King

Chapter 9

At noon, as some of King's men are taking a nap, and no one was on guard at the back entrance, Leah took the opportunity to escape, seeing as King's men are on low alert. She managed to get out of the house and found herself inside the busy part of the village. Not knowing where she was or anyone around, she kept walking around. After some minutes of walking, she realized she was getting nowhere, and was not going to get anywhere, especially without any help. But she didn't know who to ask or how to even start. She let out a sigh of frustration and was about sitting on the ground when she turned to her right saw an MTN umbrella with a lady sitting under it. At first it didn't click when she saw the umbrella and she squinted her eyes to see clearly, maybe it was the sun or the that she was already tired of walking but whichever it was, it didn't matter to her anymore as hope seeped into her heart on realization that it was a call centre.

She quickly rushed over to the call centre and began to plead with the lady at the stand to let her call a friend, even though it was a flash. She tried to appeal to the girls feminine said, telling her that she was new to the place and was stranded and needed help. After much pleading and persuasion, the woman agreed to give her one free minute she would use to flash who she wanted to flash. Then a free call, as she would not charge for when her friend called back.

She took the phone immediately, not wanting to waste one more minute. Delay they say, can be dangerous. She couldn't call her parents and tell them what was going on because she had lied to them as to where she was going and why, so she decided not to dig another hole for herself by calling them. She also could not, or more still did not want to call Jude. Asides from the fact that she didn't want him to be disappointed in her for not being to handle something as little as a trip down to the mainland, she remembered that she had called him severally yesterday and he did not pick. She didn't want to waste her lucky card on probabilities, there was no time for guess work. With that, and the fact she didn't want this news to spread round the office and they see her as incompetent, she had already made a choice on who to call. Knowing just who to call, she quickly dialled Esther's number. After a couple of rings, Esther picks up.

"Esther please call me back, it's Leah. And it's urgent" Leah said in a rush as though there was hot food in her mouth or she was being chased. She ended the call. After some seconds, Esther called back.

"Esther" Leah said as she answered the call, with so much relief, that one would think she was just placed into a drum of ice, after spending days under the hot sun.

"yeah, it's me Leah. And I'm also on with Simi" Esther said.

"ah, thank God. You don't know how good it is to hear your voice right now" Leah said, and it was evident in her voice that she was truly happy to hear her friend's voice.

"what about me?" Simi asked, about to get into her drama mode, completely unaware of the situation Leah was in.

"you too Simi. See I don't have much time. Guys, I'm in a bit of a pickle, in fact this is worse than a pickle. I need your help".

"what happened?" Esther asked eagerly.

"I saw something I shouldn't have. Just bad place, bad timing" Leah said.

"you sound tensed, are you sure you are not on something. Or you and Jude want to use us and play some kinky hide and seek romance stuff" Simi said, already in joke mode.

"not now Simi" Esther cautioned.

"sorry. So what happened?" she asked, getting back to her seriousness.

"I was off to the mainland to meet our client, but at some point I took a wrong turn. I began to ask for directions from people on how I could get back on track to Oshodi, but it felt like I was going nowhere. Even with the directions I was getting from people, I was just driving forever. So at night, I turned into this road and my car started acting up and the head light wouldn't come on, then..." Leah was saying then she trailed off as she saw some men standing on the other side of the road looking at her.