CHAPTER EIGHT: THE MAN WHO SAW IT HAPPEN

Kelechi's phone rang before we'd even left Yaba.

"Move him," he said, no hello, eyes already checking the mirror. "Tonight. Now."

He hung up and looked at me. "If someone was listening in that shop, they've already made a call. We fly to Warri tonight."

I didn't argue. There wasn't time to.

The safe house was small and plain, nothing like his mansion — a rented bungalow, no name attached to it. Inside, an old man was waiting for us. Bassey. Late sixties. A scar cutting through one eyebrow.

He looked at Kelechi for a long moment before he spoke.

"You have your mother's eyes." His voice cracked a little. "She hated that people could always tell whose son you were."

"Tell me what happened that night," Kelechi said.

Bassey sat down slowly, like the memory itself was heavy.

"I drove the second car. Chief Obiora's car. We always followed hers — he liked to know where his wife went." He rubbed his hands together, once. "Before she left that night, I saw a man go to her car. Under the bonnet. Two minutes, maybe less. I thought nothing of it. Drivers check engines."

He stopped.

"Then her brakes failed on the curve. And I understood what those two minutes had really been."

"Who was the man?" Kelechi's voice was very quiet now.

"I never saw his face. But I saw the car he stepped out of." Bassey looked at me, careful, almost sorry. "It wasn't your father's car, Miss Chukwu. Your father came *after*. He was the first car behind the crash. I watched him pull her papers out of that burning wreck with his bare hands before anyone else arrived, and hide them under his own seat before the police came."

He looked down.

"Your father didn't cause it. He's the reason any proof survived at all."

Nobody said anything for a moment. Outside, a dog barked once and went quiet.

I looked at Kelechi. He was staring at the table like it had just told him something his whole life had been built on top of a lie. Without thinking, I put my hand over his.

He didn't pull away.

"Kelechi—" I started. I didn't even know what I was going to say next. Only that I'd been holding it in since the bridge. Since the shoulder. Since counting his headlights turning onto my street.

The window shattered.

Not from a stone. From something faster.

"DOWN!" Bassey was already moving, throwing himself sideways off his chair like his body remembered a night just like this one.

Kelechi grabbed me and pulled me to the floor half a second before the second shot hit. Wood cracked above us. The lamp went out.

In the dark, his mouth was right at my ear. His arm was still around me, holding me down, holding me still.

"Stay down," he said. Calm. Steady. Like he'd said it before, in another life. "Whatever happens — stay down."

Outside, tires screamed against wet ground and then went quiet.

And somewhere in that new silence, I realized Bassey hadn't said a single word since the shooting started.

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