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At the front door of the conapt, he glanced up at I-Five. If he gave his usual verbal pass code to enter, and an Inquisitor overheard it …

The droid pulled aside the sleeve of his robe to display the gleaming tip of one index finger. He would use his laser on lowest power to beam the code into the house computer.

Weak with relief, Den turned to the door and said, “Hatto Rondin,” a name he made up on the fly. The door slid open and Den turned to his “client” and bowed. “After you.”

Five nodded and entered. Den following. They’d no more cleared the door when Jax appeared, his gaze flicking from Den to the apparent Koorivar.

“Den? Who is …” He stared hard at the droid.

“I-Five?”

“Gotta love that Force,” Den murmured.

“Why are you in dis—” Jax started, then apparently changed his mind. “It doesn’t matter. Come on, we need to get Kaj out of here and over to Ves Volette’s studio now.”

“Yes, it does matter,” said I-Five, with unbelievably irritating calm. “There is an Inquisitor in the courtyard.”

Jax’s looked shocked. “I didn’t …,” he murmured, then clearly did. “The taozin effect. And I wasn’t looking for it.”

“Something happened with Kaj, I take it?” I-Five asked.

Jax nodded. “He had an episode. Almost a seizure. He was lonely and angry, and it got to be too much for him. I was wondering if anyone picked it up. I guess I’ve got my answer.”

He turned and moved to the window. Thick and narrow, the panel of transparisteel ran the entire height of the resiblock, intersecting every floor. Den and I-Five followed to look down into the courtyard. The Inquisitor was nowhere in sight.

Which, of course, meant nothing.

“Okay,” Jax said. “Rhinann’s got an airspeeder waiting for us on level seven. We’re going to have to make a run for it. Get Kaj into the speeder and—”

“That won’t be necessary,” said I-Five. “Den and I played the roles of an agent and his client to our unsuspecting audience. I’m supposedly thinking of leasing this overpriced pile of ferrocrete. If our friend the Inquisitor stays in the courtyard, he will be expecting us to leave at some point. This could work to our advantage.”

Den nodded. “I get it. We can provide a distraction while we take Kaj up to the docking station, or—”

“Or,” said Jax, “we can take Kaj out right under his nose.” He turned to their de facto logistics officer. “Rhinann, did the speeder come with a driver?”

“Yes. A protocol droid.”

“What model?” asked I-Five.

“It’s a threepio.”

“That’ll do.”

“That’ll do what?” asked Den. He felt as if bolts of blasterfire were zooming back and forth over his head—a scenario that he had no trouble believing would be reality shortly.

Jax’s eyes were alight with something unhealthily close to excitement. He turned to Rhinann. “In about ten minutes, have the driver bring the airspeeder down to the front door.”

Rhinann gaped. “Land it in the courtyard? In plain sight?”

“Exactly. Instruct him to come up to this conapt. He’ll be taking our property agent and his client off to sign some papers.”

Rhinann disappeared back into his lair. Jax was in motion again, this time heading for his quarters. He beckoned I-Five and Den to follow.

“I can explain—” he said to Den, but the Sullustan interrupted.

“I’m sure you can,” he said. “What scares me is that the explanations are starting to make sense to me. Even when I’m sober,” he added, “which I devoutly wish I wasn’t at this point.”

“Be as that may,” Jax said, “you and I-Five are going to take our Koorivar friend to your office to sign lease papers.”

“I may have found a basic flaw in your ingenious scheme—namely, that I-Five is our Koorivar friend.”

“Not for long.”

The scariest thing about the whole maneuver was waking Kaj. Jax did this with his own Force threads tightly held, ready to shield any anomalies. As an added, though possibly useless, precaution, they carried the boy into the living room and placed him on a couch so that the light sculpture lay between him and the forecourt of Poloda