and spy movies. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t James Bond. Cameron snorted to himself. He wasn’t even James Bond’s less skilled cousin Harry Bond. Oh Lord. If this was the direction of his thoughts, he needed to get out of there fast. And dammit, he wished he had his bag. He and Gunter had planned for this, why hadn’t he taken his bag? Cameron really could be smarter than this. He mentally kicked himself for letting his panic beget stupidity.
First, he had to figure out if they were watching him. Slowly, he pushed back to his feet and walked around the room. Thanks to his training with Lisette, Cameron at least felt confident he could sense when a spell was being used near him, and there was nothing in the room to indicate they’d placed any kind of spell on the room. The other building had also shown that the Jaeggi preferred to rely on technology for their security rather than wards. As far as he could tell, there were no security cameras in the room monitoring his movements. Maybe they had just moved in and hadn’t set up all their security yet.
Well, the best way to figure it out was to do something he wasn’t supposed to do.
Sitting on the floor, he wiggled and folded up his long body, working his bound hands in front of him. He was panting, his shoulders ached, and his jeans were coated in a layer of dirt and dust by the time he was done, but he got it.
Thanks to Cassie’s weird fascination with strange YouTube videos and challenges, he knew exactly how to get free of the duct tape without a knife. One bored weekend when they were both home from college, Cassie had Cameron bind her hands and feet with duct tape to see whether these video instructions actually worked for escaping. Their parents had been less impressed, thinking it wasn’t the most productive use of their time for a Saturday night.
Getting back to his feet, he lifted his hands high above his head and then brought them down, forcing his elbows to go past his ribcage. It took several tries with this sharp, jerking motion, but the tape finally ripped. Using his teeth, he worked on tearing the tape away from his wrists until he was free.
He wadded up the tape, tossed it to the floor, and waited with his breath held for someone to storm in and tape him up again. Or maybe they’d use something like rope or handcuffs. He had tricks for those as well thanks to Cassie, but the duct tape was by far the easiest for him to escape from.
But the door never opened. Mages didn’t rush in to stop whatever he was planning. If they were watching him, they obviously didn’t see him running loose in the room as a threat.
Good. They could just keep underestimating him. If they knew about him and his sister, it was likely they already knew he’d not been raised with a knowledge of magic. Probably thought he was just some normal, boring human.
Well, this boring human wasn’t going to simply escape from their clutches. He was going to make them pay for ever threatening his clan and his dragon. They were his family, and nobody fucked with his family.
But that wasn’t going to be the easiest of tasks. He was essentially just an apprentice when it came to using magic, and these mages clearly had a lot more experience than him.
However, he did have a shiny new master’s in mechanical engineering that could be of use as well. Maybe a combination of the two could work to get him out of this damn building. He loved Alric, but he was not waiting around for his mate to show up and rescue him. He was not going to be bait and let Alric walk right into a trap.
Trying to make as little noise as possible, Cameron hurried over to the tables at the far side of the room. This place might have been used as a workshop of sorts judging by the flotsam he found. The tables were covered in random bits of scrap metal, screws, a few rusty tools, and…bullets. There weren’t many. Just a handful of different sizes. But bullets meant a tiny amount of gunpowder and copper casings. Definitely useful. The primer would also have a useful chemical compound, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get at it without the proper tools.
He snatched up