Page 44 of Lily's Eagle

“So maybe he or whoever he works for sent you to do his dirty work now,” Mitch says. “You and this pretty girl here. Two of our own, to make the job easier. Kate went missing the day this one here arrived.”

He means me, and I feel everyone’s eyes burning holes in me, from the front and the back.

“Who’s Kate?” I ask. “I’ve been at the helpline almost the whole time since I came here. When would I have the time to abduct anyone?”

They’re being totally ridiculous. Especially Miriam who’s not meeting my eyes even though she knows full well I’m telling the truth. Or Ariana who was so nice and welcoming to me until now this. What the hell is going on?

“Marsha in town told me how you tried to load her into your truck when you arrived, to take her God knows where,” Mitch says. “That’s who they go after. The ones so strung out they don’t know what’s happening until it’s too late. And the young ones like Kate. She was only fourteen.”

Frank clears his throat and steps forward, flanked by the two guys with him, both of whom are looking at me and Eagle with cold, dark anger in their eyes. Are they seriously buying these crazy accusations?

“We are making every effort to find Kate,” Frank says. “She has wandered off before, and she had a big fight with her grandmother earlier that day. There’s no reason to think anything has happened to her. Not yet.”

“What about Aysha and Dora?” one of the men—a tall longhaired guy in a turquoise rain jacket—says. “They’ve been gone for over a year now. Stop lying to yourself. We have a problem and it’s getting worse. Maybe they are the ones behind it.”

“Their biker gang, I mean,” he adds. “The one this one’s father rode with.”

He means Eagle’s dad but might as well be talking to me. I’m so mad, my blood is like mud in my veins. Scalding hot mud.

“My father does not run a child abducting biker gang,” I say loudly. “How dare you just accuse us like this? I came here, because this is my home, the place where I was born and that I love. I would never do anything to hurt my people. And neither would my friends, or may family. If a child is missing, I want to go looking for her. And I was trying to take that drunk woman to a doctor.”

“According to you,” Mitch says. I really don’t like his eyes. They’re too dark, black almost and there’s some sort of fire burning in them. Bright but cold.

“She’s not a liar,” Eagle says. “And neither am I. Prove your accusations or shut the fuck up with your lies.”

He looks and sounds like he’s gonna make him if he doesn’t. That makes two of us.

Frank gets between us. He looked majestic in his traditional wear last night, but this morning he looks old and almost frail.

“We’re not going to solve this out here,” he says. “I see little reason to suspect these youngsters did anything of the sort—“

“Well, there you go,” Mitch snaps. “Typical Frank. And you probably won’t do anything to investigate the claims either. Just like you never do. So excuse us, my wife needs to rest. This has been a hell of a shock for her, on top of everything else.”

He’s talking so angrily and quickly that spittle is flying every which way from his mouth. And he punctuates his monologue by pulling Ariana into the cafe and slamming the door in our faces.

Frank turns to face me and the rest of them encircle us.

“I don’t believe it, Frank,” Miriam says. Finally. “I don’t know Lily well, but I can see she’s a genuine person who only wants to help.”

Frank brushes a lock of grey hair off his forehead and sighs. “Be that as it may, they’re not safe here. This will get out and a lot of people will want to believe it. You saw what happened last night and that was over nothing at all.”

“Just me showing up,” Eagle mutters.

“What can we do?” I ask. “We can go look for the missing girl, I can call my father, maybe he can help too.“

“It would be best if you left the reservation,” Frank says. “I hate to say it.”

Yet he did. And it feels like a punch in the gut.

Miriam is looking at me with concern in her face. “Just for a little while. Just until we can clear this up, then you can come back. It’s safer that way.”

“I’m not going home,” I say. “I’m not just running away. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Eagle finally meets my eyes, and he seems to see all the way to the core of my hurt right now.

“We should just go home,” he says, and I open my mouth to argue, but he forestalls it with, “but you’re never gonna go for that. So why don’t we go to that camp you came here to work on. It’s far from anywhere, right? We should be safe there.”

“That’s a good idea,” Miriam says. “Just until we straighten this up.”

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