Tuesday at 4:00 PM was the hour of the "Lagos Furnace." The sun was a white-hot coin pressed against the forehead of the city, and the air at the university bus stop was a vibrating haze of humidity and desperation. It was the kind of heat that made people irritable, the kind that made secrets sweat through the skin.
Ademola arrived early. He stood under the narrow shadow of a rusted billboard, his eyes tracking every yellow Danfo that screeched to a halt. He looked calm, but his fingers were tracing the sharp crease of his trousers over and over a nervous tic he only displayed when a case was going south.
Babatunde was with him, mostly because Babatunde had a "hunch" and nothing better to do than watch a train wreck in slow motion.
"Ademola, look at you. You're sweating through that expensive cotton," Babatunde said, fanning himself with a folded newspaper. "This girl... she's going to be the end of your peace of mind. Why are we here? To play private investigator?"
"I'm not investigating, Tunde. I'm confirming," Ademola replied, his voice flat.
"If Tokunbo is who I think he is, and if Sarah is doing what I think she's doing, Omolayo is walking into a slaughterhouse."
"And you want to be the shield? My friend, shields get dented. Shields get thrown away when the war is over."
Ademola didn't answer. He saw her.
Omolayo was walking toward the bus stop from the direction of the Faculty of Arts. She looked different today smaller, somehow.
She was wearing a simple Ankara top that had faded slightly at the shoulders, and her bag was slung heavily over one arm. She looked like she had spent the last six hours arguing with a ghost.
As she reached the shade, she spotted Ademola. A flicker of relief crossed her face, followed immediately by a shadow of guilt.
She checked her phone a quick, furtive glance that told Ademola everything he needed to know. She was still waiting for a message from a man who wasn't coming.
"You came," Ademola said, stepping forward.
"I can't stay long," Omolayo whispered, her voice lost in the roar of an arriving bus. "Tokunbo said he might come by to pick me up. He's been... difficult since Saturday."
"He's not coming, Omolayo," Ademola said.
He didn't say it to be mean; he said it with the surgical precision of a lawyer delivering a verdict.
"You don't know that. He said if he finishes his meeting"
"He's at the Palms Hotel," Babatunde chimed in, unable to keep his mouth shut. "Or at least, his car is. I have a cousin who works the valet there. Big black SUV? Tinted glass? Custom plates?"
Omolayo's face went pale. The orange of her Ankara top seemed to drain of color. "The Palms? That's... that's where Sarah said she was going for her 'business lunch'."
The silence that followed was heavy, punctuated only by the shouting of bus conductors: "Yaba! Oyingbo! Enter with your change oh!"
Ademola took a step closer, shielding her from the prying eyes of the crowd. "Omolayo, look at me. Sarah didn't just 'move back' into your house. She moved in to take what she thinks she's owed. And right now, she thinks she owes me a debt for leaving her last year."
"You... and Sarah?" Omolayo's voice broke. "You're the 'Lawyer' she keeps mocking? The one she said was 'too stiff to love'?"
Ademola flinched. It was a direct hit. "I'm the one she cheated on. And if she's with Tokunbo now, it's not because she loves him. It's because he belongs to you."
Omolayo backed away, her head shaking. "No. Tokunbo is arrogant, yes. He's a show-off. But he wouldn't... not with my own sister. Not Sarah."
"Lust doesn't check family trees, Mola," Babatunde said softly, his usual humor replaced by a rare flash of pity.
Just then, a sleek black SUV slowed down across the street. It didn't pull into the bus stop; it lingered near the curb, its tinted windows reflecting the chaos of the junction like a dark mirror. The passenger window rolled down just an inch enough for a puff of expensive, floral-scented air to escape into the dusty street.
Sarah's eyes, framed by oversized Dior sunglasses, locked onto the trio at the bus stop. She didn't hide. She didn't look ashamed. She simply tilted her glasses down, gave a slow, predatory wink toward Ademola, and then whispered something to the driver.
The SUV screeched away, leaving a cloud of exhaust in Omolayo's face.
"Was that him?" Omolayo asked, though she already knew.
"That was him," Ademola confirmed.
Omolayo felt the world tilt. The heat, the noise, the betrayal it all came crashing down at once. She reached out for the rusted pole of the bus stop to steady herself, but Ademola's hand was already there, catching her elbow.
"I want to see them," she said, her voice suddenly cold and hard. "I don't want to hear it from you or Tunde's cousin. I want to see the lie with my own eyes."
"It'll hurt," Ademola warned.
"I'm already hurting, Ademola. Now I just want to be sure I'm not crazy."
"Tunde, get your car," Ademola commanded.
"O boy, my fuel is low oh!" Babatunde protested, but he was already reaching for his keys. "But for drama like this? I will even push the car if I have to."
As they piled into Babatunde's battered Toyota, Omolayo sat in the back, staring out the window. She looked at Ademola's reflection in the rearview mirror his neat collar, his steady hands. He was the stranger who had bought her Suya three days ago, and now he was the only person holding the map to her destroyed life.
"Why are you helping me?" she asked quietly. "Is this just about getting back at Sarah?"
Ademola looked at her through the mirror. For the first time, his "neat and fitting" mask fell away entirely. "In my final year of law, they teach us that justice is about making things whole. But between you and me? I just really hate seeing a good person get played by people who aren't worth the dirt on their shoes."
The car sped toward the Palms Hotel, leaving the university gates behind. The mystery of the "Saturday meeting" was over. The week of the reckoning had truly begun.