Why did I park so far away?
Breathless, he glanced behind him. He’d lost his rifle tumbling over the side of a dune, and he wasn’t going back for it. Especially not now, as Ben appeared over the rise. The man dropped Mullen’s gaderffii in the sand.
Orrin patted at his chest as he ran. He’d replaced his pistol since the afternoon in the Hutt’s abode, but he wasn’t about to try to fish for it in the folds of the stupid Tusken garb. Not when his speeder bike was there, its engine already running, thanks to his young assistant.
Mask discarded, Jabe Calwell stood between the bikes, frightened out of his wits. “Orrin, hurry!” he yelled. “He’s coming!”
Orrin looked quickly behind him. Ben was still on top of the crest, yelling something. “Orrin, watch out!”
Orrin decided he wasn’t falling for that. He reached the speeder bike—
—and, in that instant, four figures arose from the night, lunging at them.
Real Sand People.
Two Tuskens grabbed at Jabe, yanking him down into the darkness. Another charged at Orrin, striking the back of his speeder bike with a gaderffii. The hovering vehicle spiraled on the air toward him. Without another thought, Orrin leapt onto it.
The bike continued to spin with him aboard, and the world spun in Orrin’s mind, too. He saw Kenobi, still frozen on the hillside. He saw Jabe, clawing at the air in vain as one captor raised a rock to strike him. And he saw the fourth Tusken charging him, gaderffii held high.
Plug-eye.
Orrin squeezed the throttle and vanished into the night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
ANNILEEN WEARILY PACED the floor of the darkened store. Another night, another missing child. What else was new?
She didn’t know what was keeping Jabe, but at least this time she knew where he was. Or thought she did. Orrin had driven his kids and Jabe to the Gault ranch; Kallie had continued onward to the Claim, as promised. Annileen’s exhausted daughter had shared that much before heading back to the residence to collapse.
But it was nearing midnight, and no one was answering her pages at the Gault place. She’d even tried to reach Orrin on the red comlink, but something must have been wrong with the subspace network. All she heard on the other side were grunts, sounds like the Gamorreans had made in her store. A wrong connection, to be sure. Who knew Gamorreans even carried comlinks?
At least this time she could worry in peace. The store had been empty when Annileen returned from Ben’s. Tar Lup had closed the Claim on schedule, which was more than she could do, most nights. The Shistavanen clerk was staying with a friend locally and would drop off the passkeys in the morning. Annileen reminded herself to thank him. As tightly as she ran the Claim, she had to admit Tar would make a decent manager of his own place someday.
The moons shone outside the window behind the counter, casting the interior contours of the Claim into bluish shadow. Annileen sighed. The store always seemed so much friendlier at night. During the days it was either trying to kill her with stress or bore her to death. There was no middle path.
She’d grown accustomed over the years to the fact that nothing was ever going to change. Sure, there would be some trends amid the daily disasters and intermittent doldrums. Jabe and Kallie would present new and different challenges. The customers would become harder to take. And there would continue to be less time for her at the end of each day. But these would be gentle slides, ending only when she could no longer get her hoverchair behind the counter. Then they’d check her into the senior center outside Bestine, where, no doubt, Erbaly Nap’tee would be her roommate. Annileen would spend her remaining years explaining that no, she didn’t work for the center.
The slide had been gentle—until now. The ride had gotten bumpier. The highs had been higher, filling her with excitement and anticipation. And the slow moments she now found interminable. She’d become more concerned about wasting days than wasting profits. It was as if her life had suddenly gained an importance and a weight it previously didn’t have, or that she’d denied. She didn’t know the reason.
Well, something had changed, of course. There was Ben.
Since that day out on The Rumbles, every hour she’d spent around Ben had seemed full of life. It staggered belief that, in fact, they’d only known each other for a few hours over the course of half a dozen meetings. So much had happened.
The Tuskens had attacked the oasis, something they hadn’t done in years. She’d ridden into a battle and met a most-wanted Tusken warlord—who turned out to be a matriarch and mother, like herself. She and Orrin had both been hassled by big-city lowlifes. And the man her kids knew as the jovial uncle had suddenly declared his love for her.
And she’d begun to imagine a different life for herself. All this had happened, since Ben’s arrival from … where? She still didn’t know. Unbelievable.
Some people are trouble magnets, her mother had said. And by “people” her mother had meant “men,” and by “some,” she meant “all.” It had taken Dannar four years to pass the Nella Thaney Stress Test. Four years during which he’d had to show that, while he might once have been a sand-spitting rowdy, he could stay in the same place and open the store every day. For Annileen’s first two years working the counter, her mother had counted her pay every week, just to see if Dannar was keeping his word. A credit short and he’d have been a no-account dreamer again. But Dannar was Tatooine’s greatest salesman, because eventually he sold Nella Thaney on himself.
Nella wouldn’t have let Ben Kenobi within rifle range of her daughter.
Her mother’s sayings came fresh to her ears. A man with no past is a man with no future. No one with sense moves to Tatooine. Nothing good comes from the Jundland Wastes. Annileen remembered them well. She’d caught herself saying them to Kallie a few times, although she had the integrity to curse herself afterward. Ben had no visible means of support, no occupation, no seeming willingness to commit to anything beyond his solitary existence. And despite his efforts, trouble found him everywhere.
But if he was a jinx, why did she feel so much better having him around?
Annileen walked to the counter and closed the hinged flap. She wouldn’t need her blaster. She wouldn’t take her new landspeeder out in the night to see if the lights were on at Orrin’s house. She would imagine that Jabe had gotten caught up in an all-night sabacc game at the Gault place with Mullen and Veeka and their friends, and she would be fine with that.
Because she was going to see Ben again. Sometime. Maybe soon, and everything would be fine. It always was, when he was around.
Annileen walked through the stacked tables and chairs toward the hallway leading to her residence. Down the darkened hall, something moved in the shadows, giving her a terrifying start.
“Kallie, I thought you’d gone to bed!” Annileen said, heart pounding. She squinted down the hallway. “Kallie?”
A shadowy figure slumped in the doorway to the corridor leading to the garages. “It’s me, Annie.” Orrin’s voice was scratchy and unusually high-pitched. “We have to talk.”
* * *
Orrin sat at the bar stool Annileen had pulled down from the counter. “Don’t turn on the lights,” he said.
“I never do at this hour,” she said, pouring him a drink in the darkness. “The last thing I want is for anyone to think I’m still serving.” She withheld the mug from him long enough to survey him. In the moonlight, Orrin looked as gray as she’d ever seen him. His hair was messed, his face dirty. Gone were the spiffy clothes from Mos Eisley that day; he looked as if he’d dressed out of the back of his landspeeder. “You brought Jabe back, I hope?”
Orrin reached past the mug in her hand and grabbed the bottle instead. “I don’t know where to begin,” he said, raising it.
“Try at the start,” she said, pitching the contents of the mug into the basin.
He looked at her and started to say something. Then he shook his head. “No, no, I can’t tell you that part right now. You’l
l never—”
“Start somewhere!”
He clasped his hands together. They were shaking. Gathering himself, he finally spoke. “I’m out of time. This time tomorrow—” He paused, looking through the darkness at the chrono behind the counter. “No. In about fifteen hours, I have to come up with fifty-six thousand credits.”
Annileen laughed. “What crazy scheme is it now?”
“No scheme,” Orrin said between gulps. He wiped his face with his sleeve. “Just a plan to save my life. My ranch. Everything.”
Annileen gaped at him for a moment before looking at the office door. “Wait. Not the Gossam and the Gamorreans?” She put her hands on the counter and loomed over him. “That’s what the Mos Eisley thing was about?”
Orrin looked down in silence.
“Of course,” Annileen said, wandering half dazed to the end of the counter. “Of course!” She looked back at him. “I called you on the direct link. I got a Gamorrean!”
His head down, Orrin rolled the bottle against his forehead. “I lost the comlink in Jabba’s town house.”
“Jabba!” Annileen exploded.
Orrin didn’t move. “They’re going to kill me, Annie.”
“They’ll have to wait in line!” she thundered. She stomped toward him. “Is this about the vaporators? I thought that bank in Mos Eisley loaned you the money to buy the Pretormins!”
“They did,” Orrin said. “Six years ago. After Dannar died. After Liselle left. My land was the collateral. But the harvest I needed never came in. I never could figure out the formula.” He stood abruptly and started to pace. “I had to borrow more and more. And they wouldn’t loan me any more, and I couldn’t make the interest payments.”
“So you went to Jabba?” Annileen seethed. Nothing her son had ever done, no previous madcap act of Orrin’s, had ever angered her so. “The Hutt? The criminal!”
“I went everywhere,” Orrin said, looking up at her. In the moon rays from the window, he looked like a wounded animal. “No one helps a farmer! And I didn’t go to Jabba. When someone offered money, I took it—”
“No questions asked,” Annileen finished.
Orrin hung his head in shame. “Not enough questions, no. And now I need your help.” He cast his eyes past her, to where the cashbox and her datapads rested. “I know how you save. You can save me. Save my world—”
Annileen fell back against the sink basin, stunned. “You want my money. To pay the Hutt!”
“No,” Orrin said, waving his hand. “I mean yes. But no, it won’t be like that. It’ll be our money, and my fields will be your fields. Once we’re married!”
Annileen rubbed her temples. “I think I’m going to have a stroke.” She looked over at him. “You’re still going on about that?”
“Yes. We belong together!” Orrin put on a smile, but it began to wilt as she watched.
Annileen shook her head. “I don’t get it. You’re in financial trouble, but you’ve got enough money to buy me a landspeeder just so you can win me over? It must have cost—”
“Thousands. But thousands won’t make any difference to me. My problem’s a lot larger. It’s going to take your whole cash account to make Jabba go away.”
“How do you know he will? He’s a Hutt!”
“I don’t know,” Orrin said. “Maybe he won’t. But I know the bank won’t go away, and I owe them many times as much.” He stepped up to the counter again and tried to compose himself. “I also talked to them today,” he said more calmly. “They’d be willing to renegotiate—and that’s where the store comes in.”
Shocked, Annileen looked around in all directions. “I’m not giving them my store!”
“It’ll be our store,” Orrin said. “If the Claim is added to my land as collateral, they’ll negotiate a new payment plan. There’s enough in your cash account to get out from under Jabba now. Then the store’s cash flow will help me service the loan until we get a good harvest.” He gestured to the darkened shelves behind him. “They know what it’s worth, what it brings in. They want it operating!”
Annileen reeled, struggling to register it all.
He folded his hands on the counter, nervous. “They just want an ironclad guarantee that the Claim will always be there as collateral, always operating to service the debt.”
“I can’t guarantee that,” Annileen said. Looking at him, she felt a moment’s pity. “You know, if you’d asked like a normal person, I’d have tried to help you. You know that. But even then, I wouldn’t be able to just chain myself here for years more—for years, just to help a friend!”
“That’s why we have to get married,” he said. Orrin walked to the counter and lifted the hinged section. “The bank said—”
“You told the bank before you proposed to me?” Annileen nearly split apart with outrage. “How romantic! Did they give their blessing?”
“They’d be satisfied,” Orrin said, walking back behind the counter. He reached for her hand. “They’d know you and I were in it together for the long haul, to make both the farm and the Claim a success.” He tried to smile again. “They won’t foreclose. And Jabba won’t foreclose on me. We’ll all be fine.”
Annileen tried to draw her hand away. She couldn’t go along with this, but she didn’t want anything to happen to Orrin, either. For a moment, she wondered whether Jabe knew anything about all this. Had he even returned with Orrin?
And then she thought of something else, and yanked her hand away violently. “Wait,” she said, stepping to the cashbox and datapads. “How did you know what’s in my accounts? And how would the bank know the value of this place?”
Head drooping in the low light, Orrin sighed. “I made copies of the records this morning after you left.”
“You did what?” Annileen’s mouth fell open.
“And I made some holograms.”
Annileen slammed her hands on the back counter. It made sense, now, Orrin getting her out for the day. A family trip to Mos Eisley to get a new landspeeder—that would do it. “Did Tar Lup help you snoop through my files?”
“No, no. But you had lent me the codes so he could work. I logged in before Tar showed up.”
“Get out,” Annileen ordered.
“Annie—”
“Don’t ‘Annie’ me,” she said. She turned her back on him. “I won’t help you fix this. Get out.”
Orrin approached her. “Annie, they’re going to kill me.”
Standing at the end of the counter, she said nothing. There weren’t words.
“Annie, I’m begging,” he said, choking up. “You’ve got to marry me. The bank says—”
“Just go,” Annileen said, tearing up. She felt his presence behind her, could hear his fast breathing. He’d ruined his life and was here, now, invading the one place that was absolutely hers, trying to take it away. “Just go.”
“Okay,” Orrin said, arms sagging. He turned around and started to walk. But after a second, Annileen heard the footsteps stop. Orrin lingered behind the counter with her, calculating. “Maybe there’s another way,” he said.
Annileen looked back but said nothing.
“The store’s just got to be in the family,” Orrin said, stepping toward her, eyes wild. “Maybe the kids—”
Annileen winced. It was almost comical, now. “I really don’t think Mullen is marriage material!”
“No,” Orrin said. “But I could marry Kallie.”
Annileen’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”
Orrin raised his hands to explain. “She’s nearly twenty—”
“In three years!”
Before Orrin could say more, Annileen’s right fist struck his jaw. Krakk!
Hand on his bleeding mouth, Orrin looked at her, betrayed and bewildered.
“Get out!” Annileen yelled, shoving in an attempt to force him out from behind her bar. But the larger man turned instead, his hands grabbing her shoulders like a vise.
Rage entered his eyes. “I don’t care how it happens! But
I’m done asking! I’ve got to save myself, can’t you see?”
Annileen struggled. “Let go!”
Orrin wrestled with her in the cramped space. Overturned bottles smashed to the floor. His anger grew, and he shook her. Annileen wailed. “Annie, just listen—”
Kr-chowww!
A blaze of blue light lit the darkness, striking the wall just behind Orrin’s shoulder. Annileen still frozen in his clutches, Orrin looked across the bar. There in the moonlight stood Kallie, in her nightshirt, rifle quivering in her hands. “Get away from her!” Kallie yelled.
“Kallie, you wouldn’t shoot me—”
“Don’t bet on it!” Kallie fired again, shattering a bottle just to his left. “I’ve never liked you people!” Her face twisted in anger. “You always take advantage of Mom, and now you’re trying to ruin Jabe! Now let her go—and tell me what’s going on here!”
Orrin released Annileen and shook his head. “Kallie,” he said, “you just don’t get it. None of you do.” He looked up, his face lit by the light from outside. “Jabe is dead.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
A’YARK LOOKED DOWN at the exposed face of the unconscious settler in Tusken clothing. Grotesque, as flesh always was. A’Yark was glad it was nighttime. But she could tell the human was not much older than her A’Deen had been. His forehead bled from the rock he had been struck with. He still breathed only because A’Yark wanted to know something. Why is he here?
Curiosity had driven A’Yark to the ranch in the first place. The vaporator thieves from the day before were the dregs of the clan, but they’d stumbled on a gap in the area patrolled by the Smiling One’s posses. A’Yark had insisted on returning with them after dark, to learn more.
The findings had disappointed. By pilfering the worthless water-making device, the young fools had put the local farmer on alert. His house lacked sufficient defenses, but even so, A’Yark had no faith in her companions’ ability to strike it.
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