Cassandra didn't know why she was back here. It had never given her anything but trouble when she had been there, and even that was only a brief visit. Yet here she was, sitting in Wuher's dark and dingy cantina, listening to the Modal Nodes and trying not to think about what was in the glass in front of her. Her contact was around here somewhere, the drink would identify her as the person he, she, or it was looking for. All she had to do was wait. Something that even she in thirty some odd years of life hadn't quite fully mastered.
"You're late," she said without looking up. It always unnerved people when she did that.
"I had to dodge some other hunters. Like Bossk."
She'd heard the name. It failed to impress her. "You said you had information for me that I would be particularly interested in."
"I know where Boba Fett is."
The name, despite the fact that the person to whom it belonged was supposedly five years dead, made her shiver in the heat of the room. She leaned back slowly, not wanting the man to see that he had her full and complete attention. "And?"
"And what?" the man replied, obviously nettled at not getting the expected reaction. He really was new at this game.
"Boba Fett's dead. Wherever he is, the scavengers have probably already picked his corpse cleaner than a …"
"He's alive. He won't stay that way for much longer, but he is alive. I saw him moving." The man shuddered, and that alone convinced Cassandra that he'd seen the bounty hunter. Only Boba Fett could inspire that much fear, even as half-dead as he would have to be after having crawled out of the Sarlaac. "He'd've killed me if he noticed me."
"Most likely." Cassandra took a drink, sat back. "So why bring this information to me?"
"Of all the smugglers, bounty hunters, fringe runners… out of all of them, you're the only one who's never come into contact with Boba Fett. You've never been within a system of him. I figure, you two got some sort of connection."
Cassandra suppressed a shiver. If this low-life no-brains scumbag had figured that one out, how many other people had? Or was it the sort of bizarre conclusion only someone with this much time on their hands, and desperation to get money any way they could, would reach? Perhaps. Even so, it wasn't really something she could let slide. "Where is he?"
"Nuh-uh. Cred first, then information."
"How much?" This was the part she was easy with. While he was busy negotiating the price, she would rummage through his mind and pick the information out of his brain. And more, she would wipe all memory of this encounter, and of the pattern in her behavior he had discovered.
"Ten thousand."
She snorted. "For ten thousand I could buy droids and search for him myself."
"That'd take too long. By the time you found him he'd already be dead."
"Seven thousand."
"Nine and five."
They haggled back and forth, as she was careful to take just enough time that he wouldn't notice what was going on, wouldn't become suspicious. She rarely used her force talents to influence people anymore, but now she really was desperate, and didn't want the man to know. Finally she had the information she wanted. It was both better than she had expected and worse than she'd hoped. She sat there for several minutes, thinking about what to do.
The man at the table blinked and looked up as Wuher shouted angrily at two Rodians who looked like they were about to start a fight right there in the bar. He stared at the drink in front of him, wondering how long he'd been dozing. For that matter, what the hell was he doing in a dive like this, anyway? Draining his glass, he shoved his way out of the cantina, grumbling.
