Final Deposit (19 page)

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.

L
indsey'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.”

“She's all yours. Thank you, Kyle, and you, Charles, for everything.”

Kyle nodded. “We're glad you're okay, sir.”

“I'm ready to talk, Charles. I know you have many questions for me.”

Lindsey squeezed her father's hand. “Are you sure, Daddy?”

“I want that felon behind bars the rest of his life.”

Charles nodded. “With two more arrests and a flat full of evidence, I'd say we're on our way to doing just that.”

“Thank you, Charles,” Lindsey said, shaking his hand.

He smiled. “Kyle and I always have made a pretty good team. And the intel we received from you helped tremendously.”

“I'm glad to hear that,” Lindsey said. “And I'll continue to help in any way I can because I want you to ensure that this is the last time Abraham Omah ever has the chance to scam anyone.”

 

Lindsey stood beside Kyle on London's famous Tower Bridge as the sun began to set over the River Thames. She'd opted for a walk before dinner, giving her time to clear her muddled mind. The breathtaking view of the waterway had helped to soothe her frayed nerves. And she loved watching cars, motorcycles and open-topped, double-decker buses zoom across the bridge, while pedestrians strolled the famed walkway.

A cool breeze tossed her hair around her face, erasing some of the effects of the warm summer day. If only it could erase the memory of the past week as well.

She leaned against the railing and glanced up at Kyle. “Is it wrong for me to hate Abraham?”

“I believe God understands—more than we realize—the immense heartache we feel at loss and betrayal.”

“But I want Abraham to suffer the way he made my father suffer. The way he made all his victims suffer.”

“I felt the same way when Michael died. But we're all sinners and Christ died for all of us, no matter what the sin.”

“Hate the sin but not the sinner?”

“Something like that. It's hard, isn't it?

“Very.”

Kyle wrapped his arm around her and drew her closer. “You just can't let your anger eat you up and destroy you.”

“I guess it's just going to take time. For both me and my father.”

Beside them a tourist snapped photos of the city skyline before the last light of day disappeared. A couple walked by, pushing a sleeping toddler in a stroller. Life went on. The emotional wounds would take time to heal, but she also knew that they would both one day recover from the ordeal.

Her gaze followed the path of a tour boat, white water churning at the bow, until the craft disappeared beneath the massive structure of the bridge. “You told me you had some news?”

“While you were at the hospital, I got a call from a contact in the Dallas police department. Jamie McDonald was hauled in for drunk driving and apparently, thinking he was being picked up for other, more serious crimes, tried to cut a deal with the D.A. and take Vincent Lambert down with him.”

“You're kidding.” Lindsey laughed. “So he verified my father's story that Jamie had been paid to get the money back?”

“That, and he gave them information about a mysterious case of fraud the D.A.'s been trying to pin on Lambert. With Jamie's cooperation, they'll have enough evidence to put the man behind bars for the next fifty years.”

“That's unbelievable.”

“That's what I said.” He took her hands and smiled down at her. “But enough of Lambert and McDonald. You know, we never had our first date.”

She smiled back, enjoying the tingling feeling that shot all the way down to her toes when he looked at her. “You don't call flying to London and tracking down a couple of bad guys a date?”

He laughed. “I was thinking more like a dinner for two at this quaint Japanese restaurant I know.”

“I'll go for that.”

“I was also thinking about calling up my business partner and telling him I'm moving to Dallas to work in our new offices there. You wouldn't mind, would you?”

She shook her head, unable to speak. Her heart skipped a beat or two as he leaned toward her.

“I don't want to lose you again, Lindsey.”

The noisy background faded along with the busy scene until all she could see was Kyle. He brushed his lips against hers, softly at first, then deepening into a kiss full of promise and expectation.

When he pulled away, she couldn't help but grin. Perhaps her bridesmaid days were finally over.