One Way Ticket to Anywhere | ✔️

Chapter 21

Chapter 21:

I woke up to Sebastien swearing.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck. Raegan, get up!" he said, jostling me awake and gruffly pulling me up from the ground.

Lazily and confused I rubbed my eyes, trying to get a handle on my bearings. "What's going on, Sebastien? What's the hurry?"

Sebastien was full on panicking now and pacing the room. "It's after nine o'clock!" He screamed and pounded his fists against the wall as if that was supposed to mean something to me.

What the hell? What was going on now?

"I don't understand, Sebastien. What does it matter that it's nine o'clock? What does that have to do with anything?"

He didn't answer me. Instead he grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the shop and into the night. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." Sebastien kept muttering under his breath as we, well more accurately he, anxiously waited for a cab to arrive.

Sebastien pulled at his hair. His eyes were wild and crazed. Even at the worst of times I had never seen him this panicked. "Kutoboa is going to kill me."

Suddenly I remembered the conversation we had had in the hotel lobby. Kutoboa had said to meet back at the hotel at 21:00. The nearest store sign told me that it was almost midnight.

A cab drove lazily down the street and Sebastien sprinted toward it, waving his arms frantically in the air. Sebastien yanked me into the cab and told the driver to drive as fast as humanly possible back to the Golden Taha hotel.

It was all too similar about the story he had told me about the cab in New York, where he had been late to some meeting. My head pounded. This was serious deja vu.

What was supposed to happen at nine o'clock?
"So what were you two out doing today?" The cab driver asked us with a small but friendly smile.

I opened my mouth to answer but Sebastien shook his head firmly. "Don't talk to him, Raegan."

I saw the cab driver's eyes darken in the rearview mirror, but he didn't say anything.

The only noise in the car was the sound of Sebastien's leg nervously bouncing up and down and the faint sound of the saticky radio.

"Can you turn that damn thing off?" Sebastien snapped.

The cab driver angrily shut off the radio. Now the only sound was Sebastien's bouncing leg, staring out the window, fixating on nothing but the darkness.

I heard my heart pounding in my eardrums and buried my head in my hands. I couldn't think, but I knew that something was terribly and horribly wrong.

We pulled into the hotel driveway and Sebastien immediately jumped out of the car without paying. I opened my wallet, but I was distracted by Sebastien screaming.

"Get out, Raegan, goddammit. Get out now!" I wasn't focused on him. I was just trying to find some cash. Sebastien threw open the door and picked me up, carrying me over his shoulders.

I pounded my fists against his back. "Put me down, Sebastien, put me down!" I was screaming incoherently and was scared out of my mind. My thoughts were racing and my head was pounding with distress. I felt Sebastien's entire body quake as he ran away with me, in no particular direction, but farther and farther away from the cab which had turned around and started to drive toward us.

If only Sebastien had just let me pay.

I heard it before I saw it.

A noise louder than anything I'd ever heard. An explosion that continued to ring in my ears, long after it had happened.

Then I saw it.

A blinding light and then fire everywhere. Smoke slipping through my lungs and burning my eyes. The cab had exploded, only feet from where we'd been standing.

Sebastien fell to the ground, covering me with his body. Shrapnel flying everywhere, piercing the parts of my body Sebastien hadn't been able to cover.

A small whimper escaped from my lips as I continued to shake under Sebastien's quaking body.

Once pieces of the cab had stopped flying everywhere, Sebastien stood up, taking a phone out of his pocket that I didn't know he had.

"Who are you calling?"

Sebastien didn't look at me. "Who do you think?"

Kutoboa. Right.

Sebastien hung up the phone angrily. "Voicemail. Fuck."

"Call him again, Sebastien."

"What?"

"Just call Kutoboa again."

Sebastien called him again, this time looking right at me, but I wasn't looking at him. I heard a phone ringing in the distance and started jogging toward the sound, Sebastien following closely behind.

I stopped cold when I got to the source of the ringing. I heard Sebastien's breathe in sharply and curse loudly.

The phone was in the pocket of a body and the body was Kutoboa.

Blood dripping out of his skull made it clear he died from a gunshot wound. I shook my head. How had this happened?

"Too late. Too fucking late." Sebastien kept muttering to himself as he crouched down, shining his phone on Kutoboa's chest.

"What are you—?" What I saw cut me off.

Kutoboa's shirt had been ripped open and on his chest was a name, carved into his chest with a knife.

A name I had only heard spoken aloud.

But it couldn't be.

Kutoboa said we were safe.

Sebastien said we were safe.

But there was no mistaking the name.

Muuaji.

Sebastien looked at me long and hard, the eerie light from the phone casting into the body illuminating his face.

We heard the rustle in the darkness at the same time. Sebastien stood up immediately, facing the silhouette.

I could hear the menacing grin in his voice as he spoke to us.

"Well hello, Sebastien. It's been a while."

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A short, but thrilling chapter, I hope you guys enjoyed!

Why do you think Kutoboa was killed?

What were Kutoboa and Sebastien supposed to do at 9 o'clock?

Who is the man in the shadows?

Don't forget to vote, comment, and share and come back next week for answers to these questions and more!