Hana Du Rose Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1 - 4

by Bowes, K T

  Then with a heavy heart she crawled into bed in the empty house, finding herself alone yet again. “What’s wrong with me?” she sniffed into her pillow. “How do I always seem to end up by myself, no matter where I go?”

  Du Rose Legacy

  Chapter 26

  Hana awoke the next morning feeling completely disoriented. It took her a while to work out where she was. The darkness outside penetrated the room and Hana’s heart in equal measure. She lay in the inky gloom listening for the familiar bird sounds she was used to, hearing nothing from their suburban cousins. “Please bless Izzie and her babies,” Hana whispered to God, at least knowing he would be awake in the silent world around her.

  The labour had been immensely quick. Elizabeth’s was the opposite, induced in the Waikato Hospital while Izzie and Marcus stayed with Hana in Flagstaff. It was a long and painful labour and took Izzie months to get over the trauma of it all. The hospital let her out half way through, when labour mysteriously stopped on Christmas Day and the maternity ward was short staffed. Poor Izzie ended up delivering at the house on Boxing Day. It was hard enough welcoming a handicapped child into their world let alone in the bathtub, but the aftermath of the birth left a depressing legacy of hopelessness. It felt like they had all been in flux for at least a week, watching contractions and cheering Izzie on, only to have it stop, start, stop and then rush.

  Hana wondered if it was possible to be traumatised by a fast birth as much as a slow one. She thought she was certainly traumatised by it. She lay in bed enjoying the peace and darkness and ignoring her need to eat. There was the sound of a car engine and a clunk as an old car clambered onto the drive and then a key in the front door. Hana lay still. She wondered if it was Peg back with Elizabeth or another parishioner with food. It was still early though and Peg had walked home pushing the pram, not gone in a car.

  Hana heard keys being laid on the hall table and Marcus sigh deeply. She opened her mouth to call him but he went into the bedroom opposite and she heard and felt the thud as he flopped onto his bed, shaking all the joists in the floor. He left the hall light on. “Oh, bother,” Hana sighed, wondering whether to get up and turn it off. She pushed herself into a sitting position, surprised when it mysteriously clicked off.

  She lay back down, turned onto her side facing the wall and snuggled into the warm sheets tighter, relieved she didn’t have to brave the cold hallway.

  An arm snaked over her back, fingers feeling their way down her spine as the weight sunk the bed behind her. Hana inhaled quickly and opened her mouth to scream, finding a cold hand clamped down over her lips. Her heart raced uncontrollably and she felt a blue-buzz of fear pinning her to the bed. “Sshhhhh!” a male voice whispered, close enough for his lips to touch her ear. “I’ll let go. Don’t scream!”

  The hand came slowly away from Hana’s mouth and she hit out at the male casually sliding down into the bed with her. Strong hands held onto hers, making her thrashings futile and her arms were pulled apart so he could kiss her. Hana was turned her face to the side. “I hate you!” she hissed.

  Hana arched her back, but her stomach bumped against his and it hurt. She groaned and tried to wrench her arms free. “Get off!” she grunted, trying to keep her voice down.

  “No!” His answer was filled with a familiar stubbornness which grated on Hana’s nerves. She turned her face to the other side, leaving her neck exposed. He went straight for it, kissing and nibbling her vulnerable skin and moving up under her hair.

  “I hate you, Logan!” Hana shouted louder and he put his hand over her mouth.

  “Stop, woman! You’ll wake Marcus!” His jeans scratched the soft skin of her thighs and his shirt felt cold. Hana fleetingly wondered about kneeing him in the privates and moved her leg. She heard the gentle laughter as her husband anticipated the action and shifted his hip bone in the way. “No you don’t.” His voice was soft as he pressed his lips against hers. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Well, I haven’t missed you!” she replied and Logan sighed.

  “That’s not what I hear.” A cold hand snaked underneath her nightshirt and Hana shivered and tried to wriggle away.

  “They’re lying!”

  “Who’s lying, honey? Your daughter or your son-in-law?”

  “All of them. I haven’t missed you at all. In fact I’m not coming home, I’m staying here.”

  “Yeah, right.” Logan’s summer smell assailed Hana’s nose and she sought his brand of peace like fire hunts oxygen. He tipped to one side and pushed his thigh across her legs, trapping Hana underneath him. Gentle fingers stroked her face. “I love you, Hana Du Rose,” he whispered. “I’ve come further south than I’ve ever been, just to take you home. So start behaving yourself.”

  Hana inhaled with indignation and ordered her thoughts into a barrage of denial and insults. The effort was wasted as Logan’s lips covered hers. His busy fingers wrested her nightshirt up over her knickers and eased the waistband down with practiced ease. It knocked the fight out of Hana and she was temporarily stilled. By the time she recovered, Logan was well into his work and she realised she didn’t want him to stop.

  Hana administered a couple of nasty bites on Logan’s neck and shoulder to demonstrate her protest. He stripped his clothes off without getting out of bed, keeping Hana pinned skilfully in place the whole time. She wriggled and kicked out at him, stilling as his naked body slid over hers. “When will you learn to trust me?” His words jarred in the darkness and Hana found she had no answer. She reached up to meet his lips and heard Logan sigh with satisfaction. He snorted like his Appaloosa stallion and Hana felt his fingers flutter around her face. “That’s ok, babe,” he whispered. “I love a challenge; you should know that by now.”

  When Hana woke up a couple of hours later, she felt the cold wall against her bare back where Logan had boxed her into the double bed. His head was wedged under her chin and his hair tickled her nose. She had a crick in her neck where both his arms were wrapped tightly around it and she had dribbled down her own face. Not a good look.

  Hana started to wriggle and Logan disturbed instantly, gripping her harder at first. He smiled at her with his sultry grey eyes and pushed himself up the bed so his lips were level with hers. His breath smelled of airport mints and faintly of alcohol and Hana was aware hers smelled of last night’s dinner. “Not cleaned my teeth,” she said, holding her hand over her mouth.

  “Do I look like I care?” He pulled the sheets aside so she could see his aroused body and Hana pouted and rolled her eyes in exasperation.

  Logan snickered and gripped her wrists. He held her hands above her head and kissed her anyway. His grey eyes bored into hers in the grey, watery daylight, at the same time tender and accusing. Logan’s kisses were urgent and demanding as he exorcised his emotional tension and Hana found it exhilarating and terrifying.

  Eventually, she escaped to the bathroom with her leggings and pullover, afraid she would never get out. Logan was insatiable and it was addictive, even though there was a hardness in his demeanour which made her wary. She had crossed the line with him and their relationship would change as a result. The question was; how?

  Hana showered and dressed, breaking the Jiff out again halfway through on discovery of another blob of afterbirth on the tiles behind the shower curtain. In the kitchen she found a bleary headed Marcus, mechanically shovelling a bowl of Cornflakes into his face on one of Elizabeth’s red, baby spoons. Hana stroked his blonde hair as she went past. “How are you?” she asked.

  He nodded and then smirked. “Knackered, but how are you? This old couple ruined my beauty sleep.”

  Hana’s fingers changed the action from a stroke to a slap. “Did you know Logan was coming here?” she demanded.

  Marcus laughed. “Of course I did. His flight got in this morning at five. Izzie sent me to get him. Then she told me to come home and get some sleep and referee between you.”

  “Right!” said Hana nastily. “If that was refereeing then I’ll
tell her you didn’t bother!”

  Marcus stood up with his cereal bowl and took it over to the dishwasher. He looked tired and ruggedly handsome, his blonde hair sticking up at points on his head. “I’m going to get Beth from Peg’s and take her to see her brothers at the hospital now.” He walked towards the kitchen door and Hana noticed he already had his shoes on. He got halfway out the door and then his mischievous face poked back in with his parting shot. “You didn’t sound like you needed a referee!”

  Hana’s eyes widened with embarrassment and anger. Marcus ran for his life, banging the front door behind him. She heard him trip down the front step and shouted, “That serves you right!”

  Hana plugged the kettle in and watched a small mynha bird in the garden. It sat on top of a child’s swing set. Marcus must have put that up, she thought to herself. It’s wonky. She didn’t hear Logan come in behind her, but felt his strong arms link around her breasts and his stubble graze the nape of her neck. She tossed her head and he sighed. Hana looked down at his hands in front of her and noticed the fresh grazing on his knuckles. She turned gradually, struggling as he didn’t back away or give her even an inch of room and she found herself facing his chest, her back against the metal worktop. Hana gasped.

  The first thing she saw was the deep graze along Logan’s jawbone. It was open and glistened with the stuff the body makes first to seal the pores; worse than blood. Further up, there was a deep cut on the bridge of his nose and blackening under both eyes. The tails of black stitches hung through the white tape coving cut. The healed scar under his right eye had been partially opened and re-stitched and a cut into his right eyebrow looked painful and bruised. More stitches and more tape covered the area.

  Hana shut her eyes and tipped her head back, unaware until she heard it, that a groan had escaped her. Logan dropped his knees and caught her under her thighs, sitting her squarely on the work surface. Then he pressed in against her and wrapped her into his strong arms. “I’m fine,” he murmured. “It’s all over.”

  “Did you kill them?” Hana asked, her voice like a small, bewildered child’s. Logan snorted, part annoyance, part amusement.

  “No, for once, Odering arrested them. He finally pulled his finger out.”

  Hana stayed quiet, running her lips lightly over Logan’s bare chest, feeling the rough hairs on her soft skin. She moved so her arms rested over his back and her face lay sideways against his shoulder. She was too tired to ask. “Izzie had the babies,” she told him and felt him nod against the back of her head. “It was...it was...truly awful.”

  Hana began to cry. It was impossible to describe the horror of the sounds Izzie made and the sheer powerlessness Hana had experienced. Logan stroked her back while she cried and then she wiped her face on his chest because she was still cross with him. “Why did you get hurt?” she asked, snuffling against his skin.

  “Odering used me as bait. To make Laval come out.”

  Hana looked up at him. “Then you were stupid!”

  “No!” he said forcefully into her face. “I was desperate! Odering asked me before, heaps of times and I always said no. He kept on asking, making me sign in every day at the police station even when I didn’t need to. I still said no, I wouldn’t do it, even back then. Because of you. He said it was the most effective way to get Laval. When Michael couldn’t talk sense into Tama the other night, I panicked. I agreed to meet with Odering and his boss. I thought I’d be back before you woke up but when I got home, you were gone. How could you just disappear like that, without leaving a note? Why would you do that to me? Again!”

  “What do you mean, again?” Hana bridled.

  Logan shook his head, gritting his teeth in exasperation. “Oh, so you’ve forgotten already, have you? You don’t remember disappearing for a whole day without telling anyone where you were going? We were worried sick! I had Odering searching Hamilton for you. Do you know what we thought, Hana? Do you even care? We thought Laval took you. And you turn up at home, soaking wet, tired and sick with no explanation. Did I storm off, Hana? Did I harangue you and demand to know everything? No! No I bloody didn’t. I just loved you and trusted you knew what you were doing! Geez, Hana, why does it feel like you never meet me half way?”

  Hana looked down at the kitchen tiles, feeling ashamed. A flush bloomed on her neck and spread onto her cheeks. Guilt made her defensive and prickly. Logan removed his hands from her waist and put them on the counter either side of her and Hana gulped in misery. Logan frowned. “I knew you’d gone of your own accord; the house was locked up too nice!” Hana could hear his resentment. “So I rang Odering and told him what the hell, I’d do it. We set it up quick, he was ready to go and Che flushed out Laval for me. The rest is history. It’s over.”

  Logan walked across to the table, pulling out a chair and sitting down with exhausted heaviness. He ran a hand across his face, hissing when his caught his myriad cuts. Hana stayed on the worktop, too embarrassed to admit she couldn’t actually get down and without his strong arms around her, it wasn’t a comfy position anymore. “What happened?” she asked, unable to conceal her curiosity.

  Logan ran his hands through his hair, inadvertently catching his eyebrow again. He let out a string of expletives and thumped the table in anger. Then he sat for a second with his finger over the cut, letting the pressure alleviate the pain. When he looked up, his face was pale. “Laval agreed to meet me at Hamilton Lake. Che threatened him, so he didn’t have much choice. He must have known what happened to Huang. The cops got there two hours early and I rode in after two yesterday morning. I was wired. His guys checked me, but not well enough in the dark. They roughed me up a bit. I had to let them - to make it look authentic. Bo was about five metres away, hiding in a bush. He wasn’t allowed to help me. Laval asked for the will and I made a pretence of not letting him have it. His guys took it out of my jacket pocket and gave me another slap, for good measure. My hands were tied. Laval thought it was the real deal. He said the old lady was in a storm drain in the lake and I was going there next.”

  Logan halted his tale and looked at Hana in confusion. “Odering wanted him for so much other stuff and he didn’t talk about any of it. I was primed to ask all these questions but he just looked at me sideways like he didn’t know what I was talking about. It was weird.” He shrugged. “I didn’t care; I wanted it all over.”

  Logan sighed and Hana noticed more grey hairs in his sideburns in the early morning sunlight. She felt sorry. While she sulked in the airport, spending Logan’s money on expensive books, he was sacrificing himself for her. She bit her lip and hung her head. Logan spoke again. “Laval is small fry; I mean seriously small fry. Mrs Che could eat him for dessert. I don’t think he’s who Odering thought he was, but that’s who he got anyway. As soon as he said where the dead woman was, the cops bounced him but not before one of his guys dropped me into the lake. My hands were tied so I couldn’t do much about it and I banged my head and cut my face on the metal sidings. I was knocked out for a couple of seconds, but Bodie pulled me out. He’s a good swimmer, you taught him well.”

  It was a joke and Logan tried to get eye contact with Hana, but she wasn’t laughing at his attempt at humour. “Ah look, Hana, it’s over. We can go home and stop looking over our shoulder.”

  Hana couldn’t imagine it anymore - that kind of freedom. Logan tried not to dwell on the finer details of the dreadful evening which he glossed over for Hana’s benefit. It was true, the Laval crew seemed to have been rounded up. But a deep unease settled around Logan when he thought about it, knowing it wasn’t really over.

  “What was Laval like?” Hana asked into the silence and Logan shook himself.

  “The old man was just a spiteful white haired old conman, who walked with a stick and oozed menace. I didn’t expect to find him particularly convincing as a widower, dallying with lonely women’s emotions, but that was exactly what he was. I guess you could say it was a pleasant surprise.”

  Logan rode to the lake in th
e darkness, worrying more about dealing with his volatile wife than meeting with someone who made an art form out of hounding him. The wire under his shirt tickled his bare skin and it felt weird, knowing someone listened to his every movement, waiting for a damning conversation but getting heartbeats and breathing in between. Logan was surprisingly calm and it was ironic, as Bodie was a mess back at the house. He couldn’t sit still as the tech guys wired up his stepfather and ran sound checks.

  “Logan Du Rose,” Laval had said slowly, seeming to show an overt interest in his name. It confused Logan and he knitted his brows and narrowed his grey eyes.

  “I don’t know you.” The warning he sent via the Triads had evidently failed to ruffle the old man, his prize far too big to roll over when he was this close to success. It was a disturbing paradox, the little old man with a reputation for low grade, budget criminal activity, pitted against his exaggerated confidence.

  “Your reputation precedes you,” the old man’s slippery voice complimented him. “You have friends in high places, but I have no interest in your affairs. Had your stupid woman just handed over my documents the first time, it would have been simpler for both of us. But this is fine. I have what I want. Now you can go to sleep with the fishes. Michael Laval says hello.”

  Logan took the punches and kicks, knowing he wasn’t in any imminent danger. The cops would rush in as soon as they heard enough. He hoped. But the old man’s cryptic message weighed on him. ‘Michael Laval says hello.’ So who was this man?

  Once the cops heard the location of the old lady’s body, they rushed into the situation yelling and screaming, generating their own brand of chaos. Logan felt the heavy shove and saw the freezing cold water rush up to meet him. Natural instinct dictated he splay his arms and legs to buoy himself, but the plastic cable ties around his wrists made it impossible.

  Logan’s final thought as he hit the freezing cold lake was understandably, about dying. His life hung in the balance several times in his forty years, but he always expected to meet his sticky end in an alleyway somewhere, or shot by one of his relatives in a freak ‘accident’ over a woman. He never considered the possibility of drowning and consequently, wasn’t prepared for the reality.