Hana Du Rose Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1 - 4

by Bowes, K T

  “Wife?” Tama screeched and his face crumpled in an ugly combination of misery and fury. “No! That’s not fair!” Tama wrestled with Logan and anger made him strong. Hana was rooted to the landing, her heartbeat pounding in her ears and rendering her limbs useless as the men struggled.

  Logan’s limbs seemed made of steel and despite the age gap, he got the upper hand easily, forcing Tama’s arm up behind his back and pushing him roughly towards the driver’s door of the battered car. His shirt strained tight as his torso bulged with muscle and Hana couldn’t see Logan’s face. But whatever look was there made Tama quail as he landed against the wing of the car and wheeled around. His resolve failed at some hidden communication received from Logan’s well planted frame and determined stance. Wordlessly, Tama opened the car door and started to get in, fiddling around in his jeans for the keys.

  Satisfied he was leaving, Logan turned away and walked back up the stairs. His face was dark with menace and Hana felt at that moment, he was a stranger to her; a mysterious brooding force. She felt a wave of fear at the look in his grey eyes and held her breath.

  Logan was two steps up from the bottom when he heard Hana let out a strangled sound and began to turn back. The spiteful backhander caught Logan a nasty blow across the left side of his body. A metallic ring cut through the air as Logan staggered backwards and almost fell. Hana screamed and rushed forward, holding her arms above her face to protect her from the next blow as Tama lifted the metal crowbar to shoulder height again. He hadn’t finished. Hana was instantly full of rage, her only thought being to defend her husband who clutched his arm close to his body while his face went a ghastly grey. “No!” she shrieked as Tama lifted the bar again, his face a mask of rage. She covered Logan with her body, cringing at the expected blow.

  Michael came outside so quietly Hana didn’t hear him and it was he who moved quickly past her, shoving her back roughly as her instincts drove her to hit out at Tama. Michael barrelled into the boy, hauling him around and disarming him in one swift move. “Oh, God. Oh, God, help me!” Hana panicked as she knelt by Logan, watching beads of sweat break out on his forehead. She tried to put her arms around him while Michael shoved Tama back into the car and the engine started running. “Something broke, I heard it,” she hissed, her voice breaking as she checked Logan’s arm with inexperienced hands. “Let your brother check you out?”

  “I’m fine!” Logan’s teeth were gritted and a strange look crossed his face at the suggestion his brother look at his injuries. “He’s not touching me. Don’t say anything.” His grey eyes dulled as he implored Hana to play along.

  Hana saw a mix of emotions cross Tama’s face through his open window and turned away sickened, but not before she saw him lean into Michael’s face, venting with real hatred, “I hate you!”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Hana whispered and reached for her cell phone. She fumbled dialling the police emergency number and almost dropped the device in her hurry.

  “Don’t you dare!” The phone was snatched from her hand and pocketed by Liza in one fluid movement. “We don’t do things that way, pakeha! You need to learn the rules of the game!”

  Logan sunk onto the steps and pulled himself up with a Trojan effort. He walked slowly up to the front door, keeping his left arm still and struggling for breath. Hana followed him up, bumping into Miriam at the top observing Tama’s retreating vehicle. The silence between them all was deafening.

  Once inside the hallway Hana went into maternal mode, fully intending to fuss around her husband and assess the damage. She was astounded when he went down the corridor and climbed the back spiral staircase slowly, having said nothing. Nobody spoke and not one of them tried to stop Logan’s painful progress. Hana looked around at each of them in utter amazement. Then she followed him up the stairs, aghast at the apparent lack of caring. This is sick, this is too sick, her brain admonished her. Wake up, woman. What are you doing?

  Hana ran in her stockinged feet, catching up with Logan on the landing. Her husband’s breath came in short gasps. Reaching their room he grappled with the keypad, punching the numbers in with a shaking hand and refusing to let her help him. Inside, he collapsed onto the bed and lay there, ignoring her questions as though she wasn’t there. “Let me help you!” Hana begged. “He broke a bone, Logan! I heard it!”

  Her pleas were met with silence. Hana panicked and paced around, not knowing what to do. At the continued lack of response from her husband, she began packing frantically. Somewhere in her inner turmoil, she recognised the overwhelming need to get away from the house, the situation and the atmosphere. Tama’s unexpected visit exposed the weird Du Rose family dynamic in all its ugliness. They didn’t care. He broke a bone and they didn’t care.

  Hana’s hands shook as she collected their belongings together. She fought her nightie into Logan’s rucksack on the floor when, with a grunt, he shot abruptly to his feet and ran to the ensuite bathroom. He hurled himself to his knees and vomited violently into the toilet. Hana felt powerless, hovering in the doorway as he retched and offering him a glass of water once he finished. “Drink this,” she said softly as though he was her child. “Sip it.”

  Logan exhaled slowly, taking the glass and slurping the water. It ran down his chin and onto the floor speckled with blood. Still he didn’t speak, perching his shapely ass on the side of the wide bath, cradling his arm and looking still sicker, if that were possible. Hana cleaned the toilet and then threw their remaining possessions into Logan’s rucksack. “Up,” she said gently to Logan, whose colour began to return. “We’re leaving. Now!”

  Logan seemed reluctant and with his stomach empty of the sumptuous breakfast, looked a little less grey and sick. “It’s fine,” he said slowly, his words slurring, “there’s no need, it’s just…it’s ok.”

  “No!” Hana shouted, “I need to get out of here.”

  Logan watched her dragging the bags. His stuff was mixed in with hers and vice versa, not neatly segregated and fitted nicely as it was when he packed it only a couple of days ago. Hana didn’t care, flinging it all together and zipping up the rucksack and large bag. The high heeled shoes she wore to her wedding stopped the rucksack from closing properly and she took them out, dropping them onto the floor and leaving them there. Putting Logan’s flip-flops in front of his bare feet, she indicated he should get into them. “Put your feet on them. I’ll help you.” Hana slid Logan’s feet into the thongs with careful but shaking fingers.

  “Mum’s doing a proper lunch,” Logan said quietly and Hana looked at him, her eyes wide with incredulity.

  “I’m not staying now, so don’t ask me to. I’ll be in the car. I’m going to wait for five minutes exactly and then I’m going home. I am not kidding, Logan!”

  Picking up both bags and moving swiftly towards the bedroom door, Hana’s actions punctuated her final sentence. She struggled with the combined weight and her red locks tumbled from their clip, swathing her shoulders in an amber carpet. Her eyes were narrowed and her jaw locked with determination. Logan remained on the bed, his complexion pale and his arms bracing his body. He rubbed a hand over his face and let out a huge breath. “I mean it Logan.” Hana’s voice was soft but full of threat. “I’m leaving, with or without you.”

  Logan’s eyelashes fluttered and his eyes widened in fear as Hana wrestled with the heavy fire door and he heard her clumping down the hallway. When he was certain he wasn’t going to barf again, he stood up and left the room.

  Hana sat in the Honda, shaking from head to toe. Alarm bells sounded in her brain. “Oh God, I’m so sorry,” she muttered to herself. “I’ve made a monumental mistake and now I can’t ask you to help me.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and felt her insides churn. Logan never lied to her about his strange and volatile family, but he failed to impart the true picture of their odd and violent behaviour. It was all the more terrifying because of the complete lack of emotion which accompanied it. Hana counted to two hundred and forty as slo
wly as she could manage, as much to reduce her racing heart as to count to the promised deadline. Come on Logan!

  Passing the four-minute mark, she sensed Logan would not come. Not daring to think about what that meant for her forty-eight hour marriage, Hana finished counting the final sixty seconds and started the engine. Waiting a single heartbeat more with panic building, she saw Logan come down the steps and exhaled with relief. He moved quickly, taking two at a time in a pretence of being fine. But she saw how he carried his left arm with care and his face was a mask, rigid with a false smile hiding pain beneath. He climbed gingerly into the Honda, not using his left arm at all as he reached his right arm across his body to slam the door.

  Nobody came out of the house to wave them off. Biting at Logan in her anxiety, Hana snapped, “That was six minutes, not five!” With relief, she put the car into drive and shot away from the hotel, spraying gravel as she pulled out. Logan was quiet, indicating turns and direction changes with single word answers but not getting into conversation. Hana wanted to rant, to shout and scream as she would have done many years ago in a different marriage. Hindsight taught her to hold her tongue.

  They were almost at Huntly before Logan reached out and laid his right hand on Hana’s thigh, smiling coyly at her from beneath his black eyelashes, a look which normally melted her heart and made her give in to anything. The sudden contact caused something tense inside her to snap like an elastic band breaking and she turned her face away while hot tears slid down her cheeks. “Pull over,” Logan commanded her, indicating a lay-by on State Highway 1 and Hana turned into it, skidding slightly without enough time to properly slow down. She sat with her hands gripping the steering wheel, scared by the fear and anger that ran and mixed through her fragile nerves. Logan put his hand over hers, prying it off the wheel, undoing her seatbelt and pulling her towards him. “Sorry,” he said quietly, “I’m so sorry.”

  Hana dried her tears and started up the engine again, ignoring Logan’s attempts to kiss her. “I’ll drive,” he offered, but Hana pushed his hand away from her. There was no way he could drive with his injury. Hana suspected it was much worse than he pretended and she had a destination planned which wasn’t Culver’s Cottage. She didn’t turn onto the Tainui Bridge, but stayed on State Highway 1 heading south. In Ngaruawahia, she pulled up in front of a neat wooden building. ‘24 Hour Accident and Emergency’ squealed out in neon writing.

  “Aw, come on, Hana! I just need a lie down. I’m fine. I promise, I’ve done heaps worse. I’ll be right tomorrow.”

  “Get out!” Hana held his door open.

  “No!” Logan objected violently, flat out refusing to get out of the car, repeatedly insisting he was fine.

  Hana ignored him and left the vehicle. “Get out of your own accord or I’ll fetch a wheelchair. You choose!”

  Tired and in pain, Logan obeyed, closing the door with his backside and following Hana into the waiting room. “This is bloody ridiculous!” He sat on a plastic chair, putting his head down and closing his eyes while Hana booked him in and paid the fee. She appeared next to him with a green accident form and began to fill it in. When she got to the section asking for details of the accident, Hana paused, looking up to find Logan watching her intently. He took the form from her with his right hand, trying to balance the clipboard on his knee and write at the same time. Hana was horrified to see him write details of a fall downstairs which hadn’t happened. His writing was awful as he was left-handed, his long fingers struggling with the unnatural direction of the pen. “You promised you weren’t a liar!” Hana hissed and Logan leaned in close to her ear.

  “Only to you,” he whispered, his breath ruffling Hana’s fringe. “I will never lie to you.”

  Logan went into the doctor on his own, Hana not offering to accompany him. She reeled in shock from the whole incident and his subsequent fraudulent claim. Scrupulously honest, she felt jaded and tainted simply by a sentence of less than ten words which were blatantly untrue.

  Logan emerged from the corridor behind the receptionist after three-quarters of an hour, wearing his arm in a sling. In that time, Hana read a banal celebrity magazine without taking in a word of it. Her brain was constantly assaulted by the screech of a toddler, with his head stuck in a terracotta flowerpot. His wails echoed in the pottery and exited the little drain hole at the top, to the point where Hana could cheerfully have broken him out with her stiletto heel.

  Logan sat down heavily next to Hana in the waiting room, looking at her sideways from under his long eyelashes. He could see she was barely concealing her angst at the horrible situation she found herself in. He was grateful Hana wasn’t a lover of public spectacles; ‘doing your dirty washing in public,’ she called it, but his nervous grey eyes showed he knew the argument was just beneath the surface. Hana wondered if Logan was free to leave but didn’t dare ask, keeping her silent vigil in the plastic seat next to him while the child wailed into his flowerpot.

  “Logan Du Rose?” A pretty blonde nurse called Logan’s name after ten minutes and he followed her out of sight, his long legs moving gracefully across the space. He looked cautiously over his shoulder at Hana, who remained rigid in the bright orange plastic chair and refused to catch his eye. She tapped an impatient fingernail on her knee and wished she could take herself back in time to the start of the year. I would ignore the damned rat, I wouldn’t sit next to him in the staffroom and I would save myself a heap of trouble, she promised herself. The thought came unbidden into her mind and Hana looked around the waiting room guiltily, as the sentence formed in her brain. You would have missed out on the best sex of your life!

  An age later Logan reappeared, his arm in a sling and a black plaster cast stretching from his hand to above his elbow. In his right hand, he bore a carrier bag with X-Rays written on the side in bold print.

  Logan looked nervously at Hana as she slowly galvanised herself, rising up out of the chair and going out to the car on autopilot. Logan struggled to open the door, but Hana couldn’t bring herself to help him. She clamped her hands to the steering wheel, buying herself time to collect her thoughts enough to drive the Honda back to her safe home without crashing.

  Inside the house, Hana smelled fresh flowers and almost broke down, discovering the beautiful bouquet from Bodie in one of her vases on the kitchen table. It was plonked in the vase, still in the paper and the stems barely touched the water. Another hour or so and they would have begun to wilt. Hana fingered the delicate petals of a lily between her fingers while she read the note tucked into the wrapper.

  ‘Sorry Mum! It was a big shock for you and not how I wanted it to be. Sorry. I will be back in the Tron PERMANENTLY from next weekend. Can we have coffee and talk? Happy Birthday for Tuesday, love Bo. Xxx’

  Hana let out a deep breath, trying not to cry as she reached in her bag for her phone to send him a text. She poked around inside for a few minutes as panic set in. It wasn’t there. She thought back to the last time she used it as Tiger crept into the room and wound himself around her legs, mewing. “Your bowl’s full, silly boy,” Hana cooed as she smoothed his soft fur. “Have you really missed me? Where’s my phone, boy?” A memory of Liza confiscating it snapped into her brain and Hana let out a groan of annoyance. “Noooo!”

  Logan slipped quietly into the room and filled the kettle one-handed. “What’s up?”

  “My phone!” replied Hana, the whine evident in her voice. “Your sister confiscated it when I tried to call the police.”

  Logan looked genuinely surprised. “You tried to call the cops?” He reached into his jeans pocket and fished it out. “She gave it to me when I was leaving, I thought you must have left it in the kitchen.”

  Hana snatched it from his fingers ungraciously, ignoring the stab of pain that crossed his face as she jarred his body. She went into the hallway to text Bodie, walking aimlessly around the house and looking sightlessly at the rooms as she went.

  ‘Thanks for the flowers, I love them. I do want to talk to you
desperately, text me when you get back. Love you Bo, Mum. Xxx’

  Hana pressed ‘send’ while sat on her old double bed, looking around her at the spare room. A small pad and colouring pencil poked out from underneath it, reminding Hana the little boy, Jas, slept in it with his mum. Apparently Bodie kept to their agreement and slept alone in the single room. Hana felt a flush of pride and relief. She probably needed to wash the bedding again but couldn’t muster up the energy to begin stripping sheets. It was only just after midday and she felt exhausted already. Hana thought back to her excited exit from Culver’s Cottage just a few days ago, embarking on her new marriage with hope. She sighed and ran her hand over her face, smudging her mascara and examining the black line across her fingers. Anka’s face floated across her mind’s-eye, her slender hand waving from across the street at the registry office. The small wave and the tears Hana thought she saw, made sense if Anka left Tama. Then Hana thought back further to her visit to the rental house to borrow a wedding outfit. Anka’s odd behaviour and the sense she was getting rid of things, all added to the picture of a woman abandoning a hopeless situation. Hana felt unbelievably sad. Not only did she lose a valuable friend but plainly Tama was utterly broken.

  At the thought of Tama, Hana closed her eyes in misery and flopped back on the bed, the weight of the morning weighing her down as though she was filled with concrete. The day started shakily with her repeated klutzy accidents but gotten much better when Logan carried Hana over to the bed and kept her there until it was embarrassingly late for breakfast. She felt self-conscious going into the kitchen so late, especially when everyone probably guessed what they were doing. Hana was so looking forward to coming home and starting married life, possibly even being carried over the threshold. Vik never bothered with such traditions. Now it was ruined. The whole thing seemed like a farce. Hana picked at a loose threat on the duvet cover, disappointment screwing up her face as she watched a small spider journey across the yellow stained ceiling.