Tegan froze, eyes narrowing on the petite female as she turned to look at him at last. “What kind of errand? What do you know?”
“I tracked him from the train station to a FedEx store. He was there to pick something up.”
Tegan’s brain went into instant recon mode. He started firing questions at her one after the other. “Do you know what it was? Or where it came from? What exactly did the Minion say or do? Anything you can remember might be—”
“Helpful?” Elise suggested, her tone nothing but pleasant even though her eyes flashed with the spark of challenge.
Tegan chose to ignore the slight goad. She may want to grind that tired axe with him from the morning, but this shit was too critical. He didn’t have the time or interest for playing games with the female. “Tell me everything you recall, Elise. Assume that no detail is insignificant.”
She went through a basic recap of what she observed about the Minion she’d hunted the night before, and damn if the female didn’t make an excellent tracker. She’d even gotten the Minion’s name, which might prove useful if Tegan decided to locate the dead human’s residence and dig around for further information.
“What will you do?” Elise asked as he formulated his plan for the night.
“Wait for nightfall. Hit the FedEx store. Grab that goddamn package and hope it gives up some answers.”
“It won’t be dark for a couple more hours. What if the Rogues send someone to get it before you have the chance?”
Yeah, he’d thought of that too. Damn it.
Elise cocked her head at him, like she was measuring him somehow. “They might already have it. And because you are Breed, you’re stuck here waiting for the sun to set.”
Tegan didn’t appreciate the reminder, but she was right. Fuck it. He needed to act now, because the odds were good there wouldn’t be a later.
“What street is the delivery place on?” he asked her, flipping open his cell phone and dialing 411.
Elise gave him the location and Tegan recited it to the computerized prompts on the other end of the line. As the call connected to the FedEx store, he prepared to hit whoever answered with a little mental persuasion, level the playing field while he had the chance. The line picked up on the fifth ring and the voice of a young male who announced himself as Joey offered a disinterested greeting.
Tegan latched on to the vulnerable human mind like a viper, so focused on wringing information out of the man he hardly noticed Elise coming toward him from the kitchen. Without a word, she dropped a weighted plastic grocery bag down in front of him, a rectangular box at the bottom of it clopping on the counter.
Through the yellow smiley face “Thank You” logo stamped on the bag, Tegan saw an airbill addressed to one Sheldon Raines—the same Minion that Elise had killed the day before.
Holy hell.
She couldn’t have—
He released the FedEx clerk’s mind at once and cut off the call, genuinely astonished. “You went back for this today?”
Those pale violet eyes holding his surprised gaze were clear and keen. “I thought it might be useful, and in case it was, I didn’t want to risk letting the Rogues have it.”
God. Damn.
Although she didn’t say it, Tegan could tell that Elise’s Darkhaven-bred propriety was the only thing keeping her from reminding him how not a few hours before he’d assured her there was nothing she could do to help the Order in this war. And whether it was stubborn defiance or courageous savvy that sent her out today, he had to admit—at least to himself—that the female was nothing if not surprising.
He was glad for the interception, whatever it might prove to yield, but if the Rogues—particularly their leader, Marek—were expecting the package, then it must be of some value to them. The question remained, why?
Tegan pulled the box out and sliced open the tape seals with one of the daggers at his hip. The return address appeared to be one of those shared-office corporate types. Probably bogus at that. Gideon could verify that fact, but Tegan was betting that Marek wouldn’t be so careless as to leave a legitimate paper trail.
He tipped the box and the contents—a thin, leather-bound book sealed in bubble wrap—slid into his hand. Peeling the cushioned plastic away from the antique, he scowled, perplexed. It was just an unremarkable, half-empty book. A diary of some sort. Handwritten passages scrawled in what appeared to be a mixture of German and Latin covered a few of the pages; the rest were blank except for crude symbols doodled here and there into the margins.
“How did you manage to get this, Elise? Did you have to sign for it, or leave your name, anything?”