Chase chooses his tone carefully for his next words, “I know you want to protect Raina, but demanding her to go somewhere else doesn’t seem to be working well with her.”
“So, I should just let her stay alone at her cabin, in the middle of nowhere, with absolutely no security, and hope for the best?” Kas spits out angrily.
Chase shakes his head at his friend, feigning mock hurt. “Man, you should know me better than that! I think you should do exactly what you’re doing,” he starts as he nods to the food Kas is holding in the carry out bag, “stock up on sustenance so you can stake out her place tonight when Chris makes bail.”
Kas lets out a cathartic laugh, “You always did know everything I was thinking.”
“Need company?” Chase volunteers, knowing that Kas will stay up all night watching Raina’s cabin making sure Chris doesn’t make another impromptu visit in the middle of the night.
Kas’ cell rings before he has a chance to answer.
“Agent Pierce, it’s Officer Hunt, Mr. Sutton made bail an hour ago. I’m sorry I know you wanted to be called before he left, but it must have happened while I was trying to separate the fighting drunks and—”
Kas swears and closes the phone before Officer Hunt has finished. He dials Raina’s number while Chase holds up his hands, looking at him quizzically. Kas swears again as he closes his phone a second time.
“Two cuss words in thirty seconds, this can’t be good,” Chase only partially jokes, knowing that it must be serious because Kas very rarely swears.
“Chris made bail an hour ago,” Kas quickly explains as he quickens his pace to the jeep, “and Rain didn’t answer her cell.”
Chase nods grimly, sliding into the passenger side, barely having time to close the door before Kas tears out of the parking lot.
It’s dark when they pull into the driveway of Raina’s cabin, and Kas’ heart stops when he witnesses Chris brutally punch Raina. Fiery rage fills his every pore as he sees Chris kick her so hard that the impact flips her onto her back. “RAINA!” he yells as he races through the field, his heart beating so hard it feels like it’s going to come straight through his chest, “RAINA!”
Kas reaches them after what seems like eons and tackles Chris at full speed. The forceful impact doesn’t faze him, and he immediately grabs Chris inescapably with his left fist as he lands a crushing right hook to his jaw with the right one. Kas delivers another punishing blow before he roughly handcuffs a barely conscious Chris. He has never wanted to kill a man before tonight, and it takes all of his self-restraint to keep from beating him like he was Raina. The only emotion stronger than his fury is his desire to get to her.
Kas is leaning over Raina as Chase kneels beside him, “The ambulance and police are on the way.”
Seeing the bruises on Raina’s face sends shots of pain through Kas, as if someone has plunged a knife deep into his chest. He quickly scans her other visible injuries. Murderous thoughts threaten to take over his self-control when he sees the large bruise already forming on her red, scraped ribs. Taking off his jacket, he gently covers her exposed skin. “Rain?” Kas pleads as he carefully cups her face in his trembling hand. “Rain, come on baby, talk to me,” he implores, praying she’ll open her eyes.
“Her pulse is strong,” Chase encourages while he holds her small wrist in his hands.
Kas strokes her hair while he continues to plead for her to come back to him, but Raina doesn’t respond. She continues to remain cold and motionless as the minutes drag by. He’s still pleading for her to awaken as the sirens blare and lights flash, causing the dark field to be illuminated in blinking red and blue.
Kas has never felt more helpless than he does at this moment, watching Raina being lifted onto a hospital gurney and rolled into the back of the ambulance. He starts to climb into the back with her when one of the medics holds out his hand to stop him. Flashing his FBI badge, Kas glares at the medic, not giving any room for discussion. The medic lowers his hand and steps aside, knowing it wouldn’t be wise to argue.
“I’ll meet you there,” Chase calls to Kas as the ambulance doors close.
Kas stays out of the way while the medics do their work with Raina, checking vital signs and assessing her injuries. He blanches as one of the medics mentions possible internal injuries.
Kas grasps Raina’s hand as soon as the medics are done with what they can do before they arrive at the ER. Rubbing her cold hand between his, he whispers to her, over and over again, “You’re going to be alright, Rain, you’re safe now.”
Hope fills his soul when Raina’s eyelids flutter, and he brushes a soft kiss across her knuckles, blinking back tears. The sound of the siren and the passing traffic fade into the background like white noise as he stares at Raina, willing her to be alright, praying she will be.
CHAPTER TWO
The waiting room of the ER is relatively quiet for a Thursday night. There are only a few other people sitting in the corners, talking in hushed tones, occasionally laughing to break the tension. Chase stirs his unsavory coffee, grimacing as he takes a sip and glances at Kas pacing the waiting room floor. “The doctors are very competent and thorough here,” he assures his friend, at a loss for anything else to say. With anyone else, Chase would be a tranquil wealth of soothing words, but he feels useless to help the person he most wants to relieve.
Chase has always had the gift of putting people at ease, even in the most trying of circumstances, but Kas has always been able to see right through calming techniques and has been immune to the effects they have on others. Chase knows Kas prefers frankness and seeing things exactly how they are so he can quickly begin to determine the best remedy. Kas has always been a man who knows how to fix things, get things done, but now, he is at a loss, completely out of his comfortable element of control, and Chase can tell that his usual impenetrable façade is starting to crumble. It hurts him to see his best friend and profiling partner suffering. “When are you going to tell her how you feel?”
Kas stops pacing and glances at Chase before running both hands roughly through his thick curls. Letting out a resigned sigh, he sits down for the first time in the two hours they have been waiting for news he’s not sure he’s prepared to handle. He leans forward and places his forearms on his knees before looking up again, “Is it that obvious?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Chase admits, smiling.
Kas leans back in his chair, “There’s nothing to tell, Raina’s nineteen and way out of my league.”
“Out of your league?” Chase scoffs. “You have women practically throwing themselves at your feet, Pierce, and you’re only six years older,” he states matter-of-factly, “besides, she’s much more mature than any other nineteen year old I know.”
“Like you know so many nineteen year olds,” Kas rebuttals, knowing that Chase prefers his women to be a little older.
He knows Chase has his pick of dates on any given weekend as well, always has. Kas manages a small smile as he remembers the party after Homecoming, their senior year, and how they danced with so many girls that night, including the girlfriend of the opposing team’s quarterback. The look on Chase’s face was priceless, after he found out who she was, directly after she kissed him in front of her 6’5” mountain of a boyfriend. The girl’s intention was to make her boyfriend pay her more attention, well it worked so well that it caused an all-out brawl between the two football teams.
He and Chase spent the next three Saturdays repairing the damage caused on their teammate, Stephen’s, back deck. Kas lets out a chuckle when he remembers how Stephen’s mom went off the deep end when she got home, and how everyone scattered except the three of them, and he swears Stephen would’ve taken off, too, if it weren’t for his need of food and shelter.
Neither one of them lack for attention from the opposite sex, but neither one of them exploit that either. Truth is, it makes Kas uncomfortable at how women come on to him so easily, he’s never been the type of man to be interested in casual sex. He�
�s not a saint, he’s given into temptation a few times, and although he would have to admit that it felt good at the moment, he was left feeling empty and lonely afterwards. He wants it to mean something, to be with someone he loves, but he has never been in love before, not until now.
Kas thinks back to the first moment he saw Raina, when the dean introduced them after his speech on human trafficking, in one of the classes at the university. He about forgot to breathe when she looked up at him with her beautiful jade eyes and shook his hand. He would swear that he felt sparks ignite when they touched, and he had to restrain himself from reaching over and tucking her long, auburn hair behind her ear when the wind blew it across the most beautiful face he had ever seen.
Even though Raina is average height, she seemed so small compared to him. His 6’1” frame towered over her slight 5’6” body. Her height was the only average thing about her. It took the dean two times, asking him the same question, before he was able to tear his gaze away from her long legs, slim waist, and toned, ivory arms. Kas wanted to run his hands over her skin, to see if it was as soft as he imagined it to be. He was grateful that she wasn’t in the class where he had just given his speech, or he was sure he wouldn’t have been able to concentrate enough to form coherent sentences.
Kas was thoroughly impressed when the dean informed him that, even though Raina is studying for her doctorate in Computational Neuroscience, she is fluent in four languages and is learning a fifth. He wanted to kiss the blush that spread across her lovely cheeks at the dean’s praise. He could tell that she wasn’t used to compliments, but, for the life of him, couldn’t figure out why. He was sure that she must have been given plenty of them by now, especially by men. The dean continued, stating that she would be a great candidate for the translation specialist position Kas had told him about at lunch earlier that day.
Kas’ warm memories of their first meeting are interrupted when the doctor comes through the door, a guarded look in his eyes, as he scans the people in the waiting room. “Agent Pierce, Dr. Stone, I’m Dr. Merrick, would you follow me please?”
Kas and Chase exchange glances, both picking up that something is peculiar with the doctor’s behavior. The three men sit down at a table in a small, but comfortable, conference room. Every nerve-ending in Kas’ body is tense and alert as the doctor speaks.
“Does Miss Kapture have anyone else for her in the waiting room?”
Both shake their heads, nervously waiting for further explanation.
Satisfied that no one else is waiting on his patient, the doctor continues, “First of all, Miss Kapture is stable at the moment. She has numerous contusions and abrasions and a hairline fracture on her right wrist. On her right side, she has two broken ribs, a cracked rib, and the rest are bruised.”
The color drains from Kas’ face as the doctor continues with Raina’s list of injuries.
“What is currently the most pressing are the concussion and the internal bleeding, which we located in the abdomen and stopped. She is currently being observed in the ICU.”
Chase runs his hand over his mouth at the alarming news as Kas finds the strength to speak, his voice laced with worry, “How severe is the concussion?”
“There is minimal brain swelling and no signs of intracranial or intracerebral bleeding, which is very positive, but I will feel better after she wakens and I can examine her again. We currently have her in a medicated coma for at least the remainder of the night.”
“Did she regain consciousness before the induced coma?” Chase questions Dr. Merrick as he places a reassuring hand on Kas’ slumped shoulder.
“No, she did not, but she took quite a beating, and it will take a little time for her to regain consciousness. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, her body is protecting itself by giving it a chance to begin healing by minimizing further stress an awakened state can cause,” he explains.
“Is she in pain?” Kas asks, praying that she isn’t.
“I don’t think so, at least not at the moment, due to administrating pain medication through her IV. We will slowly back off of the dosage by morning, so she can come out of the coma at her own pace, but we will closely monitor her vitals.”
This causes at least some comfort to both Kas and Chase.
“There is something else I need to discuss with you. Her chart mentioned no next of kin or emergency contact. I am unaware of all of the details surrounding Miss Kapture’s attack, other than the perpetrator is male. I am concerned about whose care she might be under as she recovers.”
Kas suspiciously looks at the doctor, his uneasy feeling about Raina’s past flooding back, hitting him squarely in the gut.
“There are several alarming indicators of past injuries that showed on the tests we conducted, injuries that have healed without proper medical intervention.” Dr. Merrick continues to explain, “The injuries are congruent with a lengthy history of child abuse, in my opinion, significant abuse at times.”
Kas feels as if he has been punched in the stomach. He knew something was off by the way Raina would always divert the subject when he asked about her family or past. He was leery that something had happened to her, but hearing that she has been abused, seriously abused from the sound of it, for most of her life, is overwhelming. Knowing her mother died when Raina was very young, anger flashes through him like lightning at the thought of her father hurting her.
Kas pushes back his chair and stands, needing to move, to do something, to do anything to clear his head.
Kas sees Chase run his hands down his face and let out a slow breath before he catches his gaze. He knows that Chase had an uneasy feeling about her past as well. He would have picked up on something with his doctorate in psychology. They’ve even discussed it one night after he and Raina collided into each other after she was leaving the room he was entering. The impact didn’t budge Kas, but it knocked Raina a little off balance, and when he reached to help steady her she immediately stepped back, out of his reach. He sensed that there was something odd that caused her reaction, even though she recovered quickly and apologized, giving him a shy smile, and then escaping the room before he had a chance to apologize or explore her reaction further.
Dr. Merrick stands and looks directly at Kas, and he can see hints of worry and anger in the doctor’s eyes as well. “I have a daughter around Miss Kapture’s age, and every time I see a patient who has been attacked I think of her,” the doctor admits, allowing some greatly appreciated personal feelings filter through the usual stringent doctor-patient relationship.
“Miss Kapture has scrapes and contusions on her hands and arms, especially her right hand, which shows me that she fought back, hard, against her attacker. That’s a very good sign, Agent Pierce.” Dr. Merrick taps Kas’ shoulder and shakes his hand, offering what little help he can at easing the fear and anger he knows he must be feeling.
Kas sits in the darkness, holding the fingers of Raina’s hand so he doesn’t disturb the IV taped just above them. The constant noise from the machines in her ICU room is a reminder that this isn’t how life should be for a vibrant nineteen year old. She shouldn’t be lying unconscious, in a hospital bed, covered in injuries from some cruel, arrogant ex-boyfriend.
Kas has an overwhelming need to scoop Raina up in his arms and protect her, to tell her that he won’t let anyone ever hurt her again. His emotions are raw and hanging on the bitter edge as he looks at her face marred with swollen bruises but still so beautiful. He caresses the line of her face from her ear to her jaw, softly, back and forth, wishing he could erase all of her pain.
He has never felt so alone as he watches over her in the early hours of the morning. Chase had offered to stay, but he knew there was no sense in neither of them getting any sleep. Besides, he wanted Chase to check on the proceedings with Chris and make sure some idiot isn’t offering bail this time.
Memories of early yesterday play in Kas’ mind as he lightly rubs his thumb across the split in her lower lip. She had tried her best to
hide her bruise behind her sunglasses as he caught up with her leaving the computer lab. She had been avoiding him all day, and he practically had to sprint to catch up with her when he saw her leaving.
He cringes when he remembers the anger in his voice when he had asked, “Did Chris do this to you?” He will never forget the fleeting look of embarrassment and shame in her eyes before she reactivated that barrier that he has found so hard to penetrate.
Kas is well known at the agency for his adept skills with micro expression, which has helped shoot his career to the fast track with the FBI, but he is increasingly frustrated by how Raina seems to have this deft ability at grabbing her feelings and tucking them so deeply inside of herself at the first slip of her emotions or from someone else’s emotional outburst. His heart had nearly shattered when he raised his hand to examine her bruised cheek, and she flinched, like he was going to strike her, too. “I’m not going to hurt you, sweetheart,” he had whispered to her.
Raina’s cheeks had flushed a deep scarlet, and the remnants of shame in her eyes rekindled. He’s not sure if her blush stemmed from embarrassment of her reaction or from his term of endearment. She had rebounded quickly and immediately tried to assure him that she was alright.
Kas was fiercely proud of Raina when she told him that she had already reported Chris when he had encouraged her to call the police. He knows that, too many times, women don’t report the abuse because of fear, they have nowhere else to go, or because they are too ashamed. The shame aspect is what Kas despises the most. It’s bad enough that the women are beaten physically, but the humiliation of being torn down emotionally and having it engrained in them, over and over again, by their abuser that somehow it’s their own fault is beyond inhumane.
Saving Rain Page 2
