TARASHA Episode 20 Pt 7 – Oyin Oluwatosin Emmanuel
**February 23, 2031**
The days rolled by in silence. Activities in the country and it’s capital went on as usual. The Vice President had been flown to the US for treatment and safety and only little news about him was disclosed by the press because they got little information themselves, the government made sure that everything about the Vice President’s treatment and safety was done secretively.
Omotara and Henry avoided themselves like plagues even though they stayed in the same house. Both of them went out early in the morning but a different times and also returned at different times in the evening. Henry avoided staying in the living room, so he did Tara; she always remained in her room everytime she was in the house while Henry stayed in Jefa’s room.
After several days of not greeting or talking to each other, Henry finally knocked on her door this Sunday morning.
Omotara did not waste time in opening the door as she thought it was her brother knocking, she was shocked when she met Henry smiling at the door. She tried to close it back but he stopped it with his leg and pushed the door open.
‘What do you want?’ She said as she proceeded straight to the bed.
He closed the door and stood with his two legs slightly apart, ‘Good morning Omotara.’
She turned to face him and stood straight, she folded her arms and gave him a contorted look without replying his greeting.
‘I see you’ve been trying to avoid me for the past few days,’ Henry added, not bothered about her not replying.
‘Hear who’s talking,’ she said with a mischievous smile.
‘But I’m saying the truth,’ Henry insisted.
‘Well, if that’s the only thing you’re here to talk about, I believe that this conversation is not necessary.’ she said with a dismissing note.
‘I’m not here to talk about that, I’m here to invite you to lunch with me,” he replied.
‘Lunch?’ she rolled her eyes in surprise. ‘And what makes you think that I’ll accept your invitation.’
‘You will,’ he said briefly and paused to see her reaction. ‘I can already see it in your eyes that you need something like that.’ Henry added and moved closer to her.
‘Come on, stop this trash. You see nothing in my eyes.’ She said and moved back.
‘Don’t let us argue, you’ll go with me this afternoon.’ Henry said, raising up his hands as a sign of surrendering. ‘Why don’t you dress up now and let’s go to church together?’
‘Never would I go to waste time with you in such a place again.’
‘You call it wasting time?’ Henry moved closer to her again.
‘Please, I don’t have time for this religious bullshi*t this morning,’ she said and turned to make her bed.
He drew nearer to her and placed his hands on her shoulder, she turned back sharply and gave him a warning look. He was a bit scared but he refused to be moved. They looked into each other’s eyes for close to two minutes before the frown on Tarasha’s eyes began to vanish. She tried to move away but he placed his hands on her shoulder again and stopped her from moving, she felt intimidated by his boldness.
‘Henry, what do you want?’ she asked softly.
‘I told you what I want already,’ he replied.
‘And I said I’m not interested in going anywhere with you, what else do you want?’
He looked into her eyes for some seconds before replying, she tried to move away again but he pulled her back. ‘I want you,’ he finally replied.
She gave him a questioning look, he smiled and rubbed his palm on her cheek. He touched her lips, it was soft and inviting. His head moved closer and hers, until their lips met.
___
** Mayo Clinic, Rochester, New York **
‘Damn Matvei, he’s not as efficient as you said he is,’ Chief Elvis cursed loudly into his phone. His right leg was bandaged from the top to the knee and hung on a suspender. The bullets had been removed but reports from the doctors suggested that he may never be able to use the leg anymore. The first bullet had entered into upper region of his thigh while the second one into his knee.
‘Elvis, he only arrived in Nigeria few days before you were shot, so there was no way he was going to know about that attack.’ Matvei replied in his thick Russian accent.
‘He came into Nigeria on the same day I returned from my medical leave, so that is already enough time to study the environment.’ Chief Elvis said. ‘I even gave him two people to work with.’
‘Is it up to two weeks already?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Okay, what instructions did you give to Rex?’ Matvei asked.
‘What kind of question is that? I asked him to go after Samantha Osman.’ Chief Elvis replied.
‘That’s all you did?’
‘Yes, isn’t that’s why I requested for him to come to Nigeria?’
Matvei gave a short laugh, ‘ I’m very sure he’s doing his job well. Rex is one of the best assasins in the world now.’
‘What do you mean by that? If he really good as you say and he is going after her, then she couldn’t have still tried to ki*ll me.’
Matvei laughed again, ‘You fool, you asked him to go after her and he’s doing that. He does only what he’s asked to do, I’m sure he’ll get and ki*ll her soon. Nothing concerns him with you.’
‘Nothing concerns him with me?’ Chief Elvis asked in surprise.
‘Stop being a dummy man,’ Matvei said mockingly. ‘You didn’t ask him to protect you, so he has no business whether you’re dead or alive, all he’s going to be doing is going after that Samantha.’
‘What? So you mean I have to ask him to protect me specially.’
‘That’s another job entirely, he can do that if you ask him to. But remember, Rex is an assasin, a killing machine and not a bodyguard.’
Chief Elvis heaved a sigh of frustration, he was tired of the pain and torment. He had returned to Nigeria after his medical leave when boldness and confidence because of Rex’s arrival into the country on that same day. And his boldness had increased after he also spoke to Rex and gave him the vision, he had been inspired by Rex’s firmness and fearful look.
_____
‘I hope Chief Elvis is safe,’ Stainless commented as they drove in the Hyundai sonata. He was driving and was seated at the front with Don while Rex who had been working as their boss for more than a week was seated at the back.
Rex was a man of very few words, that was if he could even be qualified as a man; he talked like a robot with calculated words and made them brief always.
However, he had a very handsome and innocent face when he smiled but it becomes scary whenever he was giving an instruction or communicating something serious. He had a fairly dark skin like that of a black American, coiling hair and neatly carved moustache, only his Russian-like accent would make one know he wasn’t an American or he didn’t live in America, one couldn’t really tell where he was from. He was way younger than both Don and Stainless but he seemed not to consider that as he ordered both of them around like small boys.
For him, Don and Stainless had been almost useless for his mission since the Chief introduced them to him. He was supposed to be given a month to learn about his new environment and strategize, but with them, he told the Chief two weeks would be enough. But contrary to his expectations which had been raised by Chief Elvis when they were being introduced to him as leaders of two of the top most assassins gang in the nation, he found them ineffective. Most of the technical things he needed to know about the environment were discovered by himself, the only things they were able to provide him with were the names of the places and the routes to take in and out of them which he considered useless as the electronic maps on his devices could provide him the same information. The only thing that made them useful to him was their hostage, Benny. Rex was the one who mixed the solution they injected into Benny’s body before he revealed Tarasha’s locations to them.
‘Boss, have you gotten any other information from the Chief since he left?’ Don asked, turning to Rex at the back seat.
‘No,’ Rex replied briefly. To him, the welfare of the Chief didn’t matter, all he wanted to do was finish off the lady assassin whose real name he had been said to be Tarasha but was popularly known as Samantha Osman.
‘We are few metres close to the place,’ Stainless announced and pulled over to a space at the left hand side which was supposed to be for vehicles returning.
‘So, here is Gwagalada?’ Rex asked in his thick bass voice.
‘Yes,’ Stainless replied. ‘That’s the gate,’ he added, pointing to a gate some distance away at the other side.
‘Keep driving,’ Rex ordered. He picked out a device and held the both sides in his two hands.
Stainless returned to the other lane and kept driving towards the gate, they drove past few metres away without any instruction from Rex.
After they drove close to a bush was when Rex instructed for them to drive back. Stainless reversed the car.
‘There are no cameras watching outside that house,’ Rex said. ‘But we need to find out how the place looks behind the gate. We’ll wait around till night time.’
______
2pm
Tara and Henry ate silently, stealing glances at each other’s faces. For Tara, it was the first time she was on a date with someone she wasn’t planning to extract any information from or ki*ll, it was the first date she agreed to without having any plan. This was different from the first time she had lunch with Henry at Elymax hotel, then she did it to extract information about the NSCC from him. This time, she didn’t know why she did it exactly, she just knew she couldn’t reject.
The kiss she had shared with him earlier that day was the worst she ever had, it was short and unexciting but it still kept her longing for more. Henry was a bad kisser, she concluded. The first time she kissed him, she was trying to cover up her act in her attempt to extract an information from his laptop and get him to follow her Chief Jubril’s party, this time, she couldn’t tell the reason for it, all she knew was that Henry was bad in the act.
Henry ate in silence but his heart was filled with thoughts and questions. He wasn’t of the school of thought which proposed love as blind but he began to consider the thought to be accurate now. This was he in love with an assassin, he who believed in the sanctity of human lives was madly in love with one who killed without thinking.
His kiss with her in the morning had been the worst kiss he ever had, even the first one at the NSCC’s house was better, he considered her a very bad kisser. He didn’t mean for the kiss to happen but it did anyway, he wasn’t even planning to touch her or have any romantic activity with her. All he wanted was to see her change and see her express real happiness which he hoped he could help her find.
He had gone to church with Jefa after Tarasha had refused to come with them but he ensured she didn’t refuse to go out for lunch with him.
They finished the meal eventually and there was no excuse for the silence anymore, Henry had to take the bull by the horns.
‘Omotara,’ he called softly, looking into her eyes. She stared back at him expressionlessly. ‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ she replied briefly.
‘Nothing? You mean there’s nothing on your mind right now?’
‘Yes, what is supposed to be on my mind?’
‘I am,’ Henry said.
‘You?’
‘We should be on your mind, I mean.’
‘We? You and who?’
‘Both of us,’ Henry said.
‘There is no ‘us’, huh?’
‘There is.’
‘Hehe,’ she chuckled, ‘look here. I could…’ she paused to look around and then placed her hands on the table and poked her head forward. She lowered her voice so that only Henry could hear. ‘I can ki*ll you at anytime,’ she said in a tone which suggested she was serious about it.
Henry was disappointed at her answer, he wondered why she had to bring killing into every of their discussion.
‘Why don’t we forget about who’s killing who right now and focus on us,’ he said.
‘There’s no us, but there’s always going to be death.’ She replied stubbornly. She knew what he was going with the conversation and was trying to avoid it.
‘Okay,’ Henry said with a smile, understanding her plot to avoid the discussion. ‘Let’s talk about us before you ki*ll me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I love you Tara,’ he said and paused to see her reaction, she didn’t make any facially. ‘I want to know if you feel the same way about me. I need to know that before you ki*ll me as you say.’
‘I don’t know what is love, so I don’t love you.’ she replied coldly.
‘So I mean nothing to you?’ he asked. ‘And what happened in the morning, you don’t see it as anything?’
‘What happened?’ she asked and paused to see his reaction. She knew what he was talking about and the truth was that it meant something to her and she was longing for more but she couldn’t bring herself to admit it.
‘IIf you’re talking about the kiss, it was horrible and it meant nothing. I’ve kissed several other men and I ended up killing them, most of them claimed that they love me just like you are doing now.’
