillance!”

He turned to the onlookers and spread his hands.

“You've all seen it. This woman beat someone and destroyed the site, and now she wants to fabricate evidence to get off!”

Listening to him, I swiped open my phone screen.

Last time around, it was Wyatt too who had the surveillance deleted. I couldn't defend myself, and everyone was certain I was the one lying.

This life, I'd seen it coming a long way off.

Yesterday at dusk I'd called Trevor in the security office.

Trevor told me Wyatt had already formatted the entire day's surveillance record.

What he didn't know was that the park's surveillance system had a cloud backup function.

It had been added during a system upgrade the week before, and Wyatt hadn't given it a second thought.

Last night I'd downloaded all of it onto my phone.

I raised the phone over my head and let the video play.

The footage was crystal clear.

The whole sequence was there: Althea climbing over the barrier, trampling the red rock, carving into the rock face with a key.

Then she rushed at me and tried to claw my face, I stepped aside, and she tripped over the base of an iron post all on her own.

From start to finish, there was at least an arm's length between us.

My hand never touched her.

The whole square went dead silent.

“Holy crap, the guide didn't push her at all, the old woman fell on her own!”

“She's the one who carved it too! You can see the letters clear as day!”

“Oh man, is this manager just putting on an act?”

“This is disgusting. So the whole thing was framing an innocent person!”

Dozens of phones swung to point at Wyatt and Althea at once.

Some people had started livestreaming, meaning to watch me get torn apart, only to end up watching someone else go down instead.

Wyatt's face had gone purple with fear.

He took a step back and knocked into the armrest of Althea's wheelchair.

“That video is fake!”

“Fake, it's all fake! She hired someone to make it! Technology's so advanced these days, what video can't they cook up?”

I pulled the phone back and opened another file.

“This is the original data log from the cloud backup. Timestamps, server address, hash checksums, all of it verifiable.”

“Whether it's forged or not, just go check the park's cloud backup and you'll know.”

Wyatt was shaking all over with fear.

Althea shot up out of the wheelchair.

The injured woman who'd been whimpering a moment ago moved with a briskness that had nothing to do with broken bones.

“Your leg's better now, Althea?” one of the older women blurted out.

Althea stood there blank-faced, not realizing she'd given herself away, and grabbed Wyatt's arm.

“Son, she's talking nonsense! Don't listen to her!”

“Mom, sit down!” Wyatt hissed under his breath.

The crowd's hostility swung around completely.

The influencers' cameras were all shoved right into Wyatt's face.

A blogger in a leather jacket pressed loudly.

“What do you mean, deleted the surveillance, Mr. Lambert? Did you know the truth all along?”

“Is that three-hundred-thousand-dollar damage report fake too?”

“Faking a disability, sitting in a wheelchair to run a shakedown, this whole family's really something!”

Soon a siren sounded not far off. To be safe, I'd called the police first.

A few patrol cars pulled into the square, and four officers came striding over.

The officer in the lead swept his eyes across the scene.

“Who called it in?”

I raised my hand.

“Officer, I did. I want to report the park's operations manager, Wyatt Lambert, for suspected deliberate destruction of evidence and false accusation, and his mother, Althea Chavez, for deliberately damaging a protected natural landmark.”

I held the phone out to him.

“All the evidence is right here.”