Orrin blinked. Had a whistler grabbed Boopa? He couldn’t understand how. The creatures weren’t large enough. One settled on Boopa’s body now and began to feast. Hearing no others, Orrin crept out from beneath the desk. There was no one standing atop it. Who had Boopa seen?
Above, through the square gap in the mesh, the broken chain continued to sway, light from the slit windows glinting off it. One window was open to the outside, but there were no whistlers to escape through it. Apart from the one now busy with Boopa, all were gone.
Stumbling off the edge of the platform, Orrin witnessed the mess the room had become. Two Gamorreans lay dying, as well as two henchmen Orrin hadn’t seen before. There was his blaster on the floor near the overturned table, along with his white comlink. He could hear the red one, beeping somewhere in the debris; he didn’t bother to look for it. His hat was crushed beneath the cage.
And then there were the credits, scattered everywhere from Mosep’s desk. Without thinking, Orrin began stuffing his pockets. Some of it was surely his money, after all. No one here would be the—
“H-hello?”
Orrin stopped dead at the sound of the voice. From underneath a Gamorrean, Mosep moaned. “Is someone out there? I believe I’m fractured.”
“I didn’t do this, Mosep,” Orrin said, forgetting the credits and edging toward the door. “I’m just a businessman!”
Stopping in the doorway, Orrin calculated for a moment, then turned. With a strong heave, he rolled the Gamorrean off Mosep’s body. The Nimbanel gasped for air.
Weakly, Mosep turned his head to the right. Seeing the mess, he sighed. “I’m beginning to think this particular trap is ill conceived.” He looked back at Orrin. “You have my gratitude,” the accountant wheezed, still prone.
“And anything else?” Orrin asked, clutching his sides to hide the currency bulging in his pockets.
“Twenty-four hours.” Mosep beheld the room. “I expect I’ll have some remodeling bills to pay before Jabba returns.”
Orrin gave the room a last look and ran.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
ANNILEEN CLICKED OFF her red comlink. “Orrin’s still not answering,” she said. What good was having a direct communications link to the man if he never answered?
That is, if he could answer. Standing beside her new landspeeder in front of the Mos Eisley Inn, Annileen fought to dispel the thought. Orrin and Ben had been gone for more than an hour. She and Jabe had fetched Kallie, and then she’d dropped Jabe off to retrieve the LiteVan, to give him something to do. Anything to keep the boy from rushing into the town house to save Orrin, if he needed saving.
Tired of waiting, she pocketed the comlink. “I’m just going to go to the door.”
Kallie tugged her sleeve. “Wait, Mom. Here comes Jabe!”
The LiteVan hovered to a stop next to the new landspeeder. “Look who I found,” Jabe said, hopping out. The side door opened, and Mullen and Veeka disembarked.
“Oh, joy,” Kallie said.
“Hush.” Annileen walked up to Mullen, who looked more bewildered than usual. “Mullen, have you been able to reach your father?”
The young man mumbled something inaudible. Beside him, Veeka shook her head.
Annileen pressed them. “What are you all doing in Mos Eisley?”
Tongue-tied, Mullen looked at his sister. Veeka shrugged, uncomfortably. “We were just, you know, in town.”
Annileen stared at the pair. “You’re a wonderful help.”
The Gault siblings clearly knew something, which was an unusual enough condition for them in Annileen’s eyes. But before she could ask further, a horrific screech pierced the air.
“Look there!” Jabe said, pointing up the street.
The heavy front door to the town house opened. Half a dozen people of various species bolted from it, running for their lives. In the next second, three winged creatures jetted through the doorway, one after another. They soared low over the heads of panicked pedestrians before angling for the rooftops.
“Kayven whistlers,” Annileen said, unbelieving. She was on offworld safari, after all, without ever leaving Tatooine!
Last, Orrin emerged from the town house. Flushed, hair mussed, the man looked as if he’d lost an argument with a Wookiee. He started to head one way up the street before changing his mind and turning in a different direction. He was about to turn yet again when Annileen saw him and called out.
“Hey!”
She approached him. “Orrin, what was going on in there? What was that about?”
Flustered, Orrin looked back at the building and started walking. What passed for police in Mos Eisley arrived, while others gathered to watch the fattened whistlers roosting across the way. Orrin charged through the crowd. Annileen had to walk quickly to keep up. Orrin finally slowed when he reached where Boopa had parked the USV-5, some distance from the town house.
There, he caught his breath and flashed a beleaguered grin to Annileen. “Well, I’m not selling any water to that place!”
“Are you joking? Who were those people?”
“A dead end,” he said, pulling a mirror from inside his landspeeder. “Serves me right for trying to follow every lead.” He combed his hair with his fingers.
Annileen looked at the others in disbelief.
“Yeah, uh, it was a business deal,” Mullen said.
Veeka nodded. “That’s it. Er, I mean, that’s why … we’re here.” She gulped. “Yeah.”
Orrin rolled his eyes. He moved to straighten his collar. But the act of tugging at his shirt caused dozens of credit chips to tumble from his vest pockets.
Calwells and Gaults alike gawked. “Orrin, what is this?” Annileen demanded.
Orrin knelt, red-faced, as he tried to collect the credits from the dusty ground. It was mostly small change, but from a wide variety of systems—and there was a lot of it. “The, uh … client compensated me for my travel.”
Kallie looked at the pile of currency in his hands and laughed. “Did you come here from Coruscant?”
The jittery man didn’t answer. He looked up at his son. “Get down here, Mullen, and give me your hat!”
Mullen stared blankly. “Where’s your hat, Dad?”
“Shut up and give it to me!”
Mullen passed his hat to his father. Orrin resumed his frantic gathering, only looking up when he saw motion from the end of the street, in the opposite direction from the town house.
Orrin dropped the money and stood. “Kenobi,” he said, watching Ben approach.
Annileen turned. “You’re back!” She looked at Ben and then at the town house. “I thought you were going to check on Orrin?”
Ben bowed. “It seems you’ve found him first.”
Annileen stared at him searchingly.
Jabe shook his head. “Big help you were.”
Orrin looked at the ground, puzzling things through. His eyes widened. “You were looking for me? You’ve …” He stopped mid-sentence and looked back at the town house in the distance. He turned back to Ben. “You’ve been here all the time?”
Ben pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “I’m having some repair work done. The Calwells were kind enough to direct me where I was going. And, yes. Annileen thought she saw you earlier. But I got sidetracked by a rather insistent street merchant.” He clasped his hands together. “Has there been some excitement?”
Orrin glowered at him. “No, none at all.” He turned back to Annileen—and saw the glistening new landspeeder behind her. His face brightened. “Hey, you got it!”
“It’s what you sent us here for,” she said. “It’s lovely, Orrin. But it costs so much—”
“It’s nothing. I’m good for it!” Orrin gestured to his feet, where Mullen and Veeka collected the remaining credits. He stepped over them to join Annileen next to the new vehicle. Putting his left hand on the JG-8’s front steering vane and his right arm around Annileen’s midsection, he managed to hug both her and the landspeeder at the same time.
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”
Accepting the hug despite her unease, Annileen nodded. “It is.”
“And so’s my Annie,” he announced to the others, his arm grasping her more tightly. “A beauty, I mean.”
Orrin released her and turned her to face him. “Annie, listen. This is important. It’s, uh—why I wanted to be here in the city with you now. I knew Mos Eisley was special for you.” He took her right hand. “That landspeeder is just the start. I want you to marry me.”
“Marry you!” Annileen’s eyes bulged. What?
“The whole oasis has had us married for years. What are we waiting for?”
“We’ve been waiting?” This was news to Annileen. She looked out at the others. Kallie and Jabe looked as astonished as she was; Mullen and Veeka, attentive. And Ben simply watched, emotionless.
Orrin clutched her hand harder. “I’ve half raised your kids. You’ve helped me raise mine—”
“Don’t blame that on me!” Annileen yanked her hand away. She looked back at Mullen and Veeka. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Mullen growled. Both Gault siblings held hats full of cash.
Annileen turned on Orrin. “You have to admit this is strange. Until recently, you’ve never shown the slightest interest in me!”
“Come on,” Orrin implored. “You know that’s not true!”
“Serious interest. You’ve joked, sure—”
“If I joked, it was only because I was afraid,” Orrin said. “Afraid you wouldn’t think I was worthy of taking Dannar’s place.” He looked away. “Well, I’ve been working. All this time I’ve put in improving my ranch, all the work with the Settlers’ Call? It’s been me working on me. For you!”
“For me?”
“So you could see what I can be,” he said.
Annileen’s eyes goggled. They had an audience now, bystanders who had drifted away from the city’s attempts to trap the Kayven whistlers. Suddenly self-aware, she stepped back. “Are you looking for an answer now?”
“Soon,” Orrin said. He looked back up the street in the direction of the town house. “Sure, why not now? I know you like Kerner Plaza. They have weddings there all the time. What do you think?”
“I think you need to take one of your stress pills!”
“No joke, Annie,” he said, sinking down on one knee. “I’m for real!”
Shaken, she looked around again. At the landspeeder. At Ben. At the others, and then again at Ben. Her eyes back on Orrin, she spoke a little louder, partly for the benefit of the strangers. “I’ll need a little time to think about it,” she said.
Smile wilting a little, Orrin rose from the ground and dusted off his trouser leg. He bowed to Annileen and turned back to his vehicle. The loiterers, sensing the moment had ended, drifted away.
Seeing Orrin conferring with his children, Annileen spoke with hers. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Kallie shook her head. “If Veeka Gault becomes my sister, I’m going to become one of those B’omarr monks.”
“They cut your brains out,” Ben said.
“Trust me,” Kallie said. “It’d be preferable.”
Speaking quietly, Orrin finished the thirty-second summation of events in the town house for Mullen and Veeka.
“We’re not going to get out of this by talking,” he said. He wiped the sweat from his brow. “It’s not unexpected. Always two plans, you know.”
“I’m not so sure about Plan Two,” Mullen said.
Orrin looked at his son, exhausted. “Great suns, what’s wrong with Zedd this time? Surely his ribs have healed by—”
“He called from the clinic. He’s been taking the wrong painkillers,” Veeka said. “Zedd’s addicted to Wookiee meds.”
Orrin shook his head. “He is incredibly fired.”
“Do we have to go tonight?” Mullen asked. “I don’t think we can go without him.”
“Tonight or nothing,” Orrin said. “We need a fourth, and fast. But I think I’ve found him.” Orrin looked at the Calwells, gathered between their LiteVan and Annileen’s swanky ride. Jabe nodded back to him, respectfully.
Orrin had been bringing Jabe into his confidence a little at a time, and the boy seemed more than eager to be helpful. “Yeah, that’ll actually work pretty well,” Orrin said, walking toward the group.
“Jabe,” he called out. “You want to ride back to the oasis with us?”
Jabe looked surprised by the offer. Standing by the Gault vehicle, Veeka winked at him. Excited, Jabe looked to his mother.
Annileen was skeptical. “Kallie has to take the LiteVan home now to get the animals fed. I didn’t want her going alone—”
“We’ll drive along behind as far as my place,” Orrin said. “My cook droid will get Jabe fed and I’ll drop him at home tonight. Everyone will be safe.”
Overwhelmed by the earlier attention, Annileen assented.
“It’s settled,” Orrin said, waving the boy to his landspeeder. Turning, Orrin saw Ben standing in contemplation, hood shading his eyes. “I thought you had some repair work to pick up,” Orrin said, frostily.
“That I do.” Ben nodded and turned to Annileen. “I can find my own way home.”
“No,” she said. “I’ll drop you and the cooling unit back at your place.” She looked over at Orrin, who seemed none too happy. “I’m still my own woman—I think.”
“Fine,” Orrin said, the old smile returning. “Then I’ll see you tonight.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
SO THIS IS HOW A HERMIT LIVES, Annileen thought as she looked around Ben’s house. It was cleaner inside than outside, which was what she’d imagined, knowing Ben. But the furnishings were impossibly spare. She could not picture him living here in any kind of comfort at all. Every day must be like camping. Which might not be such a bad way to go, she thought, remembering the clutter of her own life.
Annileen finished washing her hands in the basin and dried them quickly. It wouldn’t do to linger here, when she’d just come inside to freshen up—and she’d had to finagle that.
But she had a good excuse. Rooh had found her way home, as Annileen had predicted, but she’d been wrong about how close the animal was to birth. Annileen and Ben had arrived just as the first sun touched the western Jundland mountains—and found mother and son right outside the trough. Annileen’s examination of the eopie and her kid found both healthy; the exertions of the morning must have brought on the early labor.
With a last look around, Annileen stepped through the curtain and into the warm evening. Ben knelt beside Rooh, who was happily munching feed. Annileen lingered outside the door, not wanting to disturb the serene moment.
But Ben noticed her presence. “Rooh’s quite energetic, given her ordeal,” he said, patting the new mother’s snout. “How long should she rest?”
“Eopies are made out of elastic bands,” Annileen joked. “She’s probably ready to race.”
Ben marveled. “So soon?”
Annileen laughed. “Believe me, I envy her. Jabe knocked me off my feet for a month.”
She walked into the yard. The repaired cooling unit sat amid the other junk outside. Ben had remained mostly quiet during the drive to fetch it and the journey here. He’d added little to his tale about Orrin’s absence, apart from a question about the man’s finances, which she found oddly timed. Ben hadn’t pried further. And he hadn’t asked at all about the one thing she most wanted an opinion about.
“Well,” Ben said, rising. “I’d better get the equipment inside while there’s still light. It was a lovely day. Thanks for the help.” With that, he passed her and walked toward the coolant unit. Annileen stood frozen as he knelt beside it.
Finally, she cracked. She marched into his field of view. “Ben,” she said. “Should I marry Orrin?”
Ben paused. “Do you want to marry Orrin?”
“Not especially,” she said. “A lot of people think I should.”
Ben heaved the unit from the ground.
“I’m sure your other friends would be more qualified to advise. Leelee—”
“No,” Annileen said. “Not Leelee.” She walked after him and blocked him from the doorway. He looked at her, puzzled, as she tugged the coolant unit from his hands and set it down by the door. “I want to know what you want me to do.”
Ben shrugged. “It’s your life. Every individual decides his or her own fate—”
Annileen groaned. “Everything’s an adage with you. Ben, are you telling me you’ve never had to deal with a real-life situation? Where you had to make a decision about someone else?”
Finally seeming to sense her frustration, Ben looked away. “I’m human,” he said. “There was someone, once. It wasn’t to be.”
“And you gave up and moved to the Jundland Wastes?” She laughed. “I’d say you didn’t find the right person.”
“Perhaps I did,” Ben said, looking back at her from beneath his hood. “But I wasn’t the right person.”
“More double-talk from Crazy Ben,” Annileen said. Feeling her confidence grow, she took a step toward him, cutting the space between them in half. “Well, I don’t think you’re so crazy. I think you’ve found someone you didn’t expect to find. And that’s not a bad thing,” she said, reaching toward him.
Ben put his hands before him to slow her advance. “Annileen—no. I can’t do this.”
“Are you sure?” She looked up into his eyes. “I think you can.”
“No, I definitely can’t.”
“Everyone loses the reins once in a while.”
He gave an uncomfortable half chuckle. “I said that, didn’t I?”
“Yep.” She clasped his hands and pulled him closer …
… and he drew back and turned away.
“What is it?” She stared at his back. “Is it because of Orrin? Don’t worry about that. I’ve told you, I don’t feel that way about him.”
“And I don’t think you feel that way about me, either,” Ben said, walking toward the eopies.
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