Chapter 45 The Silent Clubhouse
Aria POV
The heavy steel door of the safe cellar closed with a loud thud that echoed through the small underground room, and I felt a knot of panic tighten in my throat because being trapped behind feet of reinforced concrete made everything feel much more real.
Grayson had been gone for less than twenty minutes, but the air already felt different without him in the building, and the silence down here was so heavy that I could hear the humming of the emergency lights and the steady click-clack of Nana’s knitting needles. I tried to pace the length of the room, which was only about ten steps from one wall to the other, but the low ceiling and the lack of windows made me feel like the walls were slowly moving in to crush us.
"You need to sit down and stop that pacing, Aria, because you’re going to wear a hole in the floor and it isn’t going to bring that boy back any faster," Nana said, not even looking up from the green wool she was working on.
"I can't just sit here and wait for something bad to happen, Nana, because Grayson went into a trap and we’re stuck in a hole while the Iron Fangs are probably planning their next move," I replied, pulling my phone out of my pocket for the tenth time only to see that the bars were completely gone.
I tried to refresh my email and then my messages, but the screen just kept spinning in a circle until a notification popped up saying there was no network connection available. "The signal is dead, and I can't even check the news to see if there’s any trouble near my apartment or the bakery, so we’re basically blind and deaf down here."
"That’s the point of a lockdown, child, but I think you’re more worried about losing that little life you built for yourself than you are about the concrete walls," Nana said, finally setting her needles down and looking at me with those eyes that always seemed to see too much.
"I worked so hard for that life, Nana, because I wanted to be someone who didn't have to look over her shoulder every five minutes, and I actually liked waking up and knowing I had a job at the bakery where people just wanted bread and a smile," I confessed, sitting down on the edge of the small cot that smelled like dust and old laundry.
"If Grayson loses this fight, or if the Iron Fangs decide that I’m a problem that needs to be erased, then all of that work goes away and I’m right back where I started, or maybe even worse off than before."
"When a wolf goes to war, he doesn't just fight with his claws, he fights with everything he owns, and that means everything he loves becomes a target for the other side to hit," Nana warned me, her voice sounding very old and very tired in the quiet room.
"You chose to step into his circle when you helped those children, so you can't expect the world to stay the same as it was when you were just a girl selling cupcakes, because the people outside those gates don't see a baker anymore, they see a weakness they can use against Grayson."
I didn't want to hear that, so I stood back up and started checking the heavy door to see if it was actually locked from the outside, but I found that the handle turned easily because Jax hadn't wanted us to feel like prisoners. I knew I was supposed to stay put, but the thought of sitting in the dark and waiting for a signal that might never come was more than I could handle, so I looked at Nana and saw that she was already closing her eyes for a nap.
"I'm just going to go up to the security room to check in with Jax, and I promise I’ll be right back down if anything sounds like it's going wrong," I whispered, and since she didn't argue with me, I slipped out of the door and headed up the narrow stone stairs.
The hallway above was strangely quiet, and the usual noise of the pack members laughing or arguing was gone, replaced by the sound of heavy boots patrolling the perimeter outside.
I made my way to the tech room where I found Jax sitting in front of a wall of monitors, and he looked like he was about to throw his headset across the room because he was slamming his hand against the desk.
"Tell me you have a signal, because my phone is a paperweight and I can't even get the radio to stop hissing," I said, walking into the room and standing behind his chair.
"The witch-tech is hitting us hard, Aria, and they’ve set up some kind of jamming field that’s bouncing off the hills, so we’re cut off from the city and the patrol leads can't even talk to each other if they’re more than a block away," Jax explained, pointing to a screen that was filled with nothing but static and flickering lines.
"I’ve got the perimeter cameras on a closed loop so we can still see the courtyard, but anything outside the main gate is a total mystery right now, and I don't like not knowing where Darius has his men positioned."
"Can I help with anything? I'm pretty good with small electronics and I used to fix the old scanners at the warehouse when the tech guys were too busy," I offered, pulling up a chair and looking at the mess of wires on the floor.
Jax looked at me and then at the monitors, and he gave me a small, tired smile that made him look much older than he was. "Actually, if you can help me reroute the emergency antenna through the garage's copper wiring, we might be able to get a low-frequency feed from the city's traffic cameras, but it’s going to be a messy job and you’re going to get even more grease on those clothes."
"I don't care about the clothes, Jax, I just want to see what's happening out there," I said, reaching for a pair of wire cutters and getting to work because I needed something to do with my hands before I lost my mind.
We spent the next forty minutes working in a focused silence, and I felt a little bit better as we managed to get a grainy, flickering image of the main road on one of the smaller screens. It wasn't much, but it was a link to the world outside, and as I watched the empty street, I kept hoping I wouldn't see Grayson’s truck coming back in pieces.