The Watcher

He checked the windows first.

Not in a panic, he moved deliberately, the way his body had decided to operate since this morning, everything slow and controlled on the outside while something underneath ran very fast. He moved the curtain in the bedroom. Looked down at the compound. A gateman dozing on a plastic chair. Two cars he recognized. Nothing else.

He went to the living room.

“I’m getting some air,” he told Sade.

She nodded without looking up.

He took the stairs down instead of the elevator and walked through the compound slowly, phone in hand, scanning. The street outside was ordinary. A woman frying yam at a roadside stall. Okadas weaving through traffic. Late afternoon light turning everything amber.

Nobody watching. Nobody obvious.

But the call had come while he was searching. That meant either his internet activity had been flagged somehow — possible if Dayo’s people had reach into the kind of networks that could do that, or someone physically close had seen something.

Or he was being followed since he left the house this morning.

He walked back inside.

Upstairs Sade had moved to the kitchen. He could hear her running water. He sat on the bed and called the unknown number back.

It rang. Once. Twice. Six times.

Nothing.

He opened his contacts and scrolled to a name he hadn’t called in almost two years. Chidi Nwosu. They had gone to university together — Chidi had gone into insurance after graduation but before that, two years working with a private investigation firm in Ikeja. They had kept a loose friendship. The kind that survived on occasional check-ins and memories.

It rang three times.

“Emeka! E-money! How far my guy—”

“Chidi I need your help. Not on the phone.”

A beat of silence. Then Chidi’s voice shifted, the old warmth still there but underneath it something more attentive.

“Where?”

“Tomorrow. That place we used to go in Surulere. Mama Titi’s.”

“Noon?”

“Noon.”

“I’ll be there.”

He hung up and sat quietly.

From the kitchen Sade called out: “Baby you want to eat? I’m making stew.”

“Yes,” he called back.

He lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. The fan turned slowly overhead, the same fan, the same ceiling he had looked at a thousand times. He and Sade had painted this room together two years ago. She had gotten cream paint in her hair and he had laughed until he couldn’t breathe.

That’s his problem.

He closed his eyes.

The unknown caller knew his name. Knew about the wife. Knew he’d been searching. That was three things — which meant this was not a random warning. Someone had sent that call deliberately. Either to frighten him into stopping, or—

He opened his eyes.

Or to make contact. Carefully. Without being seen.

Because if there was someone else out there who knew what Dayo Adeleke was—

Someone who couldn’t come forward openly—

Then Emeka was not the first person this had happened to.

And he might not be the last.

His eyes went to the bedroom door.

Sade was humming in the kitchen again.

Same song as this morning.

Same voice.

Different woman.

Or maybe — and this thought arrived quietly and sat down without being invited — maybe he was only now seeing the woman who had always been there.

His phone lit up on the bed beside him.

The unknown number.

This time a text.

Just five words.

Check Dayo’s Abuja property records.