Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
“I’m going to lose her, she doesn’t trust me,” Thunder’s voice came through the comms unit and set Voodoo’s heartrate into overdrive.
Sending Thunder on ahead hadn't been his first choice. Splitting up again put them all at a disadvantage, especially when they knew that not only was Dr. Gardner so close, but that more men were being brought in to hunt them.
But there hadn't seemed to be any other choice.
They knew that Indigo wasn't alone out there, that she was being followed, although they had no idea of the condition of the man who had been driving the car and if he was injured to the point that he was no longer a threat.
Voodoo hadn't wanted to waste time trying to find him, Indigo was the priority, and he wanted Lion, Dragon, and Blade to use their skills to locate her.
Since Thunder’s skill was speed, without any actual physical advantages that could help him track Indigo, they were making this awkward.
Dragon directing Thunder based on what he could smell, Blade directing him based on what he could hear, Lion’s enhanced sight not as much a use to them with so many trees around.
It had seemed like such a long shot that this way of locating her would work, and yet it had. Thunder had found her, but from the sounds of things, his girl was ready to bolt, unsure who she could trust.
Not completely unsure, though.
There was one person Indigo was absolutely certain was safe.
Him.
Maybe he wasn't there right now, but there had to be something he could give Thunder to tell her so she would know he was who he said he was and that she could trust him.
Wracking his brain as he ran, Voodoo tried to come up with something that would convince Indigo that Thunder was with him.
It couldn’t just be something about her past because there was every reason to believe that Dr. Gardner would have done a deep dive into her background to ensure nobody was going to look for her.
After all, that had to be why he’d shifted to experimenting on homeless people.
Their anonymity provided a safety net that snatching people off the streets or advertising in more mainstream places where people with friends and family looking out for them wouldn't.
It hit him all of a sudden. “Bubbles,” he blurted out.
“Tell her that Voodoo said her favorite thing that made her smile was bubbles. Her mom used to get her some when she was small because they were cheap and she’d chase them around in the front yard.
Then, when she was in foster care, some of the families would only allow her a small amount of money for gifts, and she’d choose bubbles for herself. ”
Waiting to see if that was enough to reassure Indigo had to be the tensest minute of his life.
“Not far to go,” Blade assured him.
“Less than a mile,” Dragon added.
A mile was still a long way, though, and for the first time ever, he wished he’d been given Thunder’s speed instead of his ability to heal.
Healing hadn't saved Indigo. All that had saved Indigo was her own decision to keep fighting.
If she hadn't made that choice, he would have lost her to infection or hypothermia days ago.
Keep fighting, honey. Please. I'm coming, but I need you to keep fighting.
“Got her,” Thunder’s voice through the comms almost brought him to his knees as relief hit him hard.
“It worked? She believes you? Knows you're with me?” he asked, needing a little additional reassurance until he could get there and haul her into his arms.
“Yeah, when I told her what you said about the bubbles, she believed that I was Thunder and that you were talking to me. I told her you were coming, and she started crying.” There was amusement in Thunder’s voice as he said that, and Voodoo knew it wasn't that the man thought it was funny, but that he was amused that things had progressed so quickly between him and Indigo and that now another one of them had fallen hard and fast for a woman.
“Tell her I'll be there in less than two minutes,” he ordered.
“Is she okay? How badly is she hurt?” He wanted to be prepared for what he would find when he got there.
Indigo had made it a fair distance from the wrecked car, especially since she was moving on a broken leg, but that didn't mean she wasn't badly injured.
“I'm not with her,” Thunder said, and Voodoo jerked to a stop.
“What the hell does that mean? You said you found her, that she didn't trust you, but that the bubbles convinced her. What do you mean you're not with her?”
“Relax, dude,” Thunder said in a voice that was so annoyingly calm, Voodoo curled his fingers into fists.
“Don’t tell me to relax,” he snapped as he started running again. There was no way he was relaxing until he had Indigo safe and sound in his arms.
“We wound up taking different routes to get to the same place. I'm standing right above her, but there’s a drop of probably thirty feet or so between us. She’s down the bottom by the river, I'm way up here. The way you guys are coming, you're going to join me, not her.”
“Damn,” Voodoo muttered. He’d wanted to be able to hold his girl, but this meant it would take them a while to find a way to get down to Indigo. Especially since they couldn’t all leave her at once, one of them would need to keep watch so they could pick off any guards that might find her.
“We’ll figure it out,” Steel assured him. “Let’s just get you to her first.”
Nodding his agreement, he was less than a minute out now until they’d reach Thunder, and Voodoo pushed his body harder, making it go faster.
Maybe thirty seconds later, they came out of the tree line to find Thunder standing there, looking down at Indigo below him. She was so close he could almost feel the phantom brush of her in his arms.
Skidding to a stop, he looked down and spotted her. Her thin body was on her knees, looking up at the top of the cliff like it was the only thing keeping her upright.
“Voodoo,” she sobbed his name when she spotted him, and he wasn't too macho to admit that his eyes blurred with tears at finally having eyes on her again.
“Right here, honey, I'm right here,” he murmured, dropping down to his own knees as he locked his gaze on her, unable to look away for fear that she would disappear in the blink of an eye.
“I knew you wouldn't leave,” she called up to him. There was so much faith, so much trust in those simple words that a sob of his own lodged in his throat.
She trusted him.
There was no better gift Indigo could give him than her trust. After everything she’d been through, every person who had let her down time and time again, he knew she had been convinced that she would never hand over her trust to another living person ever again.
Yet she had.
Him. She’d chosen to hand that trust over to him, and Voodoo vowed in this moment that he would never make her regret that decision. He would never let her down, never give her less than she deserved.
“Never, honey. Never. I would never leave you behind. I was tracking you the whole time. Was there when they put you in that car, drove off behind you, killed as many of them as I could before I met up with these guys, and we started tracking you.”
“Burning man is out here somewhere. He was close last time I heard him,” she told him.
“Who’s burning man?” he asked, assuming it was the driver, but he needed to know if someone else was tracking her as well.
“He did this to me.” She waved a hand at the marks on her chest. He couldn’t make them out from his location, but he remembered seeing them earlier.
“Burned me. I don’t know his name. But, Voodoo,” she said anxiously, pushing up to her feet, “he was there. Dr. Gardner. I saw him. He told me they were going to use me as bait to get all of you back. He’s at that building, the one they took me to.
You have to go and get him. I'm … I'm okay. I can wait here. I’ll be okay. You need to get to him before he can leave, get away again.”
The way she said it shattered his heart. Indigo one hundred percent believed that knowing Dr. Gardner was nearby would cause him and his team to leave her behind, go and kill the scientist first, and then come back for her, even knowing that someone was nearby hunting her.
“We know, honey,” he told her. “And we’ll get him, but not before we have you with us where we know you’ll be safe.”
“But—”
“No, Indy. No buts. You first, then him,” he said firmly.
Maybe he felt it more than saw it, because with the distance between them and the eerie green light of the night vision goggles, it was harder to read her expressions, but he knew it was joy, relief, disbelief, gratefulness, and something deeper, something closer to love, that crossed her face.
But then from one heartbeat to the next, things changed.
Indigo’s eyes widened as her gaze shifted to something that only she could see.
Then she screamed, a bullet cracked through the night, and he had no idea if it hit her or not because she stumbled backward, falling into the river behind her, the water quickly washing her away.
January 25th
1:11 A.M.
Cold.
Wet.
Hard to breathe.
The water tossed her about like she was nothing, not worthy of being considered anything more than another stick, or rock, or debris that fell into its clutches.
It didn't care that she was a person, a human being, and honestly, for all her life, she’d never considered herself to be of any more importance than a stick or a rock.
But she was more important.
She was a human being. She deserved to be treated as such.
Voodoo’s voice echoed in her mind, screaming her name as burning man had emerged from the trees, obviously guided to her by the sound of their voices, long since gone but still just as loud inside her head.
If she died, he would grieve her, and that mattered.
That made her matter.