Final Deposit

by Lisa Harris

  She stopped beside the car, her arms pressed tightly around her waist. “Again, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take this out on you. I just don’t know what do to. We’ve got to get this guy, Kyle.”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “So you’re not giving up?”

  “Never.”

  “Then let’s go to your father’s hotel room—Daniel got a key from the hotel manager. Maybe your father left something there that will help us figure out where he is.”

  Lindsey glanced at her watch. Time was running out.

  Kyle pulled an empty brown suitcase out of the closet and checked the pockets for anything her father might have forgotten to unpack. So far they’d found nothing of interest. The top drawer of the dresser was filled with socks, underwear and a couple of T-shirts. His toothbrush sat on the bathroom counter beside a tube of toothpaste. A black toiletry bag hung on the back of the door. Everything was neat—there were no signs of a struggle. It was as if he’d walked out of here expecting to return.

  Kyle glanced up at Lindsey, who was methodically going through a briefcase. “Anything?”

  “Nothing that seems out of the ordinary. His Bible, a copy of The Hobbit and some travel documents.” She shrugged.

  It was hard to find something when you weren’t even sure what you were looking for. Kyle rubbed his chin. They had to be missing something.

  The concierge told him that Mr. Taylor had been dropped off at the hotel by a private car, which meant that Omah had sent someone to pick him up. It also meant Omah had still been playing the role of friend and confidante at that point.

  Kyle looked through the sliding glass door that led to a small balcony. This side of the hotel overlooked half a dozen bars and restaurants that were preparing for the lunch crowd. Omah would have taken Mr. Taylor out for a few drinks and then to the undisclosed location to show him the suitcase full of dirty money. When Lindsey’s father said he didn’t have any more money to pay for the cleaning products, things would have turned ugly.

  He doubted there would have been any question left in Mr. Taylor’s mind at that point about Omah’s innocence. The con man’s switch from friend to foe would have been quick and shocking. Mr. Taylor would definitely know the truth by now.

  Kyle pulled open the sliding door and went out to the private balcony. It was a nine-by-six area with a wrought-iron table, an umbrella and four chairs. A pen sat on the table.

  Kyle looked closely at the pen—it was from a health club in Dallas. It was the only evidence he could see that Mr. Taylor had come out here.

  Lindsey stepped out onto the balcony. “Anything?”

  “Your dad’s pen.” He handed it to her, wondering what her father had been writing.

  A gust of wind sent a chill down his spine despite the sunny, humid day. There was nothing more to see out here. He turned to go inside and something caught his attention—a piece of paper fluttering against the edge of the balcony. He bent down to pick it up.

  “What is it, Kyle?”

  He handed her a piece of hotel stationery with a few lines written neatly in black ink. “Looks like a letter your father started. To you.”

  Lindsey scanned the few lines of the unfinished letter, feeling her heart break. She stepped back inside the hotel room. Kyle closed the sliding door, muting the noise from outside.

  “What does it say?” Kyle asked.

  She cleared her throat. “‘All I can do, Lindsey, is ask for your forgiveness for what I’ve put you through. If anything goes wrong today, I want you to know that I love you. And I need you to forgive me, even if you never understand why I did this.

  “‘There are so many things I never told you because I wanted to protect you and your mother. I loved her so much. I loved you both. And now…’”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s all he wrote.” She ran her hand across the page and shook her head. “Someone must have interrupted him. He was scared, Kyle. He believed there was a chance he’d never see me again.”

  “I’m so sorry, Lindsey.” Kyle wrapped her in his arms and held her tight. “Omah must have arrived, stopping him from finishing the letter.”

  “But what did he want to tell me?” Rage suddenly gripped her and she wanted to rip up the letter. She pulled away from Kyle’s embrace. This could have been avoided.

  She threw down the letter and grabbed the map of London Kyle had left on the table, jabbing her finger at the center of the city. “This is crazy. He could be right next door or fifty miles away.”

  “Charles and his team are working as fast as they can.”

  “What if it’s not fast enough?” Less than thirty-two hours, and her hands were tied. She could hardly stand it.

  She stared at the map, looking at all the unfamiliar places and names, feeling very far away from home. Hackney, Camden, Brent, Lewisham.

  Lewisham. Uncle Lewis.

  “Kyle, look at this. The borough of Lewisham,” she said, pointing on the map.

  “What about it?”

  Her breath caught in her throat and she could hardly get the words out. “I don’t think my father was talking about Uncle Lewis, Kyle. I think he was trying to tell me where he is.”

  Kyle punched Charles’s number into his cell. It was a long shot, but if Lindsey’s theory was right, and the borough corresponded with one of the locations they’d already identified, they had a very real chance of finding her father.

  “Charles, this is Kyle.” Traffic roared in the background, but the connection was clear. “I think we might have a lead on George Taylor.”

  “What have you got?”

  Kyle relayed the details of the cell-phone message, and the fact that Lindsey’s uncle had died a decade and a half ago.

  “That is odd,” Charles said. “But fear can make people do and say a lot of strange things.”

  “Or maybe her father was trying to pass a message to her.” Kyle glanced at Lindsey who was barely holding it together. He had to get the man to listen. “It makes sense, Charles. Mr. Taylor knew Lindsey would figure it out.”

  “Lewisham isn’t much to go on, Kyle.”

  “It is if you can match it to one of the assets you’ve identified.”

  “Give me a second to find out what we’ve got on this end.” Thirty seconds later, Charles came back on the line again. “Okay, I’ve got one location in Lewisham. A small restaurant that’s been open about two years.”

  “The perfect setup for laundering money.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean Mr. Taylor’s being held there. And even if he was in that area when he called, they could have moved him during the past twelve hours. The chances are slim, and you know that.”

  “Time’s running out, Charles. What other leads do you have?”

  “Our guys are working on the computers they confiscated earlier today, but at the moment, I’ll admit this is the only possible lead we have.”

  “You could have Abraham Omah in custody before the end of the day,” Kyle said.

  Charles was silent for a moment. Then he relayed the restaurant’s address. “Meet us there in an hour?”

  “We’ll be there.”

  “And stay out of the way this time.”

  Kyle smiled. “No problem.”

  Lindsey leaned against the window of the silver sedan, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu. Another location. Another possible bust. Charles’s team had gone inside the restaurant, but so far, no one had emerged. And there was still no sign of her father.

  She scanned the narrow roadway with the binoculars. Cars, buses and bikes filled the busy street that was home to about a dozen shops and restaurants, and a high-rise of flats. A woman pushed a stroller past an Asian restaurant. Another woman ran by in a Windbreaker, listening to an iPod. A man chatted with someone standing inside a doorway.

  She zoomed in on the targeted restaurant. Two cars were parked in front and a third in the alley that ran along the side of the shop. Beyond that car was a Dumpster.

  Charl
es emerged from the restaurant. He stared down the street, his phone to his ear.

  Kyle’s cell rang.

  “He’s not here, Kyle. I’ve got two waitresses and a cook who speaks a little English. Unless you want to order lunch, this is a dead end.”

  She searched the street again with the binoculars, and zoomed back to the man in the doorway. The signature T on a Texas Rangers baseball hat caught her eye. Lindsey squinted in the sunlight. The second man had emerged from the shadows. Her heart pounded. It was her father.

  Lindsey threw the binoculars down and struggled to unlock the door, but she couldn’t seem to make her hands work the way she wanted them to.

  “What is it, Lindsey? Where are you going?”

  “My father. He’s headed inside that apartment building.” She shoved open the door and started off down the street.

  “Lindsey, wait!”

  Kyle jumped out of the car and hollered at Charles. She could hear Kyle and Daniel running behind her, but she wasn’t waiting. Dodging an older woman pushing a shopping cart, she dashed toward the building. Fatigue from the last week was replaced by pure adrenaline. She caught the door before it shut and saw her father and the man turn the corner at the top of a staircase.

  She flew up the stairs and through the doorway. “Abraham Omah!”

  Her father’s captor spun around, halfway down the hallway, his hand tightly gripping her father’s arm. Abraham Omah looked nothing like she’d pictured. With his dark complexion and curly black hair, he could have been her next-door neighbor back home.

  But his eyes were cold and hard.

  She swallowed. “I want my father. Let him go.”

  Her father’s face paled. “Lindsey, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s going to be all right, Daddy.”

  The door to the hallway slammed open behind her. She glanced back at Charles and Kyle. “Get behind us, Lindsey,” Kyle said.

  Two men from Charles’s team approached stealthily from the other end of the hallway, behind her father. They had them surrounded.

  Lindsey moved toward Kyle and Charles as Charles raised his gun. “Game’s over, Abraham.”

  “Not quite. If you hadn’t noticed, I still have a hostage.” He whipped out a gun from his jacket pocket and held it to her father’s head.

  TWENTY

  Lindsey’s fingernails dug into the palms of her hands. Please, God. Don’t let it end this way. Please.

  Charles took another step forward. “There’s no need for this to turn ugly. Let Mr. Taylor go.”

  Abraham pressed the gun hard against her father’s temple.

  Her pulse accelerated. She didn’t want to find out how the Internet scammer handled face-to-face confrontations.

  For a full five seconds, no one moved.

  Suddenly the apartment door beside Abraham swung open. A man in a baseball cap stepped into the hall and gasped as a gun was pointed in his face. “Garki! What the—”

  “Put your hands on your head!” Charles shouted as Lindsey’s father collapsed.

  Charles’s men didn’t give either suspect time to recover from the distraction. In a matter of seconds, Abraham was surrounded, patted down and handcuffed. The second man lay prostrate on the floor beside him.

  Lindsey ran to her father who was slumped against the wall. “He needs an ambulance.”

  “I’m on it,” Charles said.

  “I’m okay, Lindsey,” her father said as she embraced him.

  “No, you’re not.” Relief swelled into anger. “You never should have left the hospital, and now this—”

  “I’m sorry, Lindsey.” Her anger quickly dissipated as tears spilled down her father’s face.

  Charles flipped his cell phone shut. “An ambulance is on its way. I’ll meet you at the hospital when I’m done here. I’m going to need to talk to your father.”

  “Of course.” Lindsey squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, suddenly unable to focus. The floor swayed beneath her. She braced herself against the wall.

  Kyle grasped her elbow. “Are you okay?”

  She shook her head, her breathing growing shallow as nausea engulfed her.

  She glanced down the hall at the man who’d tried to ruin her father’s life. Abraham Omah, Garki, or whatever his real name was, was being led away, his head down, gaze on the floor. Bile rose, burning her throat. She wanted him to know what he’d done, to make him understand the cruelty of his actions.

  She started after him.

  Kyle held her back. “Save your energy for your father, Lindsey. He needs you.”

  She watched Abraham Omah vanish around the corner and prayed that God would someday take away the hatred that burned in her heart for the man who’d ruined her father’s life.

  An hour later, Lindsey sat beside her father in a small hospital room. Color had returned to his face, his heart rate had stabilized and his blood pressure had come down slightly since the initial evaluation with the EMS team. Lindsey was still struggling with her emotions, trying to convince herself that the anger and resentment she felt didn’t matter anymore because her father was okay. And as hard as it was going to be, one day they’d be able to put Abraham Omah behind them.

  “The doctor says that there is no sign of a stroke.” She brushed a curly lock of gray hair from her father’s brow. “It’s a miracle, you know.”

  “I might be a complete fool, but God is still good, isn’t He?”

  “You’re not a fool, Daddy.”

  He wound the edge of the sheet between his fingers. “There is so much I need to tell you, Lindsey. Things about your mother…about decisions we together made before she died.”

  Lindsey wasn’t sure she could handle any more bombshells at the moment. “You don’t have to talk now. You need your rest.”

  “The least I owe you is an explanation. You’ve been through so much this past week.”

  “Daddy, please. You don’t have to—”

  “I need to.”

  She pressed her hands together in her lap and nodded.

  “Remember how much your mother loved Christmas?” He smiled slightly at the memory.

  “Yeah, Daddy.”

  “Your mom wanted us to spend one more holiday together before she died. She loved the lights and the Christmas music. The choir singing ‘Joy to the World’ and ‘Away in a Manger’ at church…” He closed his eyes for a moment as if he was trying to picture it clearly. “In August of that year, we found out about some experimental drugs we believed could extend her life, but insurance refused to pay for them.”

  Lindsey tried to grasp what her father was saying. If they’d needed money, why hadn’t they told her? She’d have found a way to help defray the cost.

  “I don’t understand.” The pulsating blare of an ambulance sounded in the distance, competing with the steady beeps of the machine monitoring her father’s heart rhythm. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

  “Because your mother didn’t want you to worry. And I…” He avoided her gaze. “I didn’t want you to worry, either.”

  She shook her head. That simply wasn’t good enough. “I dropped out of school and moved back home to take care of Mom while you worked, and you were worried that I was too young to handle things?” She held up her hand. “I’m sorry. I just…I just would have liked to have been a part of things. I thought I was a part of things.”

  “You were.” He grasped her hand. “You were always the most important part of our lives.”

  Lindsey swallowed and took in a deep breath. “Tell me the rest.”

  “The experimental drugs wiped out most of our savings, but she ended up living four extra months.”

  Lindsey squeezed her eyes shut to stop the tears. Her mom had celebrated one last Christmas with them, just as she’d wanted.

  “I would have done anything to keep her alive longer, but nothing I did was enough.”

  The ugly truth sunk in. He blamed himself. She’d never realized he held himself responsible for her mother
’s death. “You know it wasn’t your fault.”

  He shook his head. “In trying to save her, I ended up failing you both.”

  “What do you mean, Daddy?”

  “All I ever wanted to do was to take care of you and your mother. You two were my life. After your mother died, Abraham’s letter seemed like an answer to my prayers. An easy way to pay off my debt and leave you a decent inheritance. Except Abraham kept needing money. A few hundred for bank charges, another couple thousand for customs, then another few hundred for something else…” He paused for a moment. “I kept telling myself it would be worth it in the end when I received my share of the fortune, but before I knew it I’d mortgaged the house and sold my stock options…and I still had nothing.”

  Lindsey’s heart broke. “Because none of it was true, Daddy.”

  “I know that now.” A solitary tear slid down her father’s cheek. “Then I made another mistake by going to Vincent. And while I’d heard rumors of his unethical business activities, I thought I could trust him.”

  “And then his business started going under.”

  “He needed the cash I owed him and sent one of his men to encourage me to pay up.”

  “Jamie McDonald?”

  Her father nodded. “Jamie’s got fewer brains than a scarecrow, but he knows how to rough people up. The only way out I could think of was to cash in my life-insurance policy. I was on my way to give Jamie the money when I started feeling sick. I pulled over and walked around a bit to get some air. At some point, I must have passed out.”

  Abraham’s promise of millions was her father’s justification for everything he’d done. Borrowing money, cashing in his life insurance, taking her credit cards…Her heart ached for her father, but she grasped for a way to find forgiveness. At the moment all she could do was hold on to her faith and pray that in time they would find a way to put this behind them.

  Kyle stepped into the room with Charles and cleared his throat. “How are you doing, sir?”

  “They tell me I’ll live.”

  “That’s always a good sign.” Kyle shoved his hands into his pockets. “You don’t mind if I steal your daughter away for a couple hours, do you? She hasn’t eaten all day, and I know you’d prefer she didn’t end up here as well.”