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Phoenix clattered back into the room. The guilty pout told Wiri she’d listened to every word from outside the door. But she lifted a phone in her hand, the floral cover gaudy in the dour hospital. The screen strobed with an incoming call, and she gnawed on her lip and appealed for help. “What should I do?” she demanded. “He told her to kill two people. One is dead and then you got shot.” She gulped and her gaze moved from Wiri to her father.
“What?” Logan’s pupils bloomed to create unfathomable black pits within his grey irises. He held out his hand for the phone. “Who told who what?” Taking the device, he swiped the green phone icon across the screen and lifted it to his ear. “Who is this?” he demanded, his voice loaded with authority.
Silence.
“Hello?” The phone gave a tiny vibration in his hand as the call ended. He glanced up to find Wiri and Phoenix watching him. “Who the hell was that?” He handed the phone back to his daughter.
“We don’t know.” Phoenix pursed her lips and sent Wiri a silent appeal for help. She pushed the device into her pocket. Her dark lashes grazed the top of her cheek as she looked down at the floor. Wiri rallied to her call, using his arms to push himself higher up the bed, the pillows bunched behind him. He opened his mouth to speak, but a male voice cut across him.
“Knock knock.” He followed the action with an actual knock on the open door, a gentle rap of acknowledgment. Vaughan stepped into the room, his gaze fixed on Wiri. He took in the hospital gown and the drip feeding fluids into his arm. “I came to see how you are.” He smiled at Phoenix before his attention fell to Logan. “Leilah’s parking the truck.” He gave an upward jerk of his head before turning to face him.
Vaughan raised his right hand and stretched his long arm towards Logan. Wiri held his breath in the pause, which seemed to last forever. He heard Phoenix’s audible gulp from next to him and flinched as she rested her hand on his shoulder. “It’s been a while,” Vaughan said.
Wiri frowned and glanced up at Phoenix, the creases in her forehead mirroring his. Logan’s face relaxed into a genuine smile, and he took the offered hand. Phoenix blinked as they touched foreheads and noses in a traditional hongi. “It’s been too long, cousin.” They separated, and the air fizzed between them like the ignition of a dormant spark of familial connection. “Thanks for the call,” Logan said.
Wiri stiffened. “Call. What call?” He narrowed his eyes and studied Logan. “I thought Phoenix called you after I got shot.”
Her hand wobbled on his shoulder and he glanced up to find her shaking her head. Her long curls flicked his right ear. “I didn’t call them.” She shrugged. “I assumed the hospital did it. Or Uncle Mark.”
Wiri pointed from Vaughan to Logan. “You’re cousins?”
“Yup.” Logan resumed his station against the wall. He bent his right knee and placed the sole of his boot against the plaster.
Vaughan dug his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans. He shrugged. “Same whakapapa until the French man. Maternal line.”
“Right.” Wiri frowned at the irony. He’d avoided availing himself of Logan’s family contacts and stumbled across them, anyway. He sighed, acknowledging the throbbing in his thigh.
“You gonna be okay?” A line appeared between Vaughan’s eyes. “Ted shot you?”
“Yeah.” Phoenix answered for him. Her thigh touched the bed frame as she edged closer, as though to protect him.
“Where’d he get the gun?”
Wiri swallowed, but Logan got there first. “Are you missing one, cousin?” he asked.
Vaughan nodded. “Yup. My rifle.”
Wiri inhaled. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the pillow. He didn’t want to see Vaughan’s expression as he smashed up his family. “Ted killed Hendricks, but Seline locked me in the water tank.” He swallowed.
“Someone’s giving her orders over the phone.” Phoenix picked up the tale. “A man. I have her phone and he thinks I’m Seline.” She pursed her lips and drew the floral case from inside the back pocket of her jeans. She winced at the discomfort of the action. From the other side came Mac’s phone, and she stepped forward to hand both to Logan. “I stole Mac’s, Papa. He knows nothing.”
Logan took it from her without comment, pushing it into an inside pocket in his leather jacket. He jerked his head towards the other phone. “Call the number,” he ordered, his tone raising only slightly in concern.
Phoenix shook her head. She ran her fingers over the screen and it lit up to demand a code. “I can’t,” she admitted. “I can answer calls, but to do anything else, I need the code.”
Vaughan wrinkled his nose. “Leilah might know it. What did the guy sound like?”
Phoenix shrugged. “Gruff, angry. He sounded white.” She squeezed her eyes tight shut and shook her head. “I know that sounds weird. Also very sure of himself, like someone used to giving orders.” She stared at the screen as though willing another call into existence. “He thinks she’s going to kill someone for him.”
“There’s a sound in the background.” Wiri stared at the ceiling until the overhead strip lights blurred his vision. “I’ve heard it before somewhere. It reminds me of my ma.”
His lips twitched as he remembered Anahera as she’d been in the early days.
Before Rueben’s fire.
Before Asher started copying Kane and their world detonated. His mind’s eye produced a memory of her laughing as she showed him how to make a daisy chain. Her dark hair swung in a ponytail, tapping her shoulder as she leaned forward to tweak the reluctant stems. She’d known happiness for a while. He swallowed and forced himself to acknowledge that he needed to see her again. Hana had offered many times to drive him to the prison for a visit. Next time, he’d say yes.
“Prison!” His tongue tripped over the word as though not wanting to release it into the ether. “He’s calling from a prison. It’s the same buzzing of the security doors as they open.” He clicked the fingers of his left hand and hissed at the pain it caused his finger. “Ouch! That’s why he needs Seline to take his calls. He’s either queuing for the communal phone or renting a mobile.”
Logan cocked his head as though seeing Wiri in a different light. He’d sheltered his children from much of the world’s horrors. Yet so many had come to his own doorstep, he should have realised they’d already seen too much. He wrinkled his nose and Wiri saw regret in his eyes as he ran a hand over his face.
Vaughan released a breath which seemed to hurt. He splayed the fingers of his left hand over his stomach as though to protect himself. “I know who that is,” he admitted. His jaw ground hard enough to make the bone press through his cheek. “I need to speak to Leilah.”
Leilah and Hana arrived together, converging in the doorway of the small hospital room. They bumped shoulders before apologising. An eerie warmth started in the pit of Wiri’s stomach at the sight of Hana again, guilt and shame rising into his throat to restrict his airway. He coughed, and Phoenix leaned across him to retrieve the cup of water.
Leilah introduced herself as Wiri chased the straw with his mouth, finally resorting to using his fingers to fix it in place. He sipped, buying himself time before he witnessed Hana’s disappointment first hand. He wished he’d had more presence of mind when she’d sat with him earlier.
A missed opportunity.
His imagination had supplied endless iterations of the scene over the years. But he hadn’t been naked beneath a flimsy hospital gown, especially with an audience. He choked on the water and Phoenix drew it away. With her other hand, she rubbed the back of his neck.
“Wiri.” Hana’s voice sounded soft and filled with tenderness. He stared down at the starched sheets to avoid the moment, not wanting to see the undeserved pain he’d caused a woman who’d given him nothing but love.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. The fingers of his right hand strayed to worry at the stitches over the seam of his middle finger. Redness bloomed along the join and it prickled as though needing him to scratch it.
He smelled her perfume and the familiar scent of her shampoo as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She rested her cheek on the top of his head. “I told you before, it’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”
His arms lifted of their own volition and he held her around the waist. Slender like the stem of a daisy, Hana had been bowled over by circumstance many times but never broken under pressure. She’d formed the lighthouse in the child-Wiri’s world. So many of his kin orbited her like boats adrift at sea. She pressed her lips to his forehead before releasing him. His gaze strayed towards Logan, seeing only love written there.
“And as for you, miss!” Hana met her daughter at the end of the bed. She wrapped her arms around her and held on as though reluctant to release her back into the world. Her palms cupped Phoenix’s cheeks as she studied her. “I’m not letting you out of my sight again. You’d better get used to it.”
“We’ve got bigger problems.” Logan called a halt to the threatening emotional scene. He drew Seline’s phone from his pocket and showed Leilah the cover. “Your daughter’s phone.” He stated it as a fact. “She’s taking calls from a man who’s telling her to kill someone.”
The colour drained from Leilah’s cheeks. Her eyes darkened and though her lips moved, nothing emerged. Vaughan’s steady hand landed on her shoulder. He drew her back to him and out of Logan’s range. A protective move, though unnecessary. “What are you saying?” A whisper filled with denial and regret. She jabbed a finger towards Wiri. “Ted did this. Larry, the police, they all said Ted did it.”
Hana and Phoenix had turned to face the drama. They blocked Wiri’s view of Leilah as though shielding him from an unseen horror. He pressed his right palm against the mattress and dipped his body to see around them. Vaughan’s calm expression belied the fury and confusion bubbling in his irises. His boots scraped against the floor as he turned to face his wife. Wiri almost missed the muttered words. “It’s me he wants dead, Lei. Revenge. Your ex-husband wants me gone, and he’s using our daughter to do it. It’s perfect justice, isn’t it, if you think about it?”
Hana slunk towards Logan, keeping hold of Phoenix’s hand. She mouthed something to him, and he nodded. A sense of isolation built as Wiri remained trapped in the high bed. Vaughan and Leilah formed a perfect circle, and he recognised a spark of empathy for Seline. Vaughan had referred to her as our daughter, yet he shared no emotional or parental connection with her. Wiri’s heart sank. He and Seline were from the same corrupt mould. They’d both had another man passed off as their father. He’d found Hana but Seline had become feral, following a criminal’s bidding like an automaton and seeking something denied to her. He hated that shared thread of commonality between them. It made her easier to understand and he didn’t want to tap into any part of Seline’s twisted psyche.
But he’d been right. She’d wanted to ruin Vaughan’s business and incapacitate him.
For someone else.
Wiri was nothing more than collateral damage in her dangerous scheme. She’d wanted Jet’s gun to kill Vaughan.
“We need to call Tane.” Vaughan’s baritone rumbled through the room.
