ETCHED XIII

Hmmmm... So some people have been making me feel bad for a while now(they know themselves 😂😁)...I'll write the sequel(s) to the Be Brave Sweet Sister no wae... I promise!... It's just that Etched has held me hostage and I can't write anything else until it's done 😄

Yesterday's chapter is here.... And now we present to you Today's chapter...Happy Reading!!!! 😘

  Chapter 13

**Fifteen Years Ago**

 "Mom... Dad is late... again," seventeen year old Phyll Dwomoh whined.
"I know... I'm sorry honey but your dad had to work tonight " his mother, Mrs Lucy Dwomoh replied.
"we'll have to eat without him... Go call your brother to come to the table," she added.

So at exactly 7 o'clock pm, the mother and her two sons sat down to eat their supper without their patriarch.
  Mr. Francis Dwomoh was a reporter for the Daily Bugle.  He was very much respected and well-paid in the early nineties when newspapers were very much in vogue and relevant. But with the emergence of a myriad of TV stations and radio hubs in the early 2000's , the newspaper business was gradually becoming a dying breed.

Less and less people bought papers to read their news. With the newspapers receiving low patronage, printhouses ran at a loss and jobs had to be cut and employees laid off and that was what had happened to Mr.Francis Dwomoh . The Daily Bugle cut him lose and that's when an acquaintance had helped him get a job as a security guard at Newman Corporation.

He was the day guard but sometimes when the opportunity presented itself, he worked the night-shift too to earn extra cash. He had not gathered up the requisite courage to tell his children that he had being fired from his job. His wife knew though and always covered for him when he couldn't make it home for the family's tradition of eating supper together.

 He always felt terrible when he couldn't make it and tonight was no different. He eagerly desired for the shift to be over  so he could go home at 4.50 in the morning.  The other guard he run tonight's shift with, Kumi, had sought for permission to visit the loo almost four hours ago and was still not back.

He wondered what was keeping him. He had called him over the radio the first two hours and Kumi had responded but now, he only received static white noise when he radioed him. He didn't worry though, Kumi was wont to pull stunts like this at times.  He was a young man of twenty-four and was a chronic womaniser.

Sometimes he invited some of his lovers to the premise so they could play with each other's bodies. Mr. Francis had exhorted him on multiple occasions but, "these young people, " he thought "never listenend "
 The night shift wasn't really difficult, all the guards ever did was sit in the chairs at the security room and intermittently walk around the inside of the building every thirty minutes.

Mr. Dwomoh was moving around the building for his last rounds when something odd struck him. It was the light in the CEO's office, they were on. That was odd because nobody was suppose to be in the building at that hour. He had wanted to believe that it was Kumi in there engaging in one of his questionable life choices but a voice inside his head counseled him to find a vantage point and hide.

He heeded the voice and found a safe hiding spot where he had a partial view of the perpetrator in the office. He heard the whirl sound of a drill and the rustling of some papers and some files. A creak from a safe being closed and noise from chairs being neatly arranged to hide evidence of foul play also creeped to his ear. He heard a giant thud on the floor and that's when his eyes faced the horror  of kumi's  corpse !

The perpetrator picked the body up with grunts and sighs and stuffed it in the closet in the office, put some files in a black duffle -bag and quietly tip-toed out of the office with the same dexterity a cat used to stalk a mouse.

 It was when the perpetrator came out the office that Mr Dwomoh saw his face and identified him as Fiifi Blankson, the eldest son of Mr. Adusei Blankson, Chief Operations officer of Newman corporation. Mr Dwomoh took out his cell phone and took a flashless photo of Fiifi.

"what is going on here?" ,"when and how had Fiifi entered the building without them noticing? " thoughts that were currently establishing dominance in his mind. He followed Fiifi when he had descended the stairs to the lobby and all the way to the parking lot where he got into a black Toyota Camry and turned on the ignition to drive away.

With adrenaline pumping through his varicose veins and his journalistic instincts firing off, Mr Francis Dwomoh, father of two...husband... Reporter-turned-Security guard-now-elated-about-the-possibility-that-he-had-stumbled-on-a-juicy-story, entered his old yellow fiat and tailed Fiifi to whatever destination he was bound for.

The joy and confusion he felt clouded the better part of his judgement  for he had not considered fully the gravity of the situation he was currently indulged in, nor had he assessed the danger he was exposing himself to...for under an overpass somewhere in that part of the dawn, Fiifi was going to meet up with a wickedly dangerous man.

                ***The Present***

"Oh God!... Oh my God! " Phyll cried out as he run along the stretcher they were wheeling Eloise into the ICU with. The medical professionals attending to her yelled vital statistics at each other but Phyll hardly heard anything  for his tears blinded his eyes as well as his sense of sound.

Eloise was wheeled into the ICU and Phyll was made to stand outside by a scrawny-looking but very determined nurse. The phone in his pocket vibrated and he answered it without paying any much attention to the caller ID to tell whoever was calling that it was not a very good time.
The voice at the other end of the call stunned him into silence when he mentioned his full name.

"Philip Francis Dwomoh, "the voice had oozed through the phone.

"yes...speaking... Who is this please? "

"Let's just say I'm a friend who is going to re-educate you on all the things about your father's death you thought you knew" the voice replied.

"What?...you're not making much sense Sir"

"Well... What if I told you that someone very close to you murdered your father that night as well his colleague Kumi and later made it look like both were involved in an accident? "

A sudden deep silence creeped into the hospital as Phyll processed the life-altering piece of information he had received....(to be continued)

Ps: Don't keep 333...share and leave a comment 😁💪👀