When Jali hurried back to his office, Ayan was still there, reading a magazine at her desk. She gave Jali a worried look as he came in. He had just managed to talk to her before she left for the night.
"You can go now, Ayan," he told her. "I can lock up."
The Zabrak examined him cautiously. "Are you sure?" she asked. "I got your call and I told him—"
"It's all right," he said, dismissing her doubts with a wave of his hand, "if Xhen is still here, you've done more than I expected you to." Ayan still looked doubtful. "And I'll be fine," he added for good measure."
He went into his inner office and sat on the corner of his desk. Trevali was right, the Silver Ring had planted someone to monitor his activities and probably keep him on the Vertey case. And when he had followed the case to its inevitable end…Jali gave a shudder, he hoped Trevali was all right.
Really, he should have seen the truth before but in a way, he had closed his eyes to it. The facts were staring him in the face that morning, when he and Xhen had found Elya Vertey's body.
The door to the outer office opened and closed, Ayan's footsteps faded away. Jali picked up his comlink.
"I need you to put a continuous location trace on my comlink," he said into it. "No, I'm not doing anything stupid, it's probably the only chance we'll have, you'll just have to trust me…do you have it? Good." He paused for a moment. "I need to you to pass this on to Pallavi Dashiell, you think you can do that?" He spoke for a few minutes more than replaced the 'link in his pocket.
He then took a deep breath, and knocked on Xhen's door. There was an affirmative murmur from within and Jali went inside. The desk was crowded with the flimsies and holopics Xhen was going through.
Jali nodded to the mess on the desk. "Lanco?"
Xhen nodded in reply. "Should have it sewn up in a few days."
"Well," Jali said as he slid into a seat, "by then it will be too late."
Xhen froze. "What do you mean?"
Jali removed a blaster pistol from his hip holster. "Admit it," he said. "Nuada put you on to this, didn't he?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Xhen lied unconvincingly.
Jali ignored him. "You killed Vertey on Nuada's orders," he said, "and Nobu was going to talk, so you took him out too." He gave Xhen a long look. "I should have been onto you before, when Vertey's wife was dead. There was something very strange about that last call she made, wasn't there?"
He placed the blaster on the desk so it was between them, Xhen stared at it.
"So what was in this for you?" Jali demanded. "Were you getting paid? Or does Nuada have something over you?"
Xhen still didn't respond.
"Tell me what happened, Xhen," Jali asked. "What happened after Vertey left the Idobal that night?"
"I got a call from Nuada what was going on and he wanted me to 'handle' it," Xhen said in a rush, his eyes still on the blaster on the desk. "Just a warning to get him off, nothing more. I knew where he was headed and I cornered him at Eastport." He shivered. "It got out of hand, he told me I didn't know what I was doing working for them…"
"Where were you?" Jali asked, trying to picture the scene.
"In some office I dragged him into," Xhen replied, his voice breathless. "There was a glowrod on the desk, we both grabbed it but I got it first." He took several deep breaths, sweat pouring down his face. "It was an accident…" He looked up at Jali, his face desperate and guilty, like a youngling admitting to his father why his sister was lying on the ground screaming with pain. "I didn't mean for it to have happened, it just…" His voice trailed off, Xhen put his hands over his face.
"What happened next?" asked Jali, his voice emotionless.
"I knew Fenn, he owed me a favour," Xhen continued. "He arranged to have Vertey shipped offplanet on the Prince, and it would have worked if Fenn hadn't gotten orders from the Judicials to check every ship that was leaving."
Antiene must have known, Jali thought, I just happened to find the body before she did. "Where is Fenn?"
"If he's smart, then he's nowhere near here," Xhen replied, "if he isn't, then you work it out, but it wasn't me." He looked sheepishly at Jali. "But I thought you wanted to know the whole story."
Jali nodded. "I do."
"After Vertey, Nuada contacted me and said he was going to turn me in unless I did something for him," Xhen continued. "So he found out you were looking for an assistant, and he sent me."
"The credentials?" Jali asked. "The references from Muscave?"
"They're real," Xhen replied, "of course, they don't know what I've done with myself since I was there." He paused for a moment. "Nobu was stupid, I don't know what you said to him, but I had to make sure he didn't say anything else."
"And Elya Vertey?"
"That was to stop you pursuing the case," Xhen said. "For a moment, I thought you would until that Jedi turned up."
"So what are you going to do now?" Jali asked.
"Same as I was planning to do," he said, picking up the blaster putting the barrel in his mouth.
He flicked off the safety catch and set the weapon to 'kill'.
"Don't try anything stupid," Jali said in a calm voice.
Xhen shook his head and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened, Xhen took the weapon out of his mouth and stared down at it.
In an instant, Jali pinned Xhen's hand to desk and prised the blaster off him. "Before you pick up a weapon," Jali said, waving the gas canister in Xhen's face. "You should make sure it's loaded first."
He inserted the gas canister into the ignition chamber and cocked it. "Now," he looked up at Xhen, "I have an idea about what we can do next."
Xhen made a quick call