Switched (8 page)

“I think everyone is suspect at the moment.” Palmer pointed at a chair. “So sit.”

* * *

R
ISA DIDN’T WAIT FOR AN
invitation. She jogged to the corner of the room where it emptied into the hallway and peeked around. In the precious few seconds it took for her to get across the room, Aaron and Royal had taken over and subdued the newest attacker. Royal stood holding his gun while Aaron had the man on the floor and a knee in his back.

“Here.” Royal slipped a zip tie out of his back pocket.

Aaron looked impressed with the preparedness but didn’t comment. He was too busy tying the guy’s hands and dragging him to his feet. And he wasn’t exactly gentle. The guy had his head knocked into the floor twice before he stood up.

While Royal reengineered the makeshift lock on the bathroom door, Aaron pulled the attacker toward the main room. Risa tried to duck into the shadows, but Aaron’s gaze zeroed in on her before she could get back into position.

“Too late,” he said.

“I heard it was under control,” she replied. Not that there was any real reason to hide. There was nowhere to go in the open room, and she was not about to go off on her own.

Aaron brought the guy into the room and slammed him to his knees, earning a grunt from the attacker. “It’s time to talk.”

The guy looked around, his gaze freezing on the body a few feet away. “Who is that?”

“One of yours.”

“Real bullets.” Royal gave his report after checking the new attacker’s weapons.

The anxiety twisting in Risa’s gut eased when she saw the guy’s face. She knew violence came in all sorts of packages, even when the guys were young and attractive like this one. He couldn’t have been more than early twenties with huge eyes and a baby face. There was nothing hardening or scary about this one, except the weapon. He didn’t seem to fit in with the others at all.

“What are you doing?” the guy asked when Aaron paced around him without saying a word.

“Figuring out the best place to shoot you that will cause pain but not kill you. Well, not right away.”

Her gaze zoomed in on Aaron. From everything she knew about him, this was a con, but then it turned out she didn’t know much about him, did she? Still, she knew in every part of her soul that he was rock solid.

“Maybe we should—” She was ready to fight for the kid’s life, but Royal waved her off.

“I didn’t do anything.” The kid rocked back and forth as his voice tripped higher.

Aaron stopped pacing and stood right behind the guy. He pushed the gun into the back of his head. “You have two seconds to tell me who hired you.”

The kids fumbled to get the words out. “I don’t know.”

Aaron pushed harder. “I’m getting tired of that answer.”

The kid winced but stayed quiet.

Risa clenched her fists to keep from reaching out and breaking this up. Instinctively she knew this was the right way to get the information, but she hated the threats and posturing. Desperation clawed at her. She wanted this over. All of it and now.

“This is ridiculous and you are wasting time. Answer him,” she blurted it out, earning a fresh scowl from Aaron.

When Royal motioned for her to join him, she complied. The new angle gave her a clearer view of the kid’s face. Seeing him head-on ramped up the energy buzzing around inside her.

Aaron leaned in until his mouth hovered near the kid’s ear and his foot clamped down on the kid’s calf. “Listen to the lady. She is trying to help you live to see tomorrow.”

The kid’s mouth dropped open several times before any words came out. “I was hired by my uncle. He’s up here somewhere.”

Royal walked over to the dead attacker and shifted him so his face was visible. “Is this him?”

Risa turned away but not before seeing the skin around the kid’s mouth turn green. He heaved and she didn’t blame him.

When the coughing fit subsided, the kid started talking. The words came out in a long, breathless stream. “No, I don’t know that guy. There were three teams of two. My uncle came up first. I was in the second wave, but when the first failed to check in, we came looking.”

The uncle was the blond in the bathroom. She’d bet on it. They had the same eyes.

“What was your assignment?” Aaron asked.

“I don’t—”

Aaron tramped down harder with his foot. “Kid, I am out of patience. You have five seconds and I start shooting.”

The kid squirmed under the assault. His voice turned breathy as panic radiated off him. “I don’t know.”

“One.”

Her insides kept jumping. She was desperate for the kid to answer before something terrible happened. Not that Aaron would hurt him just to hurt him, but she didn’t think he’d bluff.

The kid shook his head hard enough to knock something loose. “You have to listen to me.”

“Two.”

“I’m not even supposed to be here.” He focused on her as if silently begging her to step in and end the torment. “I was a late addition to the team.”

“Please answer him.” She whispered the plea as tension choked the room.

“Four.”

The kid’s eyes followed her until she stopped looking at him and focused on a spot on the floor instead. Her heart ripped in two. Part of her wanted to tackle Aaron and the other wanted to grab the gun and hurry this up.

The kid said, “Please, don’t—”

“Five.”

“Wait!”

She looked to see the kid flinching away from the gun. He swallowed hard enough for her to see his throat move.

Royal exhaled next to her. “Now, kid, or I’ll take a turn on you.”

“We were supposed to be on this floor at a certain time to grab this woman.” He peeked up at Risa. “We weren’t going to hurt you.”

The words didn’t amount to an apology or an explanation. They didn’t make much sense, either. “You have the wrong woman,” she said. “Not that having the right one would make this plan any better.”

“That…” The kid looked around at all of them. “What?”

“Why do you think I’m the woman?”

The kid snorted as though they’d all missed an obvious point. “There was only supposed to be one person, this brunette woman, on the floor at the set time. We got the place and time. It seemed so simple.”

“How about now?” Aaron asked, the disgust evident in his voice.

“You didn’t have a photo?” Royal asked.

“No. One woman in a specific location. We pick her up, hold her and then let her go when the word comes. It’s all part of some plan to get money.”

Aaron lifted his foot off the kid’s calf. “So then she was supposed to be a hostage for ransom? Gotta tell you, that’s not sounding as no-big-deal as you’re pretending this is.”

“I just know she wasn’t really supposed to be touched, but…” The kid looked at the ceiling and floor, everywhere but at a person. If he had some big secret, it was taking a long time spitting it out. “Something went wrong.”

Her sympathy fizzled. Probably had something to do with being on the receiving end of an ongoing attack.

She shot him her best you’re-an-idiot frown. “No kidding.”

“No, you don’t understand.” The kid tried to move closer to Risa, but Aaron pulled him back. “This wasn’t a real kidnapping.”

“What was it?” Aaron asked.

“A joke, I guess. I don’t really know. It’s just that it was clear there was nothing illegal about what we were doing.”

“A nonillegal kidnapping? I’m not sure what law books you guys are looking at, but that doesn’t make much sense.” Royal looked ready to explode. If he shifted one more time, his weapon might accidentally go off. “And why do you have guns and bullets?”

Fear cleared from the kid’s eyes. “In case something went wrong.”

Aaron finally looked at her. “I guess it’s good to be prepared.”

“I’m starting to hate the holidays,” she mumbled under her breath.

“Tell us what’s happening downstairs.” Aaron walked around to face the kid.

Whatever he saw in Aaron’s face had the kid answering without trying to stall. “Most of the people have been evacuated. There’s a group in a small conference room near the party.”

Royal threw up his hands. “And?”

The kid didn’t handle Royal’s anger any better than he did Aaron’s. When either man spoke, the kid seemed to shrink. Much more and he’d be in a ball on the floor.

She was just about to step in when the kid answered again. “We’re awaiting further instructions.”

“From?” The chill in Aaron’s voice washed over the room.

“I don’t know.”

Silence pounded in on her from every angle. No one said a word and neither man moved. The kid had turned a strange shade of yellow-green, as if he was on the verge of throwing up.

Finally Aaron broke the quiet. “You know what that means?”

Royal nodded. “Yes.”

When they didn’t say anything else, she gave up on being subtle. “Anyone want to fill me in?”

“Inside job.” Aaron’s words resonated, and then no one said anything at all. They were too busy wincing and covering their ears as the building’s alarm system rang out.

Emergency blue lights flickered to life and flashed from the small boxes in the upper corners of the room. The alarm wound up and then blared in a high-pitched beeping sound before repeating the process again. A computer-generated voice told them to leave the building.

“What’s happening now?” She shouted the question over the noise.

“It looks like someone has moved on to plan B.”

Chapter Eight

Lowell watched Palmer rattle the door handles before turning back to the rest of the room. The small area had broken into chaos at the first flashing emergency light. For only six people, they made a lot of noise. Everyone but Palmer’s security man shouted questions and insisted they get out.

“The building could be on fire,” Mark pointed out as he argued that they should run.

Brandon stood up. “I told you we needed to leave. Staying here puts us in more danger.”

“In light of what’s going on now, I have to agree with Brandon on this,” Angie said.

Palmer held up his hand. “Everyone calm down. There is no need for concern. We are safest in this room.”

Brandon tried to push toward the door. “How can you say that? Something is happening out there. Anything from fire to an attack on my father and we’re here, vulnerable and just waiting to be picked off.”

“I need everyone to sit down. Chaos is our enemy here.” Palmer grabbed Brandon’s arm and shoved him in a chair. “Mr. Craft, can I talk with you a second?”

Lowell met 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.”