Ex Gratia (#1 EX TRILOGY)

Chapter 32

“Rich,” Gracefield whispered. “Rich – Rich let go off her now!” Finally, she got the courage to reach for the gun and pointed it at him. “Rich, stop it. I have never used a gun before. Don’t make me – “

“Shut up!” Rich shouted at Gracefield without looking at her. Akoma’s voice had shrunken into a tiny squeak escaping her blocked voice box. With what was left of her strength, she clawed Rich’s covered arms, and finally got hold of his right ear. Rich cried out and sank his nails harder into Akoma’s throat, making her change her mind about retaliating. “I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know,” Rich kept saying. “I don’t know. You have to believe me. Forgive me, Akoma. Please.”

“Let – me – go,” Akoma managed to say in faint squeaks. “Rich…”

Rich shook his head. “I can’t. You have to believe me. I don’t know why – “

“Rich! Stop it! Stop!” Gracefield shouted and struggled to keep her hands from trembling. She finally closed her eyes. “I will shoot.”

“I don’t know – I don’t – “, Rich whispered, but before the rest of the words could leave his mouth –

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Akoma’s heart leapt, and her ears rang with the gunfire echoing noisily in her head and scrambling her thoughts. Rich’s grip loosened slowly and she began to cough and pant for air. Her face was sprayed with blood, and right before her eyes, she saw Rich – or what was left of him – keel over with a chunk of his head blown off, two gun holes through his torso and blood spraying the floor. She turned to look at Gracefield in shock, but her terror informed her that the gunshot did not come from her. She turned to look at the door and found it opened, and someone withdrawing quickly from it. She massaged her throat and felt like the ceiling was spinning. Before she could say a word, Gracefield let out a loud squeal, and Akoma covered her ears. The gunshot and cry must have caused panic outside, because they heard people screaming and the sound of rushing footsteps.

Akoma scrambled to her feet and reached for her purse. She packed the pepper spray, headset and phone into it, and managed to crawl towards Gracefield to force the gun out of her hand. The cold metal body confirmed that it was not the gun that was fired, and she quickly returned it to her purse and rose to her feet. Gracefield hugged her left leg and wailed.

“Someone killed my husband!” she cried. “My husband is dead!”

Akoma pulled her leg out of Gracefield’s grip and staggered out of the lounge. There was a crowd outside, and when they saw her, they were terrified by the sight of blood. She coughed and staggered past the parking area through the exit. She could hear distant screams behind her that informed her that people had entered the lounge to see Rich’s body. She looked around and found nobody on the run whom she could suspect as the killer. Whoever did that must have been the standby Ender talked about. She felt she had not pulled the trigger herself because she did not have the killer instinct to do so. The last thing she felt was gratification for seeing Rich die and Gracefield widowed on her wedding day. Both were terrible things she had witnessed and she started to feel remorseful for allowing Ender to take her through all this hell just to see such horror.

What was going to happen next? Was this all there was to having a job as an ex-wife? Ender was not calling her to tell her anything. There was no notification informing her that she had received any payment, and for that she knew it was so probably because she had hesitated to kill Rich herself. There was this anticipation she could not just help having: some secret sniper somewhere to just take her down as punishment, or probably someone showing up to kidnap her from behind. She quickly took out her phone and turned on the mobile data, and then she sent Aba a text that said: ‘Find me. Please. I need your help.’ She knew her iPhone was going to be useful in the not too distant future, and so after a quick configuration, she crouched near the wall, reduced the volume of the phone and carefully hid it as well as the pepper spray under her dress. She rose and started to walk along the pavement looking for a car.

Then the feeling of being followed caught up with her. She started to trot. Footsteps were doubling behind her. She agreed not to turn around and find out who it was for fear that it could distract her from seeing any other surprise attack at her blind side, so she broke into a run, but unfortunately, she tripped and fell down hard, and accidentally bit her tongue, causing her to bleed in her mouth. She spat blood out and tried crawling away, but a pair of strong arms seized her from behind and stopped her.

“Let me go!” she managed to say, “or I will scream!” But as soon as she opened her mouth to scream, her captor gripped her throat and breathed loudly into her ear.

“Sleep. Sleep. Shush! It’s over. Just sleep,” a male voice whispered to her, and then the captor snapped his fingers over her eyes.

Whatever the man did was powerful enough to make Akoma become limp at once, and her mind went blank. It felt like her brain was shutting down, and she felt very drowsy. She tried hard to keep her eyes open, but sleep overcame her like drowning underwater, and she was sucked into pitch black unconsciousness. Every sound around her began to shrink speedily into a faint echo, and then finally she was out.