Page 55 of Ramshackle
“Good,” Aiden replies. “Then here’s what we’ll do. Jackson will find and keep an eye on Thorne to get his routine. Where he goes, what he’s doing, when he’s alone…we’ll pick the best chance for us to trap him. Then see what answers we can get out of him about Royce—” Dane opens his mouth. “—and how his gift works.”
Dane’s mouth closes.
Kellan chuckles in the background. “Right. No problem. We’ll just trap the undead wind master and make him tell us all his secrets.”
He has some good points.
Oh! “The cuffs in my room—”
Kell shakes his head, but it’s Aiden who speaks up. “Taken by Vera.”
Damn. Does that mean Vera was at Old Red? Is that why we’re here and not there?
“We have time to figure it out. Jack still has to find and follow him long enough that we know his routines,” Aiden remarks, unperturbed by the obstacles Kellan mentioned.
I’ve already moved on from that conversation, though. It’s a problem for future me. The me right now is stuck on if I’m living underground for the foreseeable future. “Are we going back to Old Red or…”
“No, we’ll be here from now on,” Aiden replies, and my heart sinks.
Kellan’s eyes slide to mine. To read my reaction, I think. I try to force a look of indifference, even though I’m disappointed not to have our own space anymore. Old Red was really growing on me. It started to feel like a place I could call home.
I’d even accumulatedstuffwhile living there.
Wait.
Portia’s butterfly hair clip. It’s still at Old Red, and it was herfavorite.
Ugh. This better not be a fight.
I point my finger at Aiden. “Don’t get mad,” I start, and his eyebrows raise. “But I need to go back there. I left something important. I can be quick, I swear, I just need someone to show me the way out of the bunker.”
Three of the four begin to protest or give reasons why that’s not a good idea, and I sigh.
A fight it is.
Chapter sixteen
Raegan
One heated conversation later,I find myself in the passenger seat of Aiden’s Aston Martin at a bar parking lot. He finally caved under the condition that he and Jackson would accompany me while Kellan stayed back with Dane. We would be in and out, I promised. It might take me a second to find it, considering its size and the mess I heard Vera left behind, but hopefully, it isn’t too far from where I’d left it.
I caution a brief glance at Aiden in the driver’s seat. His face is pensive as he stares through the windshield at something in his mind. We’ve been quiet since splitting from the others. Aiden sent Jack on some task before joining us, so it was only me and him walking together from the bunker through one of the tunnels to this bar.
I’m grateful for the break while we wait for Jack, so my knee has more time to recover before we get to the firehouse.
But now that we’re no longer walking, I begin to fidget.
I can’t stop thinking about the last time we’d been alone together.
Maybe it’s been long enough for Aiden to forget what happened between us and move on, but it’s theonlything occupying my thoughts now.
The spanking. The sex. Then the blowout where I finally told him how I felt.
Did what I said mean anything to him?
He hasn’t brought it up, which leads me to believe that it didn’t make a difference. He still doesn’t trust me.
Then why did he come to save you?
