Indigo

by Pepper North

  By the time the kind woman neared the end of her battle with the illness that ravaged her body, her mother’s eyes had dimmed to a cloudy blue. Indigo had known that she couldn’t fight any longer. Even as a teenager who couldn’t imagine losing this nurturing woman from her life, Indigo knew she was going to a better place where she would be pain-free.

  Each time she looked at her own deep blue eyes, Indigo smiled. She had a piece of her mother with her forever. For a moment, her blue eyes seemed to contain all the knowledge that her mother’s held. Then it evaporated into the same clueless expression that her own eyes always reflected. Someday she hoped to know as much as her mother.

  Catching a glimpse of the time, Indigo raced from the bathroom to grab her belongings. Out of time to make lunch to take with her, she opened the cabinet and grabbed a box of cookies she had been avoiding opening. Totally devoid of nutrition, she’d at least have a sugar rush for the afternoon. To assuage her guilt at the calorie-laden lunch, she grabbed a slightly wilted apple from the back of her refrigerator before tossing it in her lunch tote as well.

  Indigo gathered her purse and a jacket before pausing at the door, hesitant to open it. Finally forcing herself to be brave, she unbolted the door and twisted the knob to peek out. In that sliver of space in the hall, nothing seemed to be amiss. Feeling braver and motivated by her need to get to work, Indigo opened the door and stepped out in the hall.

  There was no sign that anyone had visited her last night until she fully closed the door. There still blocking the peephole was a small, sticky note. It was printed with the ‘Sorry, we missed you’ message that many companies left on your door when you’d missed a delivery.

  This, however, was not marked with the name of any of the big delivery companies. It had a logo of twelve interlocking circles. Some were filled with color, while others were simply the color of the paper. The man had scrawled a message across the paper. “To ensure your safety, please contact…” and then a number.

  Reaching up to pluck the paper from her window, Indigo’s hand hesitated centimeters away from the square. She shook her head, trying to eliminate the feeling of dread that oozed from the note. Don’t touch it! The warning exploded in her mind. That voice that had always warned or encouraged her sounded more strident than ever before.

  Indigo lowered her hand, leaving the small piece of paper attached to her door. I’ll deal with it tonight, she decided. Checking the time, she rushed down the hallway to the exit. It would be there tonight or not, she thought, mentally crossing her fingers that it would disappear before she got home. In the rush to drive through the morning commuter traffic, her mind automatically filed the note away.

  Chapter 4

  Finally at her desk after a massive wreck snarled traffic past her contracted time at work, Indigo threw her things into the corner of her cube and rushed to turn on her company computer. Instantly as she logged in, a message popped up, saying that she was late and needed to report to HR before her computer would allow her to log in. With a roll of her blue eyes, Indigo stood and walked down the hall to HR.

  An hour later, after waiting with all the other employees who had been flagged for being late, Indigo explained about the wreck when her name was called. Standing uncomfortably in front of a sour-faced woman, Indigo apologized for her lateness and pointed out that she had stayed late to work last night. She had hoped that her uncompensated extra hours would excuse her tardiness this morning.

  “Inefficiency in completing your work is not an excuse for arriving late. I will note in your file that you have received your first warning for tardiness. When there are three incidents profiled, you will be terminated,” the unpleasant employee informed her.

  Using the name on the woman’s nametag in an attempt to personalize their exchange, Indigo asked, “Roberta, is there any way you could give me an oral warning this time? I am very sorry that there was an accident on the highway. There simply wasn’t anything that I could do.”

  “Leave earlier,” Roberta flatly replied as she picked up a thin-line, red marker and wrote in large brick letters on the inside cover of her file: LATE TO WORK/GIVEN FIRST WARNING AND NOTIFICATION OF TERMINATION AFTER THREE INCIDENTS—Roberta #742. With that complete, Roberta turned to pick up the next file and call the next person to the desk. She was finished with Indigo.

  “My apologies,” Indigo murmured again as she stepped away from the desk. She didn’t look at Roberta. The young woman realized that nothing she could have said would have changed the outcome.

  Suddenly her job in the small, impersonal cube looked so much better. Indigo couldn’t imagine arriving each day for work and having the task of listening to everyone’s excuse for whatever had brought them to stand on the other side of that counter. Roberta, obviously, had stopped caring about the humans who she dealt with to become mechanical and punitive.

  Finally able to begin inputting the next set of forms, Indigo tried to increase her speed. Luck was not on her side. Rushing just caused her to make silly mistakes, triggering a red warning screen to flash on her screen. The third time her computer notified her she had made a mistake on the form as she tried to save it into the system, a nasal voice sounded over her shoulder.

  “You are having an awful day today, Miss Morris. I would suggest that you improve your efforts to complete each form correctly. If not, I will be forced to note in your file that you have been deficient in your position,” the hovering supervisor informed her with a sneer as Indigo glanced over her shoulder.

  “Sorry, I was trying to move quickly. I will slow down slightly to double-check my entries,” Indigo reassured her boss. Turning back to her computer, she completed two additional forms with her supervisor watching intently over her shoulder. When at last she heard a whisper of sound to indicate the other woman had moved on, Indigo let out a breath of relief.

  Could this day get any worse? she asked herself before mentally slapping her hand over her mouth. Indigo did not wish to jinx herself into losing her job. Focusing her eyes on the stack of papers before her, she forced her mind to concentrate.

  Chapter 5

  Exhausted, Indigo walked through the abandoned parking lot to her car. She had to find a new job. This one was going to kill her. Leaning into the car, she threw her things into the passenger seat. Rounding the back of the car, she yanked on the stubborn driver’s side door. It always stuck when the weather was chilly. Crap! Planting her feet, she yanked again.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a large delivery truck pull into the parking lot. The emblem on the side made her freeze in place. It was the same logo that had decorated the piece of paper left on her door. A shiver of fright zinged down her spine.

  Heaving backward on the handle, she almost fell as the car door opened with a screech. Immediately, Indigo scrambled into her battered car and pressed the lock button to secure the doors. Eyes glued to the large truck, she watched a tall, broad man emerge from the cab of the truck. When he began to walk purposely toward her car, she panicked. Rushing too quickly, she dropped the keys onto the floorboard of the vehicle.

  Her fingers searched desperately below her for the key chain. Nothing! Forced to slide the seat back, Indigo’s fingers finally brushed the keys. She shoved it into the ignition and started the car as the man reached her car. His hand reached out to grab the door handle just as she shifted the car into drive.

  Flattening the gas pedal to the floor, the car lurched forward. The sound of his fingers brushing against the metal of the car panicked Indigo, and she sped out of the parking lot and through the connecting streets that led to the hospital. She only relaxed as she steered the vehicle onto the ramp to enter the highway. Blending into traffic, she sped back to her apartment.

  When she reached her complex, Indigo pulled into a parking spot facing her building and looked up to her apartment’s window. The light was on. Fear sizzled down her spine. Waking up late, there had been no reason to flip on a light before she left. The sunlight had already br
ightened the room.

  Without hesitating, Indigo pushed the lever into reverse and began to back out. Too late, a delivery truck pulled behind her car, forcing her to choose to slam on the brakes or strike it. After a squeal of brakes halting her escape, she looked frantically in all directions for the next threat.

  To her horror, she spotted a man emerging from the front door of her complex and one descending from the truck’s cab. As they approached, by intuition she pressed the horn to create a noise that would attract the attention of her neighbors. She could see the flickering curtains in several windows.

  When they saw the truck pulled behind her and the two men converging on Indigo’s car, she hoped that they would fill in the blanks and call the police. To her relief, she saw Mrs. Beulah Parker in the window with the elderly neighbor’s phone cradled against her jaw. Waving frantically at Beulah, Indigo tried to express the danger that she was in, while still pressing the horn in long intervals.

  The elderly woman always waved at her from inside her third-floor apartment. Indigo had helped Beulah carry her groceries up to her door one Saturday afternoon and had offered to help her tote anything heavy. The older woman had accepted the scrap of paper with Indigo’s cell phone number jotted on it. She’d never called often but had been so grateful for the assistance on the few times Beulah had asked for help. Indigo had seen that yellowing scrap of paper with the phone number on it taped carefully on the woman’s refrigerator when she’d been in the apartment last week.

  A heavy blow thumped against her driver’s side window, interrupting her thoughts. She jumped as she stared through the glass at the massive man that had appeared so rapidly next to her. Scrambling, Indigo lifted her feet and climbed over into the passenger seat. That voice in the back of her mind urged her to continue the strident blare of the horn to attract attention.

  Movement on Beulah’s deck caught her eye as she reached her hand over to press against the horn emblem on the steering wheel. Pausing, Indigo watched the older woman lean her shoulders out of the room to yell at the two men who had both reached Indigo’s car. “I’ve called the police. They are on their way. Leave that girl alone!”

  The two men hesitated and scowled ferociously through the car windows at Indigo as she huddled on the seat. With a motion to the man who had emerged from her apartment building, the truck driver reversed course to jog back to the large vehicle looming behind Indigo’s car. In two minutes, the delivery vehicle drove through the complex to disappear as it rounded the corner.

  Heart thumping, Indigo collapsed against the contoured seat. She closed her eyes in relief as she tried to recover from the attempted attack. A knock on the driver’s side window startled her, making her heart leap into her throat. Her wide blue eyes opened to meet the concerned brown eyes of her neighbor, Beulah.

  “Are you okay?”

  At the sound of the elderly woman’s voice, Indigo yanked at the door release and shoved her shoulder against the heavy door. Almost falling to the asphalt parking lot, Indigo lurched out of the car. She held onto the metal car frame for stability to regain her balance for several long seconds before meeting Beulah’s eyes again.

  “I have no idea who those men were. Why are they after me?” she wailed in distress.

  The older woman just shrugged her shoulders before reaching out to rub a comforting hand up and down Indigo’s arm. “In just a few minutes, they will realize that I didn’t call the police and they’ll return. I didn’t know if you’d gotten yourself involved in something bad that could get you arrested, too. It doesn’t matter now. Go get what you need from your apartment before they come back.”

  When Indigo hesitated, Beulah shooed her away with her hands. “Go hide in your apartment, Beulah,” Indigo urged. Taking two steps toward her apartment before breaking into an uncoordinated jog, Indigo burst through the door. She frantically pushed the call button for the elevator and bounced slightly in place as she waited for it to appear.

  The doors finally opened, and Indigo rushed in blindly as she tried to think of what she needed to grab from her apartment. Wham! Indigo rocked back on her heels and reached forward to steady herself on the solid form in front of her.

  Blinking, she automatically apologized to the man that she had rammed into. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t looking…”

  “Lady, I’m not interested in you. You’re definitely not my type. Leave me alone, or I’m going to report you to the apartment owners for harassment,” Todd Green sneered with that unpleasant expression on his face.

  Frazzled with all that appeared to be threatening her, Indigo saw the unpleasant man in the pretty wrapper for what he really was. She lifted her hands from his gym-induced biceps and turned to walk around him into the elevator. “No need. You’re not my type, either.” As the doors closed, she’d already dismissed the totally unimportant man. Pretty was not what she needed in her life now.

  Chapter 6

  Her vivid blue eyes searched the road behind her, looking for any sign of a threat. Her trunk was filled with a duffle bag of clothes and her dearest possessions, a tattered, floppy rabbit from her childhood and her e-reader. While the rabbit had not been her favorite stuffed animal, Indigo had loved Bunny, Together, the two had provided solace in this lonely world and distraction from the negatives in her life.

  Indigo had no idea where to go or what to do. She’d filed a report at the police station, but the clerk behind the window had glanced over the form and dropped it on a teetering pile of other papers. When she’d asked to speak to someone, the man had laughed at her and told her to come back if she was actually injured or her property was damaged.

  “We don’t have the manpower to check up on every truck that blocks someone in a parking lot. You might avoid horror movies for a while,” he had suggested.

  Thanks to her mother’s advice to always keep money hidden in an unexpected place, Indigo had a supply of cash with her. She hated to dip into it, but she knew she was exhausted. Finding a medium-cost hotel that she would feel safe in, Indigo checked in and paid in cash for one night.

  Planning to get some sleep and decide what to do tomorrow, Indigo parked her car away from the street view and lugged all her possessions up to the room. She collapsed on the bed and stared at the ceiling. What was going on? She never done anything illegal or unpleasant.

  “Okay, I got that one parking ticket when I was at the concert,” she admitted out loud, needing to break the silence that filled the room.

  When silence met her admission, Indigo knew she was silly for talking to an empty room. Dragging herself from the bed, she stripped off the dress clothes she was still wearing and walked into the bathroom. Her blue eyes stared into the mirror, wishing that her mother could have been there to help her decide what to do. She sadly shook her head as she stepped over the rim of the tub to shower.

  Ten minutes later, with her hair wrapped in a towel, she climbed into bed. After setting the alarm clock, Indigo decided that she’d wait until tomorrow to decide if she should try going back to work. She knew she shouldn’t, but she hated to just not show up.

  Closing her eyes, Indigo realized that tomorrow was her birthday. “Happy birthday to me,” she said aloud in the quiet room. She quickly dropped into sleep as her mind escaped from the terror that had filled her thoughts today.

  The cold woke her halfway through the night, but she cuddled closer to the heated mattress pad below her. A thankful sigh escaped from her lips as the heat seemed to wrap around her. She knew she imagined it, but she smiled as she fell back asleep. Her dream felt just like her mother’s soft kiss on her hair.

  Chapter 7

  “Droblin, it’s time for you to open your beautiful eyes,” a deep voice rumbled below her.

  Sure that she was still dreaming, Indigo squeezed her eyes shut and settled her head more comfortably against the hard pillow. When her bed started to jostle as if there was an earthquake, Indigo’s eyes burst open to look straight into the gray eyes of a handsome man. She
tried to scramble away from him but found her arms and legs quickly wrapped and contained by the massive man.

  “Let me go!” she screamed. Her heart pounded in instant terror. They’d found her!

  “Indigo. It’s okay. You survived the threat until your birthday. You are here with me now. I will keep you safe from now on,” the deep voice was filled with a caring tone wrapped around an iron core of dominance.

  “Who are you? What are you?” she asked as she continued to struggle against the massive body that held her so effortlessly.

  “Indigo, enough!” he roared.

  Instantly, she froze in fear. Looking into those gray eyes, she searched for evil or meanness that would reveal his intentions toward her. All she found was concern. “Who are you?” she whispered.

  “My name is Hagan. If you stop struggling, I will help you sit up so you can look around.” When she nodded, the oversized man adjusted her body to sit. “Thank you, droblin. Happy birthday,” he wished her as if this was just a typical day in her life.

  “Happy birthday?” she repeated, unable to comprehend his words.

  “Yes, Indigo. I have been waiting for you to arrive on your twenty-second birthday since you were conceived. Happy birthday, droblin,” he repeated with a smile. Her confusion seemed to be amusing him somehow.

  “Are you insane? Am I dreaming?” she asked, moving to pinch herself to make sure she was not still sleeping.

  His hand moved swiftly to brush her fingers away from her arm. “You are not to hurt yourself, droblin. Let me prove that you are awake.”

  A large hand cupped her jaw gently and tilted her face up to his. A strand of baffling desire arched through her at his caressing touch. Holding her breath, Indigo watched his face grow closer. She could have turned her face away but didn’t want to. The temptation of his kiss was too much to deny.