But he’d kept his promise. He’d backed her up. Now it was time for him to get gone.
two
The crowd scatteredinto the sticky Solace night, buzzing with a weird, nervous energy. Naomi stood on the cracked asphalt, handing out flyers for all the missing girls, trying to slow her breathing. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She hated that. Hated that it still mattered what these people thought of her—or didn’t.
She’d made her case. Forced them to look at Leelee’s photo, to stare down the truth they’d been ignoring for years.
Half that room still saw her as a troublemaker—one more loud, angry Indian making them uncomfortable. The other half saw her as a traitor who’d gone off to work for the feds and forgotten where she came from.
Well, screw them both. She was here for Leelee. For Tariah, Richelle, and Danielle. For Mary Rose. For every Indigenous woman who’d vanished and been erased.
“I didn’t realize it was so bad,” Charlie Whiteclaw said as he passed, accepting the flyers. “I’ll see if the Tribal Police Chief can find a way to look into it.”
“Thank you.” As he walked away, she sucked in a lungful of air, expecting relief.
But nope. There was just pressure. Building and building behind her ribs, like she was going to fly apart if she didn’t find an outlet for it.
By rights, tonight should have felt like a win. She’d made them listen—really listen. Raised voices. Raised hackles. Planted the seed that maybe, just maybe, things weren’t as random as the town wanted to believe.
But all she felt was empty.
Maybe that was the real curse of this fight. Even on nights when she got what she wanted, it was never enough.
She watched the crowd split and swirl in the dim lot. A handful of tribal elders hovered near the ramp, talking earnestly. Two county officials grumbled by their car, ducking their heads as if the truth had personally attacked them. Even the die-hards—her grandmother’s generation—looked tired, moved with a heaviness, like they’d already seen this ending before.
And then there was Owen Booker, doing exactly what she’d known he’d do—ghosting away.
That nickname of his sure was appropriate.
He moved through the shadows like he’d invented them. Jacket zipped to his chin, head bent, hands in pockets. Unremarkable except for the way he seemed to map every step three moves ahead. Not a wasted movement.
The others barely glanced his way, which meant he was doing his job—be forgettable. Untraceable.
Too bad she couldn’t forget him.
“Hey!” she called, marching after him. “That’s it? You’re just going to vanish?”
He stopped, but didn’t turn. For a second, she thought maybe he’d just keep walking. But then?—
“That’s kind of my thing.” He said it like a dare. Like she was the idiot for expecting anything else.
Oh, hell no.
He didn’t move as she closed the distance, barely even acknowledging her approach. Classic. He’d probably calculated her trajectory before she’d made it two steps.
When she was close enough to see the hard line of his jaw in the parking lot glow, she slowed, stopping just out of reach.
“You know,” she said, folding her arms tight, “I appreciate the assist inside, but if you’re going to confirm my whole theory and then walk away, that makes you look like a coward.”
Now he turned. Not the whole way—just enough that she could see the edge of his profile, the way his lip curled at the word “coward.”
He didn’t take the bait.
“You shouldn’t have said my name,” he told her flatly. “You had them. Could have kept it on you. But you wanted backup, so you threw me under the bus in front of eighty people.”
That stopped her cold. “Excuse me?”
“You put me on a stage I didn’t ask for.”
