Damn, she sounded so morose, like she was throwing herself one major pity party.
That wasn't who Indigo Yates was. She was a fighter. She kept going, no matter how bad things were, she never gave up. But everyone had an end to their rope, and maybe she’d just reached hers.
“Time’s up,” the sun taunted, its big, round yellow face dancing in front of her.
Its smile was mocking, like it was enjoying what it was doing to her.
“Please, stop burning me,” she whimpered. “Enough.”
“Enough? It’s never enough, is it?” the sun sneered. “How many times have you already begged for it to be enough? Did your father ever listen? Ever stop? Your mom? Your first boyfriend? He certainly had some fun with you, didn't he, made what your dad did look like child’s play.”
Unfortunately, that was true.
Her dad hurt her, hit her, kicked her, and raped her when her mom had passed out and could no longer scream. But he would hurt her then leave her for a while. Her first boyfriend had taken great pleasure in playing psychological mind games with her, prolonging his torture and being inventive about it.
“Even your knight in shining armor turned out to be a devil in disguise, didn't he?” the sun asked with a laugh.
Of all the horrible pain the people in her life had inflicted on her, her ex-husband dumping her and telling her that she was never going to be good enough for him might have been the wound that hurt the most.
“Nobody wants you, Indigo. Nobody. Not your mom, who willingly stood by and let your father hurt you, not your dad, who wanted a son not a daughter. Not any of the foster families you lived with, they only wanted a paycheck, didn't they? A punching bag. Your first boyfriend wanted a victim to torment, and your ex-husband only wanted to pretend he was doing his good deed, making the poor, pathetic girl believe she was worth something. But you're not worth anything, are you, Indigo? Do you know why?”
“Why?” she begged, needing an answer, needing to know what was wrong with her and why nobody loved her, why nobody cared.
The sun moved closer.
The heat crescendoed until it felt like she was on fire.
“Because you're nothing. Never should have existed. Nobody loves you, nobody cares about you, and no one wants you. Better off dead, aren't you, Indigo? No one will mourn you when you're gone.”
Heat consumed her, and she couldn’t take it a single second longer. The sun was right, she couldn’t offer a single argument.
“Just do it,” she screamed. “Just burn me to a crisp and get it over with.”
Chapter
Five
January 21st
8:04 P.M.
She wasn't getting any better.
Why wasn't she getting any better?
Voodoo had brought people back from closer to death than Indigo had been when he found her, and yet as he sat beside her on the floor of the cave, he knew he was watching her slip away.
What was wrong with him?
In the last ten years, he’d come to take for granted the fact that while he accepted he couldn’t save everybody, he could save almost everybody. Just a couple of weeks ago, he’d healed almost on the spot after a piece of debris had pierced his abdomen when he and his team were in an explosion while searching for leads on Dr. Gardner’s whereabouts. He’d healed his team members more times than he could count and saved innocents on ops. A couple of years ago, he'd even saved the life of Beth Lindon, a close friend of Delta Team’s, and married to Bravo Team’s leader, Axe, after she was buriedalive.
If he could do that, he should be able to do this.
But it didn't matter how many times he pressed his hands to Indigo’s infected wounds and willed his body to do what it did, nothing changed.
Not only did the wounds look just as bad as they had almost twenty-four hours ago, when he and his team had found her inside the lab, but her fever was much worse. She’d been delirious, fever dreams making her scream at the sun to just hurry up and kill her, whimpering and crying, tearing at his heart with her sobs about how she was ready to die and no one would care.
Hewould care.
