Free Final Deposit by Lisa Harris

isn’t it? We’re not even safe in our own houses.”
    So much for keeping the attempted burglary a secret from her father. She’d forgotten how hard it was to keep a secret in the neighborhood. Add to that, the mixture of retirees and stay-at-home moms made it the perfect breeding ground for gossip. On the positive side, the sense of community had helped her worry less about her father. If he felt under the weather, one of the women was bound to show up at the door with a pot of soup or a casserole. Still, there were times—like now—when she wished word didn’t spread quite so rapidly through the grapevine.
    On the other hand, maybe she could turn the situation to her advantage.
    â€œDid you see anything last night, Mrs. Paden? Around midnight?”
    The gray-haired woman laid the set of animal-print bones she held back on the shelf. “Only what I told the police.”
    â€œWhich was?” Lindsey prompted.
    â€œA vehicle drove down the alley behind the house about that time. I thought it strange because normally it’s so quiet at night. I was up getting a glass of water at the time and saw the van go by.”
    â€œA van?” Lindsey glanced outside. “Do you remember what color it was?”
    â€œIt was dark, so I couldn’t say for sure. Blue, maybe black.”
    Lindsey’s mouth went dry. No. It was only a coincidence. Nothing more. There had to be thousands of dark blue vans driving around Dallas.
    â€œI keep complaining that there’s nothing but a bare street lamp lighting our driveway,” Mrs. Paden continued. “I’ve told my husband a dozen times that we need the city to install more lights. With crime escalating the way it is, one can’t be too careful. Why, just the other day I was talking to Patty Loveland—she lives five doors down, you know—about how last week’s paper recounted…”
    Lindsey glanced at Kyle as Mrs. Paden droned on, and then cleared her throat. She had a lot to do if she was going to have her father’s house ready before he returned home. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Paden. I’d love to stay and chat but I still have a couple of errands to run for my father.”
    â€œYou tell him I’ll be over in a day or two with a pot of his favorite soup.”
    Lindsey smiled. “I’ll be sure to let him know.”
    Â 
    Kyle stepped into the hospital elevator behind Lindsey and pushed the button for the sixth floor. In the space of a few hours, they’d managed to set up the new fish tank, complete with its colorful—still living—pair of African cichlids, and refile all her father’s paperwork. The only sign remaining of last night’s break-in was the shattered back window that would be replaced on Monday.
    He glanced at Lindsey and saw worry on her face. He knew she was still thinking about that blue van—she was convinced it was following them. She’d seen it—or a similar vehicle—twice since the pet shop. Once on the freeway. A second time just outside the hospital parking lot.
    While Kyle didn’t want to dismiss her concerns, he had a hard time believing the connection was legitimate. Scammers didn’t need people on the ground to do their dirty work. The Internet was their world. They could function from any country, under any name, with nothing more than a computer and a few generic e-mail accounts. No DNA or hard evidence left behind at a crime scene. That’s what made them so elusive, so hard for the law to bring down. They didn’t follow victims in dark vans and break in to their houses. Why should they when they could access their victims from the privacy of their own homes, or even in some Internet café halfway around the world?
    No. The only plausible connection was if Mr. Taylor borrowed money to pay Omah and then accidentally ruffled someone’s feathers when he didn’t pay it back. But even that was a dubious