Chapter summary
Tobe discovers an unknown Windows login exposed her secret leads, then begins identifying possible saboteurs.
TOBECHUKWU
Monday night Her eyes puffy from crying, she looked a shadow of herself.
The vulcaniser in Ikeja had pumped both front tyres and shaken his head over the damage. “Madam, somebody did this one with a nail. One for each tyre. Somebody wants you to suffer small.” He charged her four thousand naira for the lesson. She paid without arguing and drove home to Yaba at the speed of a funeral procession.
Now she sat at the little table in her one-bedroom flat with her phone in her hand, and the phone rang. It was Mama, calling from Enugu. Tobe let it ring twice before she cleaned her face with the back of her hand and answered in her best office voice.
“Nne, how was work?”
“Work was fine, Mama.”
“Your brother’s school fees. The bursar sent another letter.”
“I will send it before the end of the week, Mama. Don’t worry.”
She was the first of five. Her father’s pension from the civil service came late when it came, and the whole family had long ago agreed, without ever saying it, that Tobe was the one who would rescue everybody. Rescue did not come with a month of suspension without pay. She ended the call with a cheerful goodnight, then put the phone face down and cried again for exactly one minute.
Then she did what she did best. She got to work on the numbers.
The joke had never left her phone. She had written it last
Saturday in the notes app, the way she wrote everything funny and dangerous, and nobody on earth had seen it. Nobody. Yet it had landed in Mr. Briggs’ inbox, under her own name, at 11:52 on
Sunday night.
She opened her account security page and began to scroll through the sign-in history. Her thumb stopped halfway down the screen.
New sign-in. Windows computer. Lagos. Sunday, 11:49 p.m.
She had never owned a Windows computer in her life.
At 11:47 she had sent her deck to Mr. Briggs. At 11:49 a stranger had walked into her account. At 11:52 her career had walked out of it. Three minutes had been enough for whoever it was to find the joke, copy it, and send it. She had not been hacked in a hurry. Somebody had known exactly where to look.
A cold feeling crept up her back as she scrolled further through her notes. There it was, below the joke and the shopping lists. A note she had titled Sunshine List, because every name on it had been given to her in bed, by the man who loved her. Leads. Whispered deal names. Which executive was about to sign, and which company was about to be sold. Six straight months of her best kept secret, typed in neat bullet points.
If the stranger had read the joke, he had read this too. And if he had read this, then the joke was only the bait.
She called him. She called the number he had begged her never to call during working hours, then the private line, then the first number again.
“The number you have called is switched off.”
Tobe put the phone down slowly.
She pulled an old envelope from her bag, turned it over, and made a list the way she made all her lists, with the most likely culprit at the top.
Madame Angelina’s personal assistant, Bisola, who had held a smile for a little too long in the elevator last week, and who had asked Tobe, sweetly, what she did on weekends. Mr. Briggs himself, who had never forgiven a woman for outselling his nephew. Kunle from the Abuja office, who had been passed over for her promotion.
She chewed the end of the pen, thinking about Mr. Briggs, and then crossed his name out. The man needed his secretary to print an email. He could not have walked into a cloud account on a
Sunday night to save his life. She drew two lines under Bisola.
Somebody had been inside her phone for more than a week.
And for the first time since the carpeted floor of Mr. Briggs’ office, Tobe stopped crying.
Loose Ends · Continue reading
Continue to Chapter 12
The story continues in the next chapter.
What stayed with you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
The featured photograph is used under the Pexels licence. Contextual scene illustrations are original editorial artwork created for this serial; the characters and events are fictional. Featured photograph source. Editorial design by akinakingbogun.com.
Discover more from Akin Akingbogun
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.