Tarasha - Season 6 - Episode 18

Episode 4 years ago

Tarasha - Season 6 - Episode 18

After ten more minutes, she was through with what she came for and decided to check her email which she hadn’t checked for hours. She saw several new messages which were mostly notifications from her blog posts but her eyes caught a different one as she scrolled. It was a reply from the Vice President. She clicked on it and it loaded in two seconds.


Hey Samantha, what do you really want from me. I’m ready to give anything for you to stop releasing those videos.
She read through the message more than thrice and took sometime to ponder on what his message could really mean. There was actually no options of being stopped from posting some of the videos as she already had them scheduled and they were going to post automatically except she changes her mind and decide to stop them from posting before the scheduled time and date. She clicked on reply and typed a short message.
‘I want your life,’ she sent as her reply.
……………………….

…………………………..

‘Can we see and make a deal? You’ve taken almost everything I have already,’ Tarasha was yet to get up from the computer when she got a reply.
‘No deals,’ she typed briefly and replied. She closed the browser immediately and shut down the computer. She returned into the room where the hostage was kept.
Mr Matthew looked up on perceiving her entrance, he saw her walk to the window and place her phone upright by the window frame with the back of the phone turned to face the centre of the room. She walked hurriedly towards him and he looked at her with confused eyes, not knowing what to expect.
She got to his front and landed a heavy blow on his face making him almost fall but for the ropes holding his body to the chair.
‘Tell me who you are and who Patricia is,’ she said harshly as she dragged his face up with his chin.
He stared at her fearfully, his lips were hurting badly.
‘I swear, I’m her father, she’s my first daughter…’
She didn’t allow him finish talking before punching him in the face again with her right fist. ‘I’m not here to joke man,’ she said and punch him again with her left and then placed her foot on the brace of the chair to prevent it from falling. She held his chin up and stared into his face, ‘You were not on duty at that place the day before yesterday, where were you?’
The man narrowed his gaze. He was feeling pains in his mouth and his teeth gums already. He didn’t know what answer to give to her question.
‘On what road were you on duty before yesterday?’ she repeated her question in a different way.
Mr Matthew forced out a breath, he knew it wouldn’t make sense to claim he was in another location, she could check the NSCC footages and prove him wrong.
‘I haven’t been on road duty for more than a month now, I only resumed yesterday.’ He replied.
She stared thinly into his eyes. ‘On what duty have you been on?’
‘I’ve been occupied with jobs from the office in the last two months.’
‘And what office have you been working?’
‘The FRSC station in Ikeja,’ he stuttered.
‘There are no records of you entering or leaving that station for the past one week,’ she lied, making it seem as if she had gone through the records already.
He stared at her face, confused. ‘That’s not true, I…’


Another heavy blow landed on his face and she allowed him fall to the ground this time. She pulled up the chair without wasting time and sent more punches to the face and his belly until the chair fell again. She dragged him up again and moved him to the corner behind placing the back of the chair against the wall. She continued punching him in the belly until he began to cough and fell to the side.
‘I’ll.. tell you everything…’ he stammered, coughing vigorously.
She pulled his chair up again and stared at his face for a moment, giving him sometime to stop coughing vigorously.
He shook his head and sniffed in. He could see drops of blood already rolling down from his nose but could not touch his face as his hands were still tied to the wooden chair which was now making creaking sounds due to the several times of falling to the ground.
He raised his head slightly and looked at her face. He was surprised to still see her looking calm and unruffled unlike someone who had been thrashing him.
‘Patricia…’ he paused again to take in a breath. ‘She’s my daughter and my only daughter,’ he insisted.
She stared at his face and he stared back without blinking. She was surprised at his confidence and insistence.
He kept his gaze on her, he knew she did not have any certain information yet and was only trying to force him speak. It wasn’t his first time of acting as Lizzy’s father and confidently insisting when he was questioned, the people who asked him always got the same information from the citizens’ directory. This case was just quite different. She didn’t seem to believe even after confirming she had checked his profile on the citizen’s directory.
She bent her knees and placed her hands on her laps. She looked straight into his eyes, ‘You’re going to lead us to her.’
He shook his head slowly and voiced out with a breath. ‘No, I would never do that. You can kill me if you want.’
She got up back to her feet and took a step backward. He had given her the exact reply she expected that her real father would give.
Mr Matthew kept his gaze on his face, his heart beating fast. It was his first time of receving so much pain during his work for Lizzy but he didn’t want to give up easily, he knew it could cause the total failure of Lizzy’s job.


‘You’re a fool!’ she cursed and followed with a kick to the man’s chest. She followed up with several blows on his face and chest until the man fell to the ground again. She picked him up with the chair and looked at his face, it was already disfigured just like she wanted it.

She held him by the neck and dragged him along with the tied chair to the window where she kept the phone. She put him in front of the window and turned to his back, she held his face up and made him face the phone for some seconds before releasing him. She picked up the phone and saved the video.
Mr Matthew kept staring at her and breathing heavily, he realized she had been recording a video all the while she was thrashing him.
She took a glance at him again before proceeding out of the room. He stared at the door for a while and consciously tried to balance his breathing. He spat out and looked down to see his saliva mixed with blood.
*
‘Where’s that phone you dedicated to Patricia?’ Tarasha asked as she entered Cole’s room after knocking and getting his permission to enter. He was laying in the bed with his shirt taken off, making the white bandage all around his body visible.
He tried to get up from the bed but she signalled to him not to. ‘Just tell me where it is,’ she said.


‘It’s on the table, there’s a password on it – 5673.’ he said, pointing to the table standing close to the left corner of the room.
She walked to the table and picked up the phone. She inputted the password and it was unlocked. She opened the Xender application on the phone and also on her phone and she transferred the video she had just recorded into Cole’s phone.
‘What video editors do you have on this phone?’ she asked him.
‘I have a couple of free video editing apps on it, I haven’t tested them yet because I use my other phone more often.’ Cole replied.


She dragged a seat from under the table and sat on it. She searched on Cole’s phone and s could not find any suitable application. She opened the video on her own phone with a video editor. It took some minutes to do some editing which was mainly covering her face with a smiley and tweaking her voice. She saved the edited video and then located it in the file manager where she selected and sent again into Cole’s phone through the Xender application. Then she forwarded the edited video from Cole’s phone to Patricia’s number on WhatsApp.
‘We’ve got your father with us, do you need him dead or alive?’ she typed and sent after the video had finished uploading and delivered.
____

Rex read through Tarasha’s message once again before clicking on reply.
‘Come get me if you want me dead, that’s if you are not scared to face me and take my life with your hands like you did to the others.’ he typed his reply and proofread before sending.

His eyes moved again to his phone which was on the table, the Vice President was calling again. The man had been the one who called and told him that Samantha had replied the mail and also begged him again to act fast.
He picked up the phone and answered the call. ‘Hey man!’
‘Rex, I’ve made the arrangements just like you want.’
‘Good, Thursday is close anyway but I’d get to her before then hopefully.’
____

Lizzy had just finished taking her dinner when she entered into her bedroom. She picked her bag which was placed at the edge of the bed and began to take out some of the things she went out with earlier that day that she wouldn’t need the next day. She took out her three phones and placed them on the bed. She noticed the green blinking light close to the sensor on one of the phones, it meant she had new notifications. She sat on the bed and picked the phone hoping the notification wasn’t one for a message from the network providers, she unlocked it and swiped down the notification bar. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw the message from Victor. There was a video and some texts also included.
She clicked on the message and opened it. She read the text first but she couldn’t understand immediately because of the tension in her heart, she clicked on the video and patiently waited for it to download. She then clicked on play. The video started playing and she watched how a lady with her face covered with a smiley beat up Mr Matthew and displayed his battered face for her to see. She took in a deep breath, she now understood the text which followed after the video. They must have investigated and found her to be the only daughter of Mr Matthew. She knew they checked the citizens’ directory to confirm. She had edited Mr Matthew’s profile in the citizens directory a long time ago, since the day he first acted as her father. She hid his real details and family information because she knew it was possible for any of the culprits she was investigating to try find details about the man, so the citizens’ directory had had her recorded as the only daughter of the man for a long time, the only detail she had changed the day before was his occupation to a road safety official.