Part 1 (1/2)
Healing Rain.
The Rain Trilogy.
Karen-Anne Stewart.
Dedicated to all of the survivors and the heroes who help them.
Acknowledgements.
To my husband, thank you for of your love, continued patience, support, and encouragement. I love you!.
To Jim Guilliams and Talor Stewart, thank you for your expertise.
To Todd Ervin, my favorite alpha geek, you are the man!.
To Valeria Gardin, Diane Maxwell, Shannon Lopez, and RJ Galloway, your encouragement and faith mean more than you know.
To my parents, what can I say that you don't already know? Love you both!
To the best beta readers and helpful editors, Bret Stewart, Diane Maxwell, Jackie Parker, Heather Lindall, Keri Wilson, Penny West, Karen Galloway, Julie Weatherman, and Bobi Gillespie, all of you are AMAZING!!! Thank you for your time, advice, honesty, and awesome support.
To all the authors and reviewers out there who have given me priceless advice throughout the journey thus far, it is much appreciated and will never be forgotten.
Last, but not least, to all the readers who have already sent me your support and kind words regarding The Rain Trilogy, I couldn't do it without you. You rock!.
CHAPTER ONE.
The rain continues to pelt relentlessly against the winds.h.i.+eld as Kas drives to nowhere. Brutal memories of earlier in the evening replay in his head. 'Raina Kapture, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife.' He shakes his head, fruitlessly trying to dislodge the memories from his mind. Gritting his teeth, his grip on the steering wheel tightens as he steals another glance at his phone, swearing loudly when it remains silent. Bitter agitation mounts in him as he anxiously awaits the call from Chase, telling him where the trace on Raina's cell leads.
Agonizing thoughts keep exploding inside of his head. 'I can't-I'm so, so sorry, but I just can't.' His heart is broken and bleeding from the transgressions committed earlier tonight.
The punis.h.i.+ng rhythm searing through his temples is welcoming, he would take any form of physical pain to distract him from the torment ripping through his soul. Thoughts of Raina ravish him. He thinks back to the sadness in her jade eyes when she had pulled away, her expression had cut through him like the sharpest knife. His heated words ring through his head, 'Do you think that I'm going to let you down, that I'm going to disappoint you like every other man in your life has so far? I am not your father, and I am not Chris!'
Despair seeps through him like poison. His knuckles are taut and white from his rigorous grip on the wheel. 'What do I have to do to prove that I will not hurt you, that I will never hurt you? Rain, talk to me...please.'
His jaw twitches angrily from how he handled the situation, just letting her leave when she was obviously in torment. 'Just let me go-I can't be who you want, who you need. I'm not good for you.' He viciously hits the steering wheel as he thinks of how he would have never had let her walk out of the door if he had only known her father had found her.
The earlier call to Henry was futile, the judge hasn't heard from Raina and has no idea of where she might be, but he was adamant about having Kas promise to call him when he finds her. The thin thread of his remaining sanity is vigorously unraveling. His usual inflexible grip on control has steadily eradicated since meeting Raina, but the derailing loss of control he is experiencing right now threatens to destroy him. He is known for his strength, his adept skills of being a leader. Kas' authority is both respected and even feared at times, but, right now, in his current state of brokenness from not knowing where Raina is, or if she's okay, he is only a sh.e.l.l of the man he usually embodies.
Unable to take another second of maddening silence, he calls Dexter, needing both a distraction from the waiting and a favor from his boss to pull some strings. He is prepared to beg Dexter if he has to, he doesn't care about what anyone thinks of him anymore, he just needs to find Raina and make sure her father is nowhere near her.
The call goes to voicemail, and Kas lets out a string of strong expletives as he nearly crushes the phone from his furious grip. Seconds later, the abused phone finally rings, and his heart jumps to his throat when he sees that it's Chase. ”Where is she?” he demands.
”She's at BWI. Kas, what the h.e.l.l is going on?” Chase demands in return.
”I don't have time to explain it to you right now, just meet me there.” Kas hangs up before Chase has the chance to protest. He whips his jeep around, the tires squealing on the wet road as he grabs his light, throwing it on his dash. Flipping on the bright flas.h.i.+ng blue emergency signal, he tears down the interstate to the Baltimore-Was.h.i.+ngton International Airport.
The airport traffic is a nightmare. Deciding to bypa.s.s the b.u.mper to b.u.mper line by pulling onto the median, he effectively cuts through and screeches to a jerky halt in front of the main entrance. Sprinting towards the doors, he flashes his badge at the security guards yelling at him about leaving his vehicle in a no parking zone. He scans the overly crowded airport, filled to capacity with the Christmas pa.s.sengers trying to get home, or wherever they are going over the holidays, but doesn't see Raina anywhere. His already acerbic agitation steadily increases as the man behind the ticket counter insists on following protocol and checks his credentials.
His phone rings, and he answers it gruffly, ”Are you here yet?”
”I'm walking through the door now, I don't have a handy badge like you do that I can waive around so I can leave my car parked half on the curb.”
”Meet me at the ticket counter,” he growls.
Chase finds Kas ready to jump across the counter and cause serious bodily harm to the poor man who doesn't seem to be typing fast enough to satisfy him. He places his hand on Kas' shoulder, pulling his attention away from the nervous recipient of his foul mood. ”Would you like to clue me in on what is going on now?”
Kas gives the ticket agent a deadly glare before turning to Chase. ”Raina took off. Seth said her father went to the university to see her. I don't know where Waterford is now, or if she's with him.”
Chase tenses, hearing that Raina has seen her father causes worry to seep through him as he thinks of how the encounter may have affected her.
The visibly shaken ticket agent interrupts, informing them hesitantly, ”Miss Kapture took the last flight to Pisa, sir.”
Kas runs his hand through his hair exasperatedly, but relieved, deducting that she's not with her father if she's on her way to a different country. His relief is short lived as he realizes that she's probably running away from Waterford, or maybe even him. He looks at Chase wildly, ”She went to Italy? She can't go back to her cabin, or to a hotel? She has to go to Italy! Why does she always have to be such a flippin' over-achiever?”
Chase places his hand rea.s.suringly on Kas' shoulder, knowing that he is about to come undone any second, ”We will find her.” The man has shrunken away from the counter, and Chase gives him his best calming smile, the psychologist in him s.h.i.+ning through, ”When is the next flight to Pisa?”
The ticket agent shoots a panicked look to Kas before Chase expertly steps in front of him, blocking the petrified agent's view of the man who looks like he might take off his head. ”Tomorrow morning,” he manages to answer Chase without hyperventilating.
Kas looks like he's going to shoot fire straight from his eyes, and Chase gives him a warning glare, knowing that if anyone can calm him down it's him or Raina, and since she's the one they are looking for, it looks like he's the only man for the job.
After a silent struggle, Kas reins in his anger enough to not appear murderous. He takes out his wallet and hands the man his credit card, ”Two tickets to Pisa.” He doesn't have to ask if Chase is going with him, he knows by now that his best friend since kindergarten has his back.
Raina slips her phone inside her purse, wis.h.i.+ng she had her iPad with her. It would have been much easier to send the e-mails to Seth and Dexter from that instead of using her phone. She is only one hour into the nine hour flight and is desperate to keep herself distracted so she doesn't break down sobbing in first cla.s.s.
Normally, she would be perfectly happy to fly coach, but she needs to be far away from people right now, at least as far away as a crowded plane can possibly allow. Barely hanging onto her fragile composure, the emotional torrent inside of her is threatening to break her into a million splintering pieces. She knows that it's useless to try to distract herself, it's an impossible task to turn her attention away from her current state of emotional h.e.l.l.
Closing her eyes, her treacherous mind replays Kas' sweet proposal, over and over, in her head. She wanted to tell him 'yes', more than she has wanted anything else in her life, she had wanted to tell him 'yes'. A tear slides down her cheek as she remembers the broken affliction in his eyes when she had told him 'no'. She grabs her side when the plane hits a small patch of turbulence; the pain in her abdomen from her father's vicious punch is making the flight very uncomfortable. She thinks of her father's cruel words when he told her that she will only ruin Kas' life, and another hot tear escapes, scalding her shattered heart.
The vibration of her cell phone startles her, dragging her away from the memories of earlier tonight. Raina can't stop the tears from running down her face as she reads Seth's response to her request to fill in for the translation specialist position until Dexter can find her replacement. She knew that Seth would take her place, but she wasn't prepared for his news that he knows about her father, or the heartfelt apology he e-mailed for leading him to her. Fear p.r.i.c.kles through her as she reads that Seth has told Kas about her father paying her a visit.
Her father's threat of destroying Kas' career sends a shot of panic through her veins. She has hurt him enough, she won't be able to handle it if she is the cause of him being subjected to her father's wrath and powerful means to damage what Kas has worked so hard to achieve. Any doubts she was struggling with by taking such a drastic step, getting on the first plane to Pisa, vanish. She realizes that her being far away from Kas is the best way to protect him from her father. The agonizing ache in her heart is in drastic discordance with her mind, and she furiously wipes away the tears that she can't seem to control any longer.
A pa.s.sing flight attendant notices her anguish and hands her a box of tissues, ”Honey, are you okay?”
The kindness behind the woman's words is Raina's final undoing, and she drops her head into her hands and weeps.
Chase wraps his jacket tighter around him as the bitter December wind whips punis.h.i.+ngly through his wet clothing. After moving Kas' jeep to the correct parking area so it doesn't get towed, he shoves the keys into his pocket as worry causes tight creases around his dark blue eyes when he contemplates Kas' combustible state. He has never seen him this close to completely losing his head. He has witnessed his friend's inflexible grip on control slowly loosen over the past several months, knowing that Raina has played the main role in that change. Despite the dark circ.u.mstances behind it, the transition in Kas' release of total control has been mostly healthy and positive, until tonight.
Chase has no idea how many laws Kas has bent this evening, but he's pretty sure it's a lot. He can't blame him, though, he would do exactly the same thing to protect Raina. His worry deepens as scenarios of what her father may have done to her play unwanted in his mind. The thought of him hurting her and unraveling the progress she has made sickens and infuriates him. He jumps into the welcoming heat of his Lexus and gazes steadily at Kas, his own determination fueling his resolve, ”We will find her, bro, now, tell me everything that happened tonight.”
Kas divulges all of the sordid details of earlier in the evening as they head to his home to pack an overnight bag and his pa.s.sport before heading to Chase's condo to do the same. He is bone tired, and his emotions are bitterly raw as he describes how Raina had turned down his marriage proposal, saying that she isn't good for him. Anger soars through him as he recounts how Seth showed up, telling him how he had led Raina's father straight to her. His voice is hoa.r.s.e as he tells Chase how she had finally cried after so many years, only to run away almost as soon as the tears started to fall.