“Jabba?” Kallie repeated, stunned.
“—and I’ll devote the rest of my life to finding Jabe.” Orrin struggled to look earnest. “And if it’s already too late, I’ll exterminate the lot of them. You lost Dannar to these monsters. I lost a son. Do it my way, and it’ll be—”
At the front of the store, the door clicked open.
Rifle in hand, Orrin looked up. Annileen and Kallie were already moving, dashing up the long aisle through the darkness. Their weapons clattered to the floor. “Jabe, Jabe!”
Startled, Orrin followed. There, through the open doorway, Jabe was staggering in. A great brown robe, a bit too large for him, blew in the night wind as he entered. In a second, his mother and sister were at his side.
“You’re hurt,” Annileen said, looking at the dried gash on his forehead.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Jabe said weakly. “Ben looked at it.”
“Ben?” Orrin and the women said it at the same time.
“He brought me home,” the boy said, looking tired and bewildered.
Orrin tromped forward, weapon raised. “Is Kenobi here?”
“No,” Jabe said. “He saved me from Plug-eye. I don’t know how he did it, but he did.” He rubbed his bruises. “I guess I was wrong about him.”
Annileen embraced her son again. “This is Ben’s cloak!” she blurted as she grasped his collar.
“He … uh, thought I was cold,” Jabe said, pulling away.
Orrin stood, dumbfounded. Kenobi had seen him in Tusken guise at the Ulbreck place, yes. But Orrin had assumed that the real Tuskens had killed both Ben and Jabe. If Ben lived, that changed everything.
As the women turned back into the store for water and a medpac, Orrin sidled up to confer quietly with Jabe. “Where did Kenobi go?”
“You left me out there,” Jabe said icily.
“Never mind that! Where did he go?”
“I don’t know,” Jabe said. “But he was in a hurry.” Looking first to make sure his mother and sister were still in the back, he slipped the cloak slightly open so Orrin could see that he still wore the Tusken costume underneath. “He didn’t want the locals here to see me in this,” he whispered.
“Huh.” Orrin wondered at that. Why didn’t Ben want to expose Jabe? There could be sinister reasons. Kenobi thought he had something now. Leverage. How would he use it? To blackmail Orrin for money? Or maybe to stop him from marrying Annileen?
Orrin decided it didn’t matter which. Something had to be done about him. “Don’t say anything about tonight,” he urged Jabe quietly. “Don’t tell—”
“Don’t tell me what?” Annileen stood nearby, holding the chair she’d brought for Jabe. She dropped it on the floor. “There’s something else, isn’t there? Something you’ve done, to try to pay off your debts?” She looked at Jabe and then back at Orrin. “Was that what tonight was about? What have you done?” she demanded. “What else have you done?”
“What I had to do,” Orrin said. “And right now, I could be in trouble.”
“You’re already in trouble!”
“A different kind of trouble,” Orrin said. “Legal trouble. The kind that will make it difficult for me to walk around freely, even if I get clear of the criminals and the bank.”
Annileen raised her hands to the ceiling. “Why not? You’ve ruined everything else in your life.” She took a deep breath and grabbed his sleeve. “Orrin, that’s enough,” she said, yanking him toward the doorway. “Leave, and don’t come back. I’ll have the stuff in your office here cleaned out and sent to you!”
“You don’t understand,” Orrin said. “This trouble. I’m in it, yes. But Jabe’s in it, too.”
Annileen and Kallie looked at the boy, baffled. “Jabe?”
Standing in the shadows, Jabe looked down and swallowed. “Yes. I’m in it.”
His mother gawked. “What? What have you done?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Orrin said. He pointed his finger in Jabe’s face. “What matters is Jabe will go away, too, if it comes out. But it won’t come out. Only one other person knows, and I’m going to take care of that.”
Overwhelmed and confused, Annileen seemed not to know where to look. Orrin changed that by getting in her face. “Did you hear me? I can make sure Jabe stays free,” he said, snarling. There wasn’t any reason not to let his anger show. “I’ve been helping your family for years. Bringing business here, watching over you. It’s time you paid me back! So you’d karking well better help me stay alive in the next twenty-four hours.” He jabbed his finger in the direction of the cashbox. “That means we pay Jabba off tomorrow. Me—and you. You’re in this with me whether you want to be or not.”
Kallie moved to her mother’s side. “Mom, what’s going on? What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know, sweetie,” Annileen said, looking between Jabe and Orrin. “But I think we need help.”
Orrin looked up at the chrono. A little over fourteen hours until Jabba’s deadline. The hoodlums would be serious, this time. However it had happened—and it was still a mystery to Orrin—Mosep Binneed and his minions had been embarrassed today in the town house. Orrin didn’t expect that anyone in Jabba’s organization could let that happen twice. Not and continue to draw breath. They’d have to be paid and taken care of.
But he had to deal with Kenobi first. Reenergized, he opened the front door to the night. “I’ll be back in time, tomorrow. I’ll fix it all. You’ll see.”
Her arms around her children, Annileen shuddered. “I see a monster,” she said.
“I’m a farmer,” Orrin replied. “And I’m going to save my farm.” Adjusting the settings on his rifle, he called back to Jabe. “Kenobi—did he say where he was going, boy? Did he say anything?”
Jabe responded coolly. “He had a message for you.”
“For me?” The tall man paused, curious.
“Yes,” Jabe said. “Turn back now.”
Orrin’s eyes widened as he weighed the words. Then he stepped out into the night.
Annileen locked another door and barred it. She’d changed the pass-codes on all the electronic locks, even from the entryway from the garages. Tar Lup would just have to knock in the morning. She’d thought then about entering Orrin’s satellite office in the store, until she remembered Jabe needed tending to back in the house.
Her son sat under the lonely light at her kitchen table. Ben’s cloak was off and being folded lovingly by Kallie. Underneath, Jabe wore the rags of a Tusken Raider. He made no move to hide them, but he looked embarrassed and humiliated.
Seeing her mother stare, Kallie spoke to the air. “I think I’m going to have ammunition in every fight from now on.”
Jabe shook his head. “It’s a long story,” he mumbled. “You won’t believe it.”
Annileen pulled up a chair and sighed tiredly. “Try me.”
Jabe started speaking slowly at first, and then gained speed, rambling from one part of his young life to another. His lost father. His hated job. His need to fit in with the Gaults, whom he saw as doing something with their lives. And his desperate desire to please Orrin, a man of stature and independence.
And he spoke of the favor Orrin had asked, in Mos Eisley.
“He said it was a prank,” Jabe said. “We were going to dress up and scare the Ulbrecks.”
The air went out of Annileen’s body. She sagged. “Wyle Ulbreck. My best customer, Wyle Ulbreck.”
Kallie brought her mother a warm drink. The mug shook in Annileen’s hands. She put it down without tasting it.
“Zedd was supposed to go with them, but he couldn’t,” Jabe said. “Orrin had a whole trove of the Tusken gear—from the Settlers’ Call rescues, I guess. I thought—I don’t know, that maybe this was my chance to get on Orrin’s lead support team.”
“By dressing up like the people who murdered your father and scaring an old man.” Annileen was numb as a droid, at this point. “Makes perfect sense to me.” She waved aimlessly. “Continue.”
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“It was just supposed to have been rifles on stun,” Jabe said, his voice faltering. “It was to teach Old Wyle a lesson, for showing up Orrin all the time. Nobody likes Ulbreck anyway, Mom. You know that!”
Wraithlike, she rose and found the medpac on the kitchen counter. There was still that raging bruise and cut on Jabe’s forehead. She could treat that, even if she had no idea what was going on inside his skull.
Jabe breathed faster, the details of the raid spilling forth as Annileen cleaned the cut. He told of knocking Wyle down, and of Mullen and Veeka’s capture of Magda Ulbreck. He told of Ben’s arrival and the Gaults’ subsequent departure. And he told of the real Tuskens appearing, and the ambush. His words growing quicker and louder, he moved his head against Annileen’s efforts to treat him.
“Ow! Ow!”
“Do you want me to stop?” Annileen asked, pulling back the applicator.
“No,” Jabe said, tears in his eyes. “I want to feel it.” Forlorn, he looked up at her. “Do you want me to stop?”
She shook her head. “I need to know. You said Ben saved you?”
Jabe nodded. “I woke up and Orrin was gone. And Plug-eye was there. And Ben was talking to them. In Basic,” he said, puzzled. “Somehow he was talking to them, bargaining for me!” Every word seeming to remind him of how close he’d come to the end, he struggled to catch his breath. “Mom, they were going to kill me—or worse!” He blinked rapidly, tears finally falling.
Annileen put down the applicator and pulled his head close to her chest. “I know. But Ben was there.”
“Yeah,” Jabe said, sniffling. “I don’t know what he said, but it worked. And he took me out of there.” He looked up at her, his eyes red. “But the Gaults just left me. Orrin ran—”
“It’s okay—”
“—he ran, and the others were already gone,” he said, his voice rising with alarm. “And Mullen and Veeka, back with the old woman—they acted like they were really going to hurt her, Mom! And I hit that old man …”
“And that’s not okay,” she said, stroking his blood-matted hair. “But we’ve all found out a lot tonight.”
“I wanted something to do,” he said, voice faltering. “I’ve just been so sick of the store. I wanted some action. But this wasn’t like going with the posses. This was wrong.”
Annileen just nodded. Well, I’m glad to hear that.
She released him and dried his eyes. “Did you tell all this to Ben?” she asked, placing the bandage.
“All of it.”
“And?”
Jabe wiped his eyes. “He said I should follow his advice for Orrin—that I should turn back now. And he said that only a fool follows another fool.”
Kallie watched, mystified. “Do you still think he’s crazy?”
Jabe smiled weakly. “I’m not one to judge.”
CHAPTER FORTY
ANNILEEN HAD SAT with her children until after midnight, comparing notes about what had transpired with Orrin. Now that her exhausted kids had gone to bed, Annileen clutched her pillow against the breeze and tried to sort it out. So much news. So little sense.
What Jabe had done was bad, yes—but she couldn’t figure out Orrin’s involvement. He’d made the trouble Jabe was in sound darker than a botched prank. But if Orrin needed untraceable money, he wasn’t going to get it robbing Wyle Ulbreck, who famously kept most of his fortune in aurodium-plated ingots, buried somewhere underneath his septic system.
So what were they doing out there?
She looked for the seventh time at the chrono by her bed. It was her birthday, now, and had been for three and a half hours. Hours in which she hadn’t closed her eyes, except to cry. Her sparely furnished room lay more than a meter underground, with a high window cracked open to the outside; the smells from the livery, as pungent as they sometimes were, reminded her of her childhood home. But after the night’s events, she just felt cold. She pulled at the brown fabric she’d been resting under until it was over her head.
“Is my cloak comfortable?”
Annileen looked out from beneath the makeshift cover. Backlit by moonlight, Ben sat perched in the open window. He wore the clothes she’d seen him wearing outside his house, the day of that first visit—and he looked grim.
But she was glad to see him, even here, even now. Given his penchant for sudden appearances, this circumstance seemed almost normal.
“Hello, Ben,” she said, sitting up. Belatedly realizing she was lying half dressed under his cloak, she pulled it to her chin and blushed. “Sorry,” she said. “I guess you need this back.”
“No, no, you hang on to it!” Ben turned his head quickly, nearly hitting it on the ceiling above him.
Annileen chuckled, her first laugh in hours. She had him look outside for a moment while she found her nightshirt. “Crisis averted,” she said, passing him his cloak as he slipped down to the floor.
“You must be exhausted,” she said, watching his shoulders sag as he sat on the floor against the wall. She had almost forgotten that their day had started in the desert, before Mos Eisley.
“I am tired. I’ve been very busy,” he replied quietly, a respectful distance from her bed. In the hallway, there was only darkness. “I need you to listen,” he said, “because I don’t have much time.” He looked up at her. “I know Orrin was here.”
Shifting to sit on her knees, Annileen nodded.
“He told you about the money he owed Jabba?” Ben asked.
“And the bank.” Annileen shook her head sadly. “It’s so much. I don’t get how he came to this.”
“It’s about water,” Ben said. “A magical water, that tasted better than any other. And the vaporators that produced it.”
“You mean this,” Annileen said, holding up the flask from her bed-stand. She handed it to him.
Ben didn’t refuse it. He drank, thirstily. Wiping his face, he continued. “You told me Dannar had never developed the formula because of the cost. But that after Dannar died, Orrin invested heavily.”
“Six years ago,” she said, nodding. “Dannar was gone. Orrin’s wife had left. He’d hit bottom. I think Orrin decided it was the way to reclaim his life.”
“But success never came,” Ben said. “Orrin’s debts grew. And he took a loan from someone who really worked for Mosep Binneed, one of Jabba’s business managers.”
“Orrin told me,” Annileen said.
“He started selling things off,” Ben said. “I know because I just came from his office at his ranch.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
Ben nodded. “I figured he kept things there he wouldn’t keep in his office here in the store.” Then he looked up at her guiltily. “Although I checked there, too.”
“But how did you get in?” Annileen squinted. She sighed, impatient. “Never mind. Go on.”
Ben stood, still speaking quietly. “Orrin was broke. So he turned to a resource he had control of. A public trust.”
Annileen gasped. “The Settlers’ Call!”
“You told me there was once enough money in the Fund to defend half the galaxy.”
“I wasn’t serious,” Annileen said, reaching over to nudge the door to the hallway shut. “And he was legitimately using the money to buy weapons and landspeeders. There’s that whole arsenal in the garages!”
“But he also uses those speeders for his ranch,” Ben said. “And there are loans taken out on all the Fund’s vehicles. As for the weapons, they all came from your store. He wasn’t exactly paying full price.”
“And my new landspeeder?”
“Leased. The dealer wasn’t supposed to tell you.”
“Figures.” Annileen’s mouth twisted as she rolled her eyes. “So he’s an embezzler. I guess I’m not surprised.”
Ben paced back in front of the window, his shadow cast by the moon outside falling across the bed. “I’m afraid that’s not all. Orrin could only rely on the Settlers’ Call for financing while the Fund was flush. When the Tuskens were on th
e rampage, that was no problem. But three or so years ago … something happened.”
“I remember,” Annileen said. “After the raid at the Lars place.”
“Yes,” Ben said, looking mysterious in the moonlight. “I’ve heard about that. After that attack, something happened to the Tuskens—I’m not sure what. But it chilled the Sand People to their bones. And the attacks mostly stopped afterward. Didn’t they?”
Annileen sat, wooden, contemplating.
“The attacks stopped,” he said. “And within months, the money stopped. The Settlers’ Call Fund began to dry up.”
“People even stopped buying so many weapons here,” she added.
“Orrin couldn’t make Jabba’s payments. There was nothing left to borrow against. His strategy relied on fear of the Tuskens. So when that fear vanished, he had to create some.”
Annileen’s eyebrows shot up. “I can’t believe this!”
“It’s true,” Ben said, clasping his hands together. “Orrin and his kids—and probably some hands—staged their own attacks. And your arms business came back, and the Fund came back.” He looked out the window. “And they didn’t choose random targets. They struck those who wouldn’t contribute.”
Her mouth dropped open. “How do you know this? Did Jabe tell you?”
Ben shook his head. “The boy seems only to have been brought in now, at the end.”
Annileen was glad to hear that.
“No, the first clue I got was from A’Yark, tonight. She said her Tuskens of the Roiya Rift—what they call The Pillars—have been struck by settlers nine times this season.” He counted on his fingers. “That matches the Fund’s recorded attacks. But A’Yark said the area Tuskens have only raided four homes in that time.”
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