[Indigo Brothers 01.0] Indigo Fire Read online

  also by Vickie McKeehan

  The Evil Secrets Trilogy

  JUST EVIL Book One

  DEEPER EVIL Book Two

  ENDING EVIL Book Three

  The Pelican Pointe Series

  PROMISE COVE

  HIDDEN MOON BAY

  DANCING TIDES

  LIGHTHOUSE REEF

  STARLIGHT DUNES

  LAST CHANCE HARBOR

  SEA GLASS COTTAGE

  LAVENDER BEACH

  SANDCASTLES UNDER THE CHRISTMAS MOON

  BENEATH WINTER SAND

  The Skye Cree Novels

  THE BONES OF OTHERS

  THE BONES WILL TELL

  THE BOX OF BONES

  HIS GARDEN OF BONES

  TRUTH IN THE BONES

  The Indigo Brothers Trilogy

  INDIGO FIRE

  INDIGO HEAT

  INDIGO JUSTICE

  THE INDIGO BROTHERS TRILOGY BOXED SET

  Exclusively at Amazon in print and Kindle format

  INDIGO FIRE

  The Indigo Brothers Trilogy

  Published by Beachdevils Press

  Copyright © 2016 Vickie McKeehan

  All rights reserved.

  Indigo Fire

  The Indigo Brothers Trilogy

  Copyright © 2016 Vickie McKeehan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic format without written permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, locales, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, businesses or companies, is entirely coincidental.

  Excerpt from Indigo Heat copyright © 2016 by Vickie McKeehan.

  ISBN-10: 0692643532

  ISBN-13: 978-0692643532

  Published by

  Beachdevils Press

  Printed in the USA

  All Titles Available at Amazon

  Cover designed by artist, Jess Johnson

  You can visit the author at:

  www.vickiemckeehan.com

  www.facebook.com/VickieMcKeehan

  http://vickiemckeehan.wordpress.com/

  www.twitter.com/VickieMcKeehan

  For Pancho,

  who enriched my childhood beyond measure.

  The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.

  ~ FERDINAND FOCH

  The First Warrior looked out on the land and his Home.

  He saw the hills

  And the stars

  And he was happy.

  For giving him his home, the First Warrior told the Great Spirit

  That he would fight and win many battles in His honor.

  But the Great Spirit said, “No, do not fight for me.

  Fight for your tribe,

  Fight for the family born to you,

  Fight for the brothers you find.

  “Fight for them,” the Great Spirit said, “for they are your Home.”

  ~ HENRY STANDING BEAR

  Longmire TV series

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Indigo Heat

  INDIGO FIRE

  Book One

  by

  VICKIE McKEEHAN

  Part One

  Jackson

  Prologue

  Wednesday, September 23rd

  11:45 p.m.

  Olivia Indigo Buchanan had reached her thirty-third year.

  Unfortunately, it would be her last.

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  Darkness.

  She couldn’t focus. Every time she tried, she saw two of everything. There were shadows and the shadows kept moving—dark to light, light to dark—and back again.

  Her head pounded like she’d been drugged. The surface where she lay felt hard, cold, damp. Was she inside a basement with a dirt floor or outside lying on the ground in the woods? The air seemed muggy, almost fetid. Maybe that meant she was outdoors.

  She struggled to raise her head, tried her best to move her arms. But it was just too much effort. She began to squirm and realized her hands had been bound behind her back. She did her best to work them free but couldn’t budge whatever held her hands together. She tried to scream, to lick her lips and met the foul, pasty taste of duct tape covering her mouth.

  She caught movement to her left. Relief moved through her in bits and pieces knowing she wasn’t alone. But that was short-lived when she realized it was a stranger she didn’t recognize. He stood ten feet away chopping at something…no, no, that wasn’t right, he kept hitting something, no someone. She watched, she listened as the thwack, thwack, thwack sound repeated, over and over again.

  The other victim on the ground fought for his life, the punishing blows coming fast. Olivia heard what sounded like bones crack and snap. His effort to survive became a pathetic attempt until finally his desperate mutterings and pleas for help got weaker.

  Through heavy lids, she thought she heard her name. Livvy. For one precious moment, the nickname fluttered on a sunny breeze from the past. Her mind tried to reach out and grab hold of that lifeline, that memory of the life she’d lived.

  But then, she watched in horror as her captor took out a plastic bag and slipped it over the man’s head to silence him once and for all. The man put up another weak struggle. But it was brief. Terror moved through her when she heard him take what sounded like his final gasp of air.

  She needed to get away from this monster. With tears streaming down her face, she used the last bit of energy she had to roll as far away as she could. She shoved along using her legs to get away from this brutal asshole. She inched on her belly over uneven ground. It occurred to her every muscle in her body ached. Had she already suffered some type of debilitating injury that prevented her legs from working, from going faster?

  As she edged along over gravel and loose dirt, Livvy thought of her children. Where was Blake, her eight-year-old son? And where was Ally, her six-year-old daughter? If she got away and they were still here somewhere, if the monster had them hidden away in this horrible place, what would happen to her kids if she left them alone? Were they alive, being kept somewhere in the darkness where she couldn’t see them?

  The last thing she remembered was being at home, tucked in her own bed. She desperately tried to recall what had happened after that. How long ago had that been? Hours? Days? How long had she been kept here tied up in this torture chamber?

  Where was her husband, Walker? Why wasn’t he helping her? She looked back at the battered man on the ground. A sick feeling overpowered her. The man looked like Walker. She realized he
’d stopped moving, stopped moaning. Her last real glance told her all she needed to know. Walker’s face had been beaten, his body brutalized and tortured. All that was left was a mass of bloody clothing wrapped around flesh and bone.

  She felt her stomach churn as she began to push herself farther along over the hard, dirty surface to get away. But something impeded her progress. She felt pain in her head, felt the monster on her back.

  With a massive force grinding into her spine, Livvy realized he’d used something heavy to hit her across her shoulders. She felt something jab into her kidneys. The blow put an end to her moving. It felt like a crowbar came down on her skull. Metal connected with her head. A thousand needles pierced her brain.

  With his foot, he kicked her in the side and turned her over to face him. For one brief moment she locked eyes with the man. He tore off the duct tape that sealed her lips. Profanities sailed out of his mouth. He kept yelling at her to tell him…something.

  She tried to raise her head to ask him why he was doing this, but she couldn’t speak. Her jaw refused to work. In that moment Livvy knew for certain she was about to die. She thought of her mom and dad and all her brothers. She thought of Walker, and Blake, and Ally. She thought of the perfect life she’d once had. What had she done to deserve this kind of death? Why such torture and brutality? She’d always thought she’d lived a good life, been a good person.

  But the blows kept coming. The smell of iron overwhelmed her. Blood trickled into her eyes and ran down her face, so much that it felt like she became bathed in the stuff. She took another hit to the head and then another. Olivia’s world became a sea of sharp pain.

  As the plastic bag slid over her head, her last thought was of her children. She wanted to cry out, to ask God to spare her babies. She tried to yell at the top of her lungs to not let this monster get his hands on her kids. Please don’t let him do this to Ally and Blake. Please!

  Her last stand was a desperate attempt to fight, to buck, to live. But she was slowly running out of air. Her breathing became more labored until finally blackness descended. Darkness took over. Her body no longer felt anything at all. Not the ache or the agony of pain. A peace settled over her. No more thoughts rushed through her mind. But the terror and pain remained in her vacant, open eyes, eyes that would never see again, at least not in this world.

  Where life had once been, now there was nothing left but an empty canvas of black.

  Chapter One

  For Jackson Indigo it had been a nerve-wracking forty-eight hours. Ever since his mother’s phone call the day before telling him that his sister Livvy, and her family had gone missing, his mind had been a scattered mess of fear and panic.

  He’d caught the first available flight out of New York for Miami International and then boarded a puddle jumper that would take him to the southern tip of Florida.

  Even though he’d long since left behind his childhood home for life in the Big Apple, it didn’t mean he’d hesitate coming back to tiny Indigo Key when the situation warranted it.

  Sure, he’d spent holidays and birthdays here. It was impossible not to. His last visit to the area had been in the spring to help his parents bury his beloved grandmother. But he never stayed in town for longer than a five-day stint. With his busy schedule it wasn’t practical.

  Even as a kid growing up, there’d been a restlessness brewing inside him. Much to his mother’s dismay, it had been enough to push him out of the nest completely at eighteen.

  Always at the top of his class—even when that class was a mere sixty-five students—Jackson had always known what he wanted to do and set his sights on making it happen. Because Lenore and Tanner Indigo had four kids to put through college—a difficult task for a self-employed carpenter and a bookkeeper—Jackson had always known it would be an uphill battle.

  As a smart, but rather nerdy guy, he’d headed north and worked his way through four years at Columbia University. Thanks to a slew of scholarships and small grants and a work-study program, he’d survived his undergrad years.

  Once he got to grad school, he’d made do bussing tables and washing dishes in the school cafeteria until a research assistant job opened up. There’d been all-nighters of hard studying where he’d gone to class bleary-eyed and exhausted. But he’d made the best of his situation.

  On the way to getting his Masters, he’d taken a research position that eventually turned into a teaching assistantship and an increase in pay. During most of those college years he’d held down two jobs on his way to an Environmental Science degree before moving on to MIT for his doctorate. There, he’d studied marine ecosystems. When the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute offered him a spot on board the research vessel, Constantine, he’d hit the bigs as far as the world of science recognizing Jackson Indigo as an oceanographer.

  After getting his Ph.D., he’d taken a job in downtown Manhattan with the Ocean Shield Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting coastal watersheds and shorelines, ecosystems and marine life. The work kept him in the field most days, doing what he loved, studying catastrophic storm events and the effects on the coastal ecology and soil erosion.

  Staring out the window past the wing of the jet, his eyes landed on the blue-green waters of Florida Bay and the sugar-white sand along its shoreline. It suddenly hit him that this is where his love of the ocean had started, drumming through his veins at a young age. He had a fondness for the Key—barely three and half miles long and not quite that wide.

  So when his commuter plane touched down on the tarmac of the little airstrip that served the Florida Keys, memories from childhood came flooding back to him.

  He’d spent his early years trouping alongside his father to fish for snapper or sea trout, or spending time snorkeling with his siblings. There had been something amazing about hitting the waves as a teen with his surfboard and spending hours lazing at the beach, ogling the girls.

  There’d been an Indigo in these parts for three hundred years or more. Ever since Koda Indigo—a swashbuckling pirate—had taken refuge on the island with his captive, a Spanish countess he’d spirited away from a rival. As local legend went, when Koda had refused to ransom the beauty as planned, his crew turned on him with daggers and flintlocks to prove a point. The mutiny had forced Koda to jump overboard gripping the arm of the lady in question and swimming into the night until they’d made their way onshore to the nearest land mass. Somewhere through Jackson’s ancestral heritage Indigo blood had merged with Spanish, and later, with the Seminole tribe, producing a long line of forceful, independent, stubborn mavericks—male and female alike. It occurred to him his sister, Olivia Shay Indigo Buchanan, fit that picture to a tee.

  With a plunk, the Gulfstream came to an abrupt stop. It put an end to the mulling over family history and brought him back to the reason he was here.

  For two days, Livvy and her husband, Walker, had been unaccounted for, which meant her two kids, Blake and Ally, had missed a couple days of school. It was out of character for his sister not to call their mother. And since no one had seen or heard from the family since Wednesday afternoon, his parents were growing more frantic by the hour. Overwhelmed by the situation, Lenore and Tanner Indigo had reached out for help from their three sons.

  As soon as the pilot gave the all clear, Jackson stood up, his six-two frame taking up most of the headroom in the aisle. He grabbed his carryon from the overhead as the pilot, Bryce Kimmel, appeared from the cockpit.

  “I’m sorry about Livvy and her family. It’s been all over the local news. Everyone’s been trying to do what they can for your mom and dad.”

  That one sentiment caused reality to sink in. Jackson’s mouth went dry. A surge of fear lodged in his gut. Jackson stared at Bryce, a man with a linebacker build, but who had in fact played fullback in high school. “From what I understand no one’s seen or heard from any of them since Wednesday evening. Livvy was supposed to bring the kids over to Mom’s house on Friday night for a sleepover. It never happened.”


  Bryce slapped Jackson on the back with a sympathetic nod. “At least you’re back home now. This is a time for family. Your mama and daddy need you here, all of you, no doubt about that.” To lighten the mood, he added, “I never did understand why you or your brothers didn’t go out for football. You’d have made a helluva receiver.”

  Jackson slipped on his Ray-Bans. “Tell that to Coach Burton. As I recall, at the time, Coach thought I was too slow, way too slow. Turtle slow is how he phrased it. Mitch’s game was always baseball. And Garret, Garret just loved the water. You couldn’t get that kid out of it. He even slept with his surfboard. We’re pretty sure Garret must be one part amphibian, one part alien.”

  “That might explain local boy making good. Livvy is awful proud of him. She always submits the photos he sends from his competitions to the Indigo Dispatch. Over the years we’ve got a good look at the world through Garret’s travels. Look, I know you’re worried sick, but Livvy and Walker will turn up, you’ll see. Why, I bet by the time you get home, your mama’s already heard from them and they just got away for a few days.”

  Despite Jackson’s head bob, he’d exchanged text messages with Mitch and knew for a fact his parents hadn’t heard a thing. But he put on a brave face anyway and said, “Let’s hope Livvy has a good explanation as to why they’ve been gone all this time.”

  Bryce followed his passenger down the steps, pointed across the pavement. “If I’m not mistaken that looks like Mitch waiting for you by your dad’s old beat-up Ford pickup. How long’s Tanner had that thing anyway?”

  Jackson grinned for the first time in two days. “It’s almost as old as Garret.”

  “Go on,” Bryce directed. “Go greet your brother. I’ll get your luggage, bring it over, load it up.”