Page 3 of Earning Her Trust

"Let me be clear," Naomi said, her voice dropping lower, more intense. "Leila isn't the first Indigenous woman to go missing from this area. She's the fourth in eighteen months."

She set the stack of flyers on the table and spread them out like a hand of cards. Four faces. Four lives. “Richelle Twoteeth. Danielle Lankford. Tariah Clairmont. Leelee Padilla. All connected to the casino. All were last seen between nine and midnight. Three of the four reported being followed in the weeks leading up to their disappearances. All of them were ignored by the sheriff’s department.”

“What about the Tribal Police? Isn’t that what they’re for?” Janice Henderson asked. She was the town’s busybody, and although she meant well, she was often oblivious to how her husband’s money and status gave her privileges others in town lacked.

“The abductions aren’t happening on reservation land,“ Naomi said patiently. “That’s part of the problem. They have no jurisdiction here. We’re at the whim of the county sheriff, and he’s not helping.”

Daniel Bigcrane cleared his throat. “You make it sound like a conspiracy, Ms. Lefthand.”

A man in the crowd snorted. “She’s always been looking for conspiracies. Doesn't matter if it's the FBI or Bravlin County, she just can't let it go.”

Ghost tracked the voice—a man in a cheap suit, arms folded, annoyed. Dennis Sharpe. A mean son-of-a-bitch who drank away his county clerk paychecks at the Rusty Spur. Honestly, it was surprising he was here instead of warming his usual stool there. Then again, maybe not. The man’s favorite pastime was stirring up trouble.

“Shut it, Sharpe,” Julius said, half-rising from his seat.

“It’s okay, Jules.” Naomi stared Sharpe down, undaunted. “It’s Special Agent Lefthand, FBI,” she reminded him. “And I make it sound like a pattern, because it is a pattern.”

For a split second, the room just stared at her. Ghost counted heartbeats. Three.

Then the muttering started again. The men at the snack table rolled their eyes, sharing a look that said,Here we go again.

Dennis Sharpe smirked, already preparing his next shot. Typical. He’d never met a woman he couldn’t belittle, especially one smarter than him.

“You should all be ashamed of yourselves!” Ava shouted into the crowd, silencing them, then turned back to her granddaughter with a look of pure love and pride. “Go on. You make them listen.”

What would it be like to have someone like that in his corner?

The thought was uncomfortable, so Ghost shoved it aside and scanned for reactions. Three people in the middle row went rigid at the word stalking. Good. Fear meant they were listening.

Naomi mouthed her thanks to her grandmother, then passed out folders to the council members. “I’ve assembled timelines, witness statements, digital records, and cell phone pings. None of these women left voluntarily. There’s evidence of stalking. Escalating harassment. And every single time, the same handful of names surface in the background.”

Daniel Bigcrane flipped through the folder, then sighed and closed it, folding his big hands on top. “Women leave all the time. Take your aunt, Julius’s mother, for example.”

“Or Mary Rose,” Charlie Whiteclaw called.

Julius shoved out of his chair so hard it nearly tipped backwards. “Yeah, my mother left, and good riddance, but you all keep my sister’s name out of your mouth. She didn’t run away. Fifteen years and we still don’t have answers.”

The murmur once again rose like a tide, and Daniel Bigcrane held up his hands to stop them.

“Maybe Leelee just got tired of her life and split,” Dennis shouted as the noise quieted once again. “You hear about that girl over in Billings? They had the whole fucking state looking for her, and she turned up at a boyfriend’s house after two weeks. Cops wasted all that time and money on a wild goose chase.”

“Leelee didn’t run.” Naomi’s tone was flat. Absolute. “She was saving for school. She was thinking about the future. Four days before she vanished, she reported someone watching her when he left work at the casino. Her manager logged it. You want to see the documents?”

Sharpe’s mouth worked, but nothing came out.

A woman near the middle of the crowd blinked rapidly, and her knuckles were white around her purse. Nora Austins, HR for the casino. Ghost tracked the tremor in her hands, the darting glance to the side. She was scared. Or guilty.

“I’m not saying every missing woman is a victim of foul play,” Naomi added. “But when the same warning signs happen again and again, and law enforcement ignores it, what do you call that?”

“A tragedy,” someone mumbled.

“A failure,” Naomi shot back. “But it’s fixable. If we stop pretending this is random.”

For a moment, no one said a word. Then Ava Charlo clapped. “That’s my girl!”

It broke the tension. People shifted, the mood changing.

Naomi picked up the four flyers and held them up. “These women mattered. They had names. Families. They deserve more than excuses.”