Tarasha 2 Chapter 8 Part 9 – Oyin Oluwatosin Emmanuel
He rushed towards her all of a sudden and tried to grab her arm but she bent down, dodging him as she stabbed his thigh. She turned to his back and stabbed him again on the waist. She was about to make a third stab on his other thigh when the third man’s strong hands grabbed her from behind and turned her towards himself. He landed her a heavy blow which made her stagger backwards. He followed her and grabbed the hand in which she had the knife, he tried to take it from her but she held it tight in her palm, not ready to release it.
He sent her another blow on the face and she fell to the ground, the knife also fell off. Then he hurried towards her and held her two hands together in his right hand, he searched her body to check if she had more weapons on her. He pinned her hands to the ground with his after confirming that there was nothing else on her body, then he tried to drag up her gown but the struggles with her legs did not allow him succeed. He took a quick look backwards to call for support from the other injured men. The slender one who was already wounded on his shoulder and stomach was already moving towards them, he covered his bleeding belly with a palm.
‘Move!’ he said as he grabbed Omotara’s hands which was previously pinned to the floor and kept it in position with his right hand. He began to unbuckle his trousers. ‘Hold her legs for me,’ he ordered the hefty man who obeyed immediately. The slender man was still desperate to have his way with her before anyone else.
Omotara’s legs were held firmly and she could not make any more struggle except to shout which she began to do immediately, but the men looked less concerned about it , it appeared that they were confident that no one was going to respond to her no matter how loud she shouted.
Her gown was torn from the top instead of being pulled up from below. The man started for her little breasts first and his fingers found its way to the straps of her bra. He was about to cut off the straps when a kick from outside sent the door of the room down to the floor.
It was the junior queen who entered, she was with a gun in her left hand and a wooden plank in her right. She started first with the third man who was injured on the thigh and waist. The plank landed on his head and he who was already standing up landed back on the floor with a thud. The two other men were distracted and surprised at Tarasha’s act but she didn’t stop, she moved closer to them and hit the head of the slender one with the wood before sending in a bullet to his back. The other one got on his knees immediately and raised his two hands in the air to plead for mercy.
Tarasha (the queen) threw down the wood and uncocked her gun, she put the gun into her pocket hurriedly. She took a glance at Omotara and the narrowed her gaze at the girl who was already on her feet with her shredded clothes on her body. She turned her face back to the third man who still had his knees on the ground and his hands in the air, ‘Tell Tom I’ll come for him.’ she said to the man and turned back to Omotara. ‘Let’s go,’ she stated briefly and turned, she proceeded towards the door without wasting time. She stopped at the entrance and turned when she noticed that the teenager wasn’t following her, she narrowed her look at the girl and noticed the fear in her eyes. ‘Come, you’ve scaled past death.’ she said with a reassuring tone and stretched her palms forth widely to receive the girl.
Omotara moved with slow steps towards the queen still trying to cover her body with her torn clothes. She placed her palm in the opened palm of the queen and the queen squeezed her hand softly and gave a smile. She took off the torn clothes from the teenager’s body, leaving only the bra and pant.
‘Let’s go,’ she said as she held Omotara’s palm in hers and began to lead her away hurriedly.
The fear in Omotara’s heart disappeared as she followed the queen. She placed her gaze on the queen’s face and then searched around her body, she noticed the queen now had a very small carton in her back pocket, she concluded in her mind that the carton was what the queen took from the man who she went away with while sending her to be molested by the three men. It wasn’t Omotara’s first time of seeing girls being sentenced to death in that same manner in the Nefary City or being punished by having to go several rounds with a sex starved Lord, she had once being a victim of the latter. She knew the pain in it and couldn’t imagine how it would be when it was a sentence to death.
She ignored the coldness of the ground against her bare feet as they hurried past the large main walking hall, she also ignored the men’s stare which was much more now that she was only on pant and bra.
____________________
**Present**
The picture of the junior queen slowly faded off her mind and was immediately replaced by hers. She saw herself in that building where she had gone to rescue Cole and Aisha, she could hear the scream of the girl clearly again. She saw herself hurry through the corridor and into the room where the cultist was trying to molest Stephanie. How she rescued Stephanie played in her mind again just like the junior queen rescued her from the men, then she remembered how she looked at the queen again without trust in her eyes, it was the same way Stephanie looked at her several years after.
A sharp pain in her bum brought her out of the realm of memories. Her eyes opened and she found herself laying on her side in a bed. Her vision was still blur at that moment but she noticed two men standing and discussing something some metres in front of her. She turned back to look at the face of the lady who had just taken the syringe needle out of her bum.
‘You have to stay calm and let me attend to you,’ the nurse said to her with a frown. ‘Thank God you’re awake now, I’ve given you drugs to calm you but you wouldn’t just stay calm, maybe you can control yourself now that you can hear me.’
‘Is she awake?’ Tarasha heard a male’s voice ask, it sounded so much like Henry’s. She turned to look at the person and confirmed he was the one. There was joy in her heart on seeing him alive again and she also still alive. She still remembered how she was captured but had totally forgotten how she was rescued.
‘Yes, she is.’ the nurse who had walked away with a tray replied in a muffled voice.
Tarasha noticed she still had only her briefs on but a towel was now wrapped around her body. She tried to sit up as she saw Henry walking excitedly towards her but she only made a groan and couldn’t muster enough strength to sit.
‘Omotara, you’re awake.’ Henry said, beaming with smiles as he took her palms in his. ‘I’ve been so worried about you.’
Tarasha tried to put on a smile but she couldn’t tell if what she did was a smile or a frown., she was too weak to even control the movement of her facial muscles.
‘It’s not time for that,’ the nurse warned as she walked back to the bed with the tray in her hands. Two fresh ampoules, a syringe, a roll of bandage, two small scissors of different sizes and a nylon of cotton wool were in the tray.
Henry stepped back some distance from the bed and folded his arms as he watched with a smiling face, Cole stood behind him with his arms also folded but with an expressionless face.
Tarasha looked away from their faces to the surrounding, she felt a bit alarmed as she observed that they were in the medical lab in her facility.
‘Please lay down properly,’ the nurse said to Tarasha.
–15 minutes later —
‘For how long will Omotara keep sleeping? ‘ Henry asked aloud as he and Cole walked down a corridor.
‘You’re not supposed to direct that question to me,’ Cole replied blankly. ‘Tomi is doing all to make her sleep so that the medications can work, you should be glad she fell asleep again.’
‘Well, I’m just anxious to see her well again.’ Henry said.
They continued until they got to the control room. Henry opened the door and allowed Cole walk in first before closing the door. Cole proceeded straight to the control system, he took off his shirt and stared a minute at the already dressed wound on his back before sitting.
‘I just have this feeling that someone is coming after us right now,’ Cole said as he tapped the space bar on the keyboard and the desktop screen came on.
Henry glanced at his face with a worried look, ‘Who do you think is after us? That guy Rex?’
‘I don’t know; I think Rex finished his work after delivering the boss to the Vice President and Inspector General.’ Cole answered as he began to type on the keyboard.
‘What if he works for them full time?’
‘I don’t think he’s a kind of assassin that’ll work full time for anyone, he works on contract basis just like Tarasha. ‘ Cole said.
Henry heaved a deep sigh and stared at the ground thoughtfully for some seconds, he raised his head up to meet Cole staring at him.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Cole asked.
Henry took another deep breath and licked his lower lip briefly, ‘I just hope after recovering now, Omotara would make the decision to stop this assassination job.’
Cole chuckled mockingly, ‘Why should she make such a stupid decision?’ he asked, staring at Henry like he was looking at a kid.
‘What’s stupid about it?’ Henry countered with a serious look on his face. ‘I think it’s the wise thing to do, she almost got killed by those evil men, don’t you think it’s better for her, for all of us to just seek a peaceful life henceforth.’
Cole glanced at his face and then laughed. ‘Do you think we can ever live a peaceful life? Those men, do you think they’ll ever stop trying to ki*ll the boss?’
‘I don’t know about them or what they’ll do but we could just run off to somewhere they can’t find us and start a new life there,’ Henry said.
A phone on the table rang and distracted them. Both stared at the phone for a while and then glanced at each other. It was Tarasha’s phone ringing. It stopped ringing and Cole picked it up to check the caller’s ID. The phone began to ring again, the caller was Chief Gab. Cole answered the call and placed it on his ear without speaking.
‘What’s the matter with you Tarasha?’ I’ve been waiting here for you since, you refused to answer my several calls or even send a message to explain yourself.’ the man complained.
Cole took the phone off his ear, he minimized the dialer and rolled down the notification bar to confirm the man’s claim to have called severally. He placed the phone back to his ear after he saw seven missed calls in the notification, the calls must have been when they left the control room to check on Tarasha.
‘Tarasha…’ the man was saying as he didn’t get any response.
‘I’m sorry Chief, the boss is not in position to speak with you now.’ Cole spoke.
‘Who… who are you?’ Chief Gab stammered.
‘She’s my boss, I’ll tell her about your call as soon as she’s able to attend to it.’
‘Hey! Tell her I’m expecting her here right now,’ the man said angrily.
‘I will do that when I’m able to…’
‘Please get to her wherever she is right away and deliver my message,’ the man slammed.
‘I’m sorry she can’t get your message right now, but I’ll deliver it as soon as possible.’
‘You must be joking right, you don’t know who I am.’ Chief Gab said in a threatening tone.
‘I know who you are but there’s nothing I can do right now,’ Cole replied.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, just tell her I give her thirty minutes to get here.’ he said and ended the call.
Cole shrugged and hissed as he dropped the phone on the table. He turned back to the system and continued with his work but Henry who was eager to get the details of the call grabbed his hand on the mouse.
‘Who was that?’ he asked in soft tones.
‘That’s Chief, the man who Tarasha works for.’ Cole replied without stopping his work.
‘What does he want?’
‘He wants to speak with her right away, I think she scheduled a meeting with him today.’
‘Oh! Why can’t you tell him what has happened, maybe he could help us to get somewhere safer.’
‘No, I can’t…’ Cole began but stopped briefly to think. ‘I can’t, not right now.’ he said, shaking his head.
_____
Dave typed in the address of the house again into the dialog box, he clicked ‘SEND’ and waited as it began to process. He looked out through the window to the gate again and the buildings nearby. He had been there for close to two hours and had not seen anyone going in or coming out of the place. He made enquires from the neighbors around and learnt that the place was occupied by a group of young people whom no one in the street knew anything about, they only see their cars drive in and out of the place. The people also told Dave that a car had entered into the place that day and left again but had not been seen entering there again after that. He also learnt that a man and a lady was seen hours ago walking into the place. All his efforts to confirm what the neighbours said proved abortive as he couldn’t retrieve from the NSCC Database any footage recorded at the time he calculated. The footages available were the ones recorded the last night and fifteen minutes before he got there. It only meant two things; either the cameras were made to stop work between that time or someone who had access to the database deleted the footages. The latter had a higher possibility of occuring.
He tapped the power button of his tablet device and the screen came on again. The processing had ended and the details he requested for were gradually loading. On the first page of the tab that popped up showed the picture of the gate of the building he was staring at, just the same way it was in real life. He scrolled to the next page and a half view of the gate and fence was shown together with the neighboring building at the left, he scrolled to the third and the other half of the gate was shown. On the fourth to the ninth page were shown different views of the top plan and roof of the building behind the fence. Dave paused to check the loading progress of the window and saw it as ninety seven percent, the displayed tab already had a hundred and twenty one pages. Dave knew at one that there was something fishy about the facility. There was no way a hundred and twenty one pages of a private owned facility would be documented in the Ministry of Housing database from which he was checking. Even government owned facilities do not occupy more than thirty pages in their documentation. He knew someone must have hacked into the system and made a dummy documentation or tampered with the original.
He scrolled back to the top and searched for the ‘find’ icon at the top bar of the app. He clicked on the icon and the keyboard popped up, he typed in the word ‘owner’ and searched. Only one result was found in the document, he clicked the result to navigate to the page where it was. It was the second to the last page of the document. The details he needed read below;
‘ Owner Of Facility : Unknown
Type of Facility : Residential
Description : Unknown
Signed by: Amodu Shehu
Minister of Housing ‘
The details confirmed to him that the documentation was not done by the Ministry of Housing, there was no way they would document a facility with an unknown owner.
He was sure Samantha Osman was the owner of the facility but how to get inside the place was his challenge. He needed to find a way to get in without raising suspicion. It wasn’t something he could rush into, it needed more planning. He pushed the start button on his car and drove off, he was going to return after planning well.
______
‘I saw this car at that gate where you came out carrying her on your shoulder,’ Henry said with his voice full of conviction as he and Cole both stared at the screen of the computer. Agent Dave’s car was seen in the video driving down the road away from their building, Cole switched the cameras in view to keep monitoring the car as it sped off.
‘I didn’t notice anything then,’ Cole replied him. ‘But we have to see where he’s heading for.’
‘Do you think it can be Rex?’ Henry asked in a shaky voice.
Cole smiled as he could sense the fear in Henry’s voice, ‘I don’t think so, if the car was really staying there for us, it must be that guy that helped me and later shot the tracker into my back.’
‘But don’t you think that unknown helper could be Rex?’
‘No, he can’t be Rex. The Inspector General was waiting for him to come and pick Tarasha and he couldn’t have gone against them after working so hard to make things work for them.’
‘So then who can that guy be and why did he help us?’
‘I can’t say,’ Cole said. He turned to look at the other computer systems on the table, ‘I think you should boot another computer and let’s check with that how long that car has been outside.’
‘Okay,’ Henry got up and searched around with his eyes for the computer that would be convenient for him to use.
_______
–Thirty five minutes later–
** The NIS Underground Office**
Dave hurried down the stairs into the corridor, the walls by the side and the doors were made of transparent glasses, that made it possible for him to see the other NIS officials as they worked in their offices which was usually shared by four to six people. He waved at some people and greeted some verbally as he walked to the exit, the place was now busy with activities unlike earlier in the day when he was there with Dan and Lizzy.
He almost collided into Lizzy as he exited the corridor into another block. ‘Hey… Easy!’ Lizzy cautioned, staring at him like he had just fallen from the sky.
‘Lizzy,’ Dave tried to put on a smile. ‘I was coming to meet you.’
‘I know, I was waiting for you.’
‘Then let’s go straight away,’ Dave said and Lizzy turned with him. Both of them began to walk to the dressing room.
‘What happened to all I did this morning?’ Lizzy asked as they walked on.
‘What’s that?’ Dave asked, pretending not to know what she was talking about. He stared at her for a while and noticed that she had changed into something different from what she had on that morning. She was now properly dressed in a corporate outfit since it was time for the office job unlike the cleavage and thighs revealing outfit she wore before.
‘I dressed you up with a bandage on your head and one on your hand, what happened to them?’
‘Well, it’s a long story.’ Dave said and paused as they got to the door of the dressing room. She slid in a card and the door gave way. ‘I’ don’t have much time to explain right now.’
‘So you mean you have a long story to tell already, it’s not up to ten hours yet.’ she said as she locked the door.
‘Let’s just forget that now, I want you to fix something different for me now.’ David said.
‘And what difference do you want?’ she asked as she took off the line the piece of cloth to be hung down his neck to cover his chest.
‘I want something removable and durable,’ he replied.
‘You must be joking if you believe you’re going to get that within the same period of period we did the morning dress.’
‘When can I get it then?’
‘You can’t even get it today, it can only be tomorrow evening or the day after tomorrow.’ she said, facing the mirror and rubbing a spot on her face.
‘What?’ David shone his eyes. His eyes met with Lizzy’s in the mirror.
‘Yea, you can however order for a ready made one if you need it urgently.’
‘Come on Lizzy, just help me do this.’ he pleaded.
‘I’m trying to help you, you know I also have my work to do. It can only be ready by that time, I’m telling the truth.’
‘Okay then, let’s have you repeat something quick like the one you did this morning but it should be totally different. Maybe I have to take off my shirt, so you’ll fix the wound around my belly instead.’
‘Yes of course, you dare not put the bandage on your head anymore,’ Lizzy began, she turned and rested her bum on the drawer, she folded her arms and looked directly into his eyes. ‘The whole country is already on the lookout for the man with the bandage on his head who attacked and killed several officers this morning and also left the Inspector General seriously wounded.’
Lizzy’s word hit Dave hard. It meant that the news of what happened that morning was all over the city already and he was seen by somebody who reported. Lizzy was sure he was the one.
