The shifter finally said, “If I let you make a call, you’re going to do it on speaker phone, just to make sure you’re not trying to play me.”
Relief washed over Marco, but he didn’t let it show. He shrugged a shoulder. “Fair enough. Put in this number.” He rattled off the number, and the phone rang.
After three rings, Aislinn—one of the DEFEND co-leaders—picked up. “Hello?”
Marco switched to English. “Hey, I have a situation. What do you know about a woman called the Collector?”
Aislinn paused, and then said, “Why am I on speaker phone?”
He glanced at the shifter. “Caught that did you?”
“Answer the question.”
“Well, there’s a guy here who claims that he works for this Collector woman, and he wants to strike a deal to rescue his younger sister.”
“Humph. Mysterious stranger, are you there?”
Aislinn could sound like a drill sergeant when she wanted, so Marco moved his head in encouragement, and the shifter said, “Yes, ma’am, that would be me.”
“Tell me in three sentences or less why I should help you.”
Marco tried not to laugh at the shifter’s face. Aislinn’s orders brooked no argument—you followed them or you knew something bad would happen.
The shifter cleared his throat. “I have inside information about how the Collector works, and I also know the number of Feiru with latent abilities that she has under her control.”
“That was one sentence, bravo. Care to use the other two?”
“I know how the Collector plans to capture Camilla Melini. We need to work fast, because once the Collector obtains Melini, she’ll be forced to kill to protect someone she loves.”
Marco couldn’t resist asking, “Who?”
The shifter shook his head. “I won’t say anything else until I get a sign of goodwill that you’ll see to my sister’s safety.”
He was tempted to move so that he could use his elemental magic, but he knew that breaking his promise to the shifter could end up hurting Cam in the long run. Instead, he said to Aislinn, “What do you think, boss?”
There was some typing on the other end of the line. “Give me five minutes, and I’ll call you back.”
“But what about Cam? The longer we wait, the more time we give t
he Collector to capture her.”
“The longer you argue with me, the longer it’s going to take me to verify and put things in place. I’ll call you back.”
The line went dead.
Marco pulled against his ties, but they held firm. Cam had barely escaped killing someone against her will once. He hated to think she might have to go through with it again. Especially since he knew that if the targets she had to take out were innocent, she’d never forgive herself.
There was little he could do to help Cam right now, but in order to be prepared for when Aislinn called back, he needed to negotiate his release. He looked at the shifter. “I need to be ready for when my friend calls back, so either I can get rid of my bonds myself, or you can cut me free.”
The shifter stared at him a second, and then said, “I think you care for Melini.”
Marco decided to play dumb at the random change of topic. “Of course I care about my friends. Now, are you going to free me?”
The shifter backed away, to the other side of the room, and he took out his gun. “Go ahead and free yourself. But if you try anything funny, I shoot first and ask questions later.”
Marco shifted his body until he could point his finger to the west. He drew the elemental particles to the bonds around his wrist, and froze them. A quick tug and the plastic snapped.
Waiting for Aislinn to call was torture, and as the seconds ticked by, all he could think about was helping Cam. He knew she was a DEFEND soldier with skill, but skill mattered little when dealing with a person that might be mentally unstable—like Ekstrom—or with a potential sociopath, like the Collector.