Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights II Streets of Shadows - Michael Reaves [88]
Her eyes flashed. Set against her pale red skin, the effect was positively destabilizing. “Tell me his name. I’ll pay him a visit. I guarantee you that afterward he won’t threaten you again.”
Afterward he’ll probably run naked down the Imperial parade thoroughfare if you ask him, an increasingly unsettled Jax thought. “Better to stay away from the police. That’s what we’re trying to do. But there are other complications. For example, there’s a woman—”
“That truncated Twi’lek?” she interrupted him.
“No, not Laranth.” Why would she think of Laranth? he wondered. “Someone else. Someone very dangerous. I’m concerned for the well-being of my friends.”
“I could pay her a visit, too.”
Her suggestion helped Jax remember why he was here. “This is one being I don’t think even your persuasive abilities would affect. I’m afraid, Dejah, that we’re going to have to terminate the agreement between us. My friends and I will still do our best to get you safely off Coruscant. But under these new circumstances, for us to continue the search for your partner’s killer simply poses too much of a danger. To you as well as us.”
Dejah buried her face in her hands and started sobbing. A fresh flush of pheromones burst forth from her, different from those that had enveloped him earlier but no less affecting. Despite the resistance he immediately put up, her empathic projections, combined with the desperate bouquet she was emitting, threatened to undermine his renewed resolve. He started to reach for her, to hold her and reassure her. Then, realizing what a mistake that would be, he remained where he was and let her weep.
It broke his heart.
After a couple of moments she looked up, wiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands, and folded them in her lap. Even that simple gesture was fraught with sufficient implication to unnerve him, but he still didn’t move.
“Isn’t there anything I can do to make you change your mind, Jax? If not more money, then what?” The promise that shone in her eyes and hung expectantly in the air between them was almost powerful enough to shift a small planetary body in its orbit.
He felt himself wavering. Stall, blast it! “It’s just that,” he began, playing for time to get a new grip on his emotions, “we don’t seem to be making any progress. Or at least, not the right kind of progress. We’ve learned a few things, but they’ve just sent us off on different tangents. What we need is a fresh start. A new angle. Is there anything you can tell us that you haven’t told us before, that you haven’t told the police?”
“Well,” she said, “I have been doing a little questioning of my own. This is a pretty exclusive residential area, and people of all species here tend not to want anything to do with established authority. But they’ll unburden themselves to me.”
A Sullustan rockrender would unburden itself to you, Jax thought. “So what have you found out?”
“Probably nothing. But … there’s an old Drall who lives several domiciles down from here. You know the Drall—they’re so absorbed in their libraries that they hardly ever socialize. Because of that I don’t know if the police ever interviewed this elder. But the Drall are also noted for their jewelry work, and she used to sometimes have a chat with Ves about how art crosses species lines.
“She dropped by just a couple of days ago to finally offer her condolences. Said she would have done so sooner but that she was occupied with some important bit of cataloging. I invited her in and brewed up some dianogan tea she had brought.” Dejah smiled coquettishly. “Well, you know what that stuff can do. We had a good time.” The Zeltron leaned toward Jax, and this time her pheromonic discharge was rigorously muted. “In the course of our conversation she let slip that she had seen a large Vindalian in the neighborhood a few nights before Ves’s death.”
Jax frowned. It might be sheer coincidence that a Vindalian was seen in the vicinity when