Liana Kills a man

Liana had since then developed a strong resentment for men. He was stable but that was only a plus to a go-getter who would be a surgeon at a top hospital in the country in a couple of years.

She tossed her car keys and pressed on it causing her new Lexus to start hooting. She didn't want to think about Lee, or child support or getting married this time. She however couldn't stop worrying about Sofi.

She must be scared. Was she safe? What were those men doing with her in a locked room? Liana tried to calm herself down. She looked at the parcel in her arm. She remembered William. The gentleman she had met at a friend's party who turned out to be her worst nightmare.

She got into the car and started the engine, feeling the emptiness that occupied Sofi's seat next to hers. She buckled up, took a long breath and sighed. She wasn't ready for the turn of events in her life. The morning was foggy with a hazy, blurred visibility. She waved at the guard who had opened the gate for her and drove off the small road from the neighborhood into the main road that flooded with speeding matatus from Buruburu.

She approached the main highway cautiously, knowing that with the slippery roads and bad visibility, anything more than 50kmPh would be a death would be a death wish. Was she at 50? Well, that was what she thought, but her mind wasn't on it.

All that she had in her head was how to wish everything away. How to reverse time and stay at home that night she chose to attend the party that changed her life to the worst. All these were too much to take at a go.

She was engrossed in her thoughts so much that she didn't see the pointer slide to 100 on the dashboard. When she got back to her mind, she was swearing loud in panic. The fog was thicker on that section of the feeder road than it was on the main road.

She heard a huge thud against her car, like she had hit something, an animal to be precise. She was shaking and stepping on the brakes, the gas, and pressing the horns at the same time. She had suddenly brought the Lexus to a stop without even giving it a thought.

Liana opened the door and rushed out in the cold to check what she had hit. All the headlights were on, a clear show of the degree of panic that had hit her. She came back to the car for a sweater and a flashlight and ended up bumping upon her appointment with the NTSA inspectorate.

She was supposed to take her car for the first inspection over the weekend, but she didn't –she was dealing with too much; she probably forgot about everything. She didn't even see her dentist.

When Liana grabbed the flashlight to check in the shrub nearby, she heard a sound of groaning-like someone was in immense pain. She moved closer, praying silently that it wasn't what she thought.

She couldn't take one more yoke to her neck when what she had already was eating her up. Just a couple of days ago she was a happy single mother with one of the world's most enviable jobs and a new car. She was on top of everything and the only thing that mattered to her was her resentment towards men.

Well not until now that she had to deal with a nasty heartbreak, single motherhood, abduction and threat, blackmailing and she could be staring at a manslaughter suit right in front of her if her fears were true. And they were.

An old man was writhing in pain a few yards off the spot she had knocked him. She was in panic. His head ears were bleeding and that was enough to startle anyone who understood human anatomy. She leaned over, shaky, opened his eyelids while shaking and took note of something that didn't really appeal to her, so she felt the pulse on her wrist and her jugular instead. It wasn't looking good.

Liana phoned the hospital and an ambulance would be there anytime. A curious crowd was growing. In a few minutes the man was surrounded in a typical Kenyan way he would have died out of suffocation if the bleeding didn't kill him.

She knew him. He was a widower and his twin sons went to a university in town. Their dad was everything they had. It stroke Liana that she would be handling the police in a few minutes and she needed legal representation. She went through her contacts with fingers darting shakily over the screen.

She would call Ben, but he was out of town, the friend of Ben, who was an attorney, was taking a break and had posted honeymoon photos from Comoro. Only one person was left and he was Lee. The man he had a child with seven years ago.

"Hello its Liana. You have to come over to my place. I am in a deep mess."

He wanted to hear that. He had always wanted to see his daughter but he had to bring down her walls first. This was an opportunity. He was sounding over the phone from the other side.

"Calm down Liana, tell me what happened huh…"

She replied anxiously.

"I... I killed a man. Well I have had an accident just next to my home."

She was helpless.

"I'll be right there."

Lee knew what he was coming to. He had vast experiences finding loopholes in accident reconstruction and investigations. This was his chance to burst to the scene and get the most out of it. He needed to stay closer to her daughter Sofi. He was even hoping he would get to see her.

Lee was now the Chairman at Lee and Lee advocates and had all the best attorneys and magistrates in the country at fingertips. He was a tall dark man with a shiny sideburn and an unending love for navy blue shirts and khaki pants. Navy blue. Something that would later lead Liana to a conclusion that wicked men had a taste for navy blue.

******

The police had marked the area in yellow tapes and witnesses were giving their accounts in long reeling sentences made of a mixture of Swahili and a deafening vernacular. She could hear it all. Everyone was sympathizing with the poor old man who had since then been rushed to the hospital. Every witness was trying to insinuate a case of dangerous driving. She must have been on phone as one suggested.

Lee was there too in a short while and repeated the "my client has the right to remain silent" phrase as though one more chant of that would open the gates to wonderland or undo a spell on an entire humanity.

He called her aside to give her own account of the accident so as to see the legal hooks that could fit the bait of the state reconstruction team and investigators. The police were now darting in and out of her car, hoping to find a lead to mischief since that was what their job description said but never wrote.

The fog had cleared and the sky was clear. All that Liana wanted to know was if she was going to jail.

"Of course not. But to be honest with you, we are going to have to work across the clock to prove that this was just an accident and not an intentional manslaughter. It is important to know what is in their charge sheet to know what cards to play.

We have to be ready for the worst because if the man dies it will be a totally different scenario and they will be forced to amend the charge sheet."

Lee assured and let her lean on his shoulders.

"We have to go with you to the station"

A police officer approached. She looked at Lee and he gave her an assurance.

"It's okay. It's a normal process. You will be out today. I will be right behind you."

She shed a tear as she struggles into the high land cruiser. A police officer drove the Lexus right behind them to the station.