Chapter 18: Familiar Numbers
The tension in the house could slice through steel. No one said it aloud, but every step, every breath, every blink felt like a countdown to something explosive. Zion stood in the living room with a sharpness to his features that had no place in casual conversation. Wale leaned over his shoulder, eyes narrowed on the screen of Zion's laptop, both of them immersed in data pulled from a private financial tracking program only few in their elite network could afford.
"There," Zion said finally, voice low but crisp. "That second payment. It funded Tony's relocation to Ghana the night before the hotel incident."
Jeremy looked up from the far end of the room where he was nursing a cold glass of water he hadn't touched in fifteen minutes. "Who sent it?" He knew what the answer would be but he hoped it wasn't.
Zion hesitated, then pulled up the sender's contact trail. "It's from a burner number. But the SIM registration… it matches a student SIM card Tammy reported lost two years ago. Registered under her name."
The silence that followed was not empty—it was loud. The kind that screams accusations no one dares to speak. All three guys looked down. Jeremiah sighed and went over to the whiskey cabinet and grabbed a strong one.
He took a glass and poured in it and drank it all in a go. Wale and Zion were looked at each other and sighed.
Tammy, who had just returned from upstairs with a towel wrapped around her head, froze in place. "What?" Her voice cracked halfway through the word. "My SIM?"
She had a really bad feeling about what Zion was about to say.
Zion turned the screen toward her. "Your old Glo number. The one you lost in second year."
Tammy's towel slipped a bit, but she didn't reach to fix it. "That line was gone ages ago. I even replaced it. I've had nothing to do with glo since forever!"
"And it just so happens the number was reactivated under your NIN and used to make this payment." Wale added, face blank, eyes unreadable.
She stumbled toward the screen, trying to make sense of the digital trail. It didn't make sense. None of this did. The offshore account from earlier. Now this burner number. What next? A handwritten confession in her own diary? Proof that she robbed the bank? Or she's a murderer?
Jeremy stood up but didn't come any closer. His silence was more suffocating than any scream.
"I didn't do this," Tammy whispered.
He wanted to believe her. He really did. But he believed more in evidence. And yesterday and today's evidence points to her. There was nothing that didn't seem suspicious about her now.
"Then who did?" Wale said, arms crossed.
She looked at all of them. "I'm being framed. Someone is… someone is trying to bury me. Jeremy someone's trying to separate us. You guys have to believe me." She felt tears gathering in her eyes. So she looked up to try to make them not to fall.
But even to her ears, the words felt thin, like shadows cast by a flickering light. Jeremy's expression didn't change, but his eyes—they dimmed. Like something sacred inside him had broken.
"I need a minute," Tammy muttered, rushing past them, escaping into the kitchen.
Rita, who had come in through the back gate minutes earlier with a bag of banana bread from her mum's house, stepped aside for her.
"What's going on?" Rita asked, watching Tammy disappear into the hallway. She dropped the bags on the chair and walked over to where they were.
Wale sighed. "A lot. You might wanna sit."
"I'll stand," she said, eyes trailing after Tammy. "I've been watching all this unfold, and something's not adding up. It's too clean. Too connected. Tammy? Offshore accounts? Burner lines? This girl doesn't even know how to export a PDF sometimes. I admit she's good at hacking and all but, all I'm saying is it's way too clean and coincidental. Come on guys. You can see this."
Zion turned toward her. "You think she's being set up?"
"I think.. no- I know," Rita said slowly, "someone is trying to make it look like she did all this. The digital trail is neat. Neater than any actual criminal would leave. That's not smart—it's suspicious."
Zion nodded once. "I've been feeling the same. But the patterns are too exact. If it's a frame job, it's genius."
Meanwhile, upstairs, Tammy sat on her bedroom floor, old laptop open beside her. Something had told her to boot it up again. She hadn't touched it since the semester break before she met Jeremy.
There was a single folder on the desktop. Hidden deep inside old schoolwork. Its name: "ADEBAYO."
Her heart stopped. When did this appear here?
She clicked it. It was encrypted. Heavy. Military-grade.
"I don't even know how to encrypt folders like this, this is genius. So many stuff to breach." she said aloud to herself, voice shaking.
Downstairs, Jeremy paced the backyard alone, jaw tight, hands shoved into his pockets. There were storm clouds gathering above, and it felt almost symbolic. His instincts told him she was innocent—but the evidence said otherwise. The Tammy he was learning to love, laugh with, trust… was now shrouded in questions. And he hated it.
Back inside, Zion made a call.
"Put her under passive watch," he said. "Tell her it's for her safety."
Rita overheard. "Why passive?"
"Because I don't think she did it," Zion said quietly. "But if she didn't, whoever did is ten steps ahead. And that means she's in danger."
Jeremy didn't come in that night.
He stood out there in the drizzle long after the others had gone to bed. Because for the first time in weeks, Jeremy Adebayo didn't know who or what to believe.
And for Tammy?
She couldn't sleep. Because that folder—named after her husband—was sitting encrypted on a laptop she hadn't used in years.