The old bakery's quiet promise hung in the air long after they had left. The car, Ifeyinwa's sleek Lexus SUV, felt like a bubble of polished modernity in the chaotic streets of Lagos. Inside, the silence was no longer heavy with grief, but light with a sense of purpose. Dayo, in the passenger seat, looked out the window at the flashing lights and blurred faces of the city. He had spent five years running from a ghost, and now, he was hunting for one. He was not alone.
"The echoes," he said, his voice a low hum. "You really can hear them."
"It's not... hearing, exactly," Ifeyinwa explained, her hands firm on the steering wheel. She was navigating the labyrinth of Lagos Island with a confident ease that came from years of driving these roads. "It's more like a feeling. A resonance. Every place has a memory, a story. The echoes are the whispers of those stories. The bakery… it was full of a specific kind of fear. A terror that still lingered."
Dayo looked at her, a profound mixture of awe and fear in his eyes. "And the office? The Omololu office where they threatened me?"
"It will have its own story," Ifeyinwa said, her voice a promise. "And it will tell us where to look."
They drove to the heart of Victoria Island, a different world from the one they had just left. Here, the buildings were sleek and modern, their glass facades gleaming under the city lights. The Omololu Construction main office was a towering glass structure that seemed to mock the ghosts of its past. It was closed now, but the security guards at the front gate gave them a second look as they drove past. Ifeyinwa knew that this building held a different kind of echo, one of power and corruption, but it wasn't the place they were looking for. "He mentioned a dusty room," she said, her brow furrowed in concentration. "He said it was like the bakery. It must be an old office. A place they used before they got so big."
Dayo nodded. "They had a smaller office in Ikeja, close to the old airport. It was a dark, cramped place. That's where they took me. It was dusty, with boxes everywhere. They were searching for something."
The change in location, from the grand, new building to the small, old office, was a perfect example of the city's dual nature. Lagos was a place of a million stories, some of them glittering with success, and some of them dark with failure. They drove to Ikeja, a bustling hub of business and commerce, but their destination was tucked away on a side street, a small, unremarkable building that looked like it had been forgotten by time.
The old office was dark and quiet. The windows were caked with dust, and the door was locked. Ifeyinwa walked around the building, her senses heightened. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting the echoes of the place wash over her. It was a different kind of echo than the bakery's. It was a cacophony of voices, of arguments and threats, of frustrated grunts and anxious whispers. She could hear the echoes of two men, the Omololu brothers, arguing about a book, a ledger. They were angry. They were desperate. They were searching for something they had lost.
"They were here," Ifeyinwa said, her voice a low whisper. "They were looking for the book. They were arguing. One of them said, 'We'll lose everything if that book gets out.' The other said, 'We have to find it. It has to be here. We searched every box.'"
Dayo looked at her, his face pale with a mixture of fear and awe. "It's true," he said, his voice a tremor. "They were here. They were angry. They were tearing the place apart."
Ifeyinwa continued to walk around the building, her hand on the wall, her mind open to the echoes. The whispers grew louder, clearer. She heard a new voice now, a third voice. It was a woman's voice, a voice she had never heard before. She heard the woman say, "It's not here. I moved it." A flash of an image, a vision in her mind's eye: a woman, her face obscured by shadow, walking away with a small black book in her hand. The echoes of the Omololu brothers were of frustration and fury. The woman's echo was of defiance and a quiet, terrible resolve.
"The book isn't here," Ifeyinwa said, her eyes wide with a new discovery. "Someone else has it. A woman. She moved it."
Dayo's face was a mask of confusion. "A woman? I never saw a woman."
"She was a ghost," Ifeyinwa said, a new kind of certainty in her voice. "A ghost in the echoes. She's the one who took it. She's the one who hid it." She felt a new kind of echo now, an echo of a secret. The book wasn't a lost object; it was a hidden treasure, a weapon in a war she hadn't known existed. The woman had taken it, not to use against them, but to protect someone. But who?
Ifeyinwa focused on the woman's echo, trying to pull more information from the past. The whispers grew stronger. She heard the woman talking to someone, a man. She heard her say, "I'm doing this to protect him. I'll hide it where they'll never find it." A new image, a new memory: the woman was in a small room, filled with stacks of old books. She was holding a small black ledger. She was talking to a man. He was older, with a kind face. "This is a secret," she said. "You must never tell anyone." The man nodded, his face etched with worry. The woman, with a final, determined gesture, placed the book inside an old, hollowed-out globe.
Ifeyinwa opened her eyes. She knew where the book was. She also knew who had taken it. The echoes had given her the answer. The woman was the wife of the man who had been killed, the man Nonso's brother had run over. The woman had taken the ledger to protect her husband. The man she had been talking to was her son. He was a witness. He was a key to the truth. She also heard a new echo, a new voice. A voice of a man, an investigator, an old man who had been looking for something for a long time. The echo told her that he had been asking about the Omololus. He had been asking about the death of a man. The echo told her that he had been close to the truth. But then, the echoes faded. The ghosts of the past were gone.
Ifeyinwa looked at Dayo. "I know where the book is. And I know who took it. It's the wife of the man they killed. She hid it. It's in an old globe. And… I think we have an ally. A ghost of an old investigator, a man who had been looking for the truth for a long time."
Dayo was speechless. "The echoes... they told you all that?"
"Yes," she said. "The city has a long memory. It will not forget. Now... we have to find the woman." The race was on. The Omololus were still watching, and they were closing in. They had to find the woman before they did. The future of their families depended on it.