Free Switched by Helenkay Dimon Page A

Palmer at the door. In a room the size of a small bedroom, it wasn’t easy to find privacy and no one was making it easy. They leaned in and fired questions. When Lowell didn’t respond, they turned on each other, throwing out suggestions about what to do next while sirens roared around them.
    He put a hand to his ear to block out the alarm and all the talking and concentrate on his trusted adviser. “What’s happening?”
    “I wish I knew.”
    “That answer doesn’t fill me with confidence. Also makes me question your credibility since it smacks of the exact opposite feeling of what you’ve been selling to the room.”
    Lowell had known Palmer for years. They’d thrown in together soon after Craft took a lucrative business running secured storage space facilities and grew it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. He moved it from servicing small-time residential customers to being the place commercial businesses looked to for long-term privacy and storage solutions. They were the leader in the field, and the cash kept rolling in.
    But creating an empire also created enemies. Family members raged at his refusal to cut them in or be their bank. Former employees who believed loyalty was enough to secure their jobs learned that he demanded results when he fired them and sent them packing from the building minutes later.
    He insisted on greatness and eliminated those who didn’t give it to him. His system ensured that he surrounded himself with the best but had also led to many threats over the years. The latest, which demanded he step down, was less about evening a score than about pushing him out.
    He was not going anywhere.
    Along the way while transitioning from one type of company to another, Palmer lost a wife who preferred shorter work hours to a bigger paycheck. After that, their son died and Palmer ended up alone. Through it all, he never lost his commitment to the job. So when Palmer’s voice wavered with worry now, Lowell knew to listen.
    Lowell went with his gut. “Call the police.”
    “We still can’t phone out.”
    “Find a satellite phone if you have to.”
    The siren continued to wail in the background. Lowell strained to hear the low rumble of Angie and Mark’s conversation over the buzzing and squealing, but he couldn’t make out more than a few useless words. The alarm blocked out everything unless you were standing right on top of someone else.
    And Angie and Mark did appear to be rather close all of a sudden. Lowell couldn’t remember ever seeing them talk outside of an executive meeting before now. This was her new ploy. She’d flirted with a business associate from another office the week before. Suddenly she’d turned on the charm to some of the executive staff, or attempted to, when she’d always found them beneath her in the past. It was as if she was trying to ingratiate herself, but he had no idea why.
    She’d used a few days together over Thanksgiving when his family was out of town to insist he buy her a condo. When he said no, she’d smashed the favorite decanter in his library and made a scene. Threatening to remove her from the property had calmed things down.
    Now he wondered if it was time to move on. After all, women like Angie were not hard to find. Beautiful women gravitated to power. He possessed it, which meant he could possess them.
    But dropping her would be difficult. She had skills and she listened. She handled the unpleasant items at work and eased his stress during the day. She gave him something he needed, and she knew that.
    Maybe he should just buy her the condo.
    “Sir?”
    Lowell dragged his attention back to Palmer, but the disgust over Angie’s newest and not-so-veiled attempts at making him jealous still boiled his blood. “Well, we can’t sit here and wait for someone to attack me.”
    Forget the woman. Forget the inconvenience. Lowell swore under his breath as the reality of the situation hit home. This attack wasn’t a test run. Whatever was