Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 07_ Fury - Aaron Allston [130]
And that was my instinctive reaction. Even when I found Mom dead…something inside me said that was important. I’ll trust that.
Jedi would have said it was the certainty of the Force; cops like Captain Shevu would have said that Ben’s investigative training had kicked in. Either way, Ben had more questions than he had answers. But he was more sure each passing day that Jacen, his own cousin, his own flesh and blood, really had killed his mother.
He waited.
Eventually he heard two sets of footsteps coming down the passage, and had a sinking feeling that Luke might have met Leia in passing and decided to tag along. But when the doors opened, it was Leia and Jaina.
“Ben?” Leia always had that calming tone that said everything was under control, even when it wasn’t. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got some difficult things to say,” he said. “You might not thank me, but I can’t sit on it any longer.”
The accusation was meant solely for Leia, and for a moment he was reluctant to blurt it out in front of Jaina as well. But she needed to hear it.
“You know you can tell me anything,” Leia said. “Do you want Jaina to leave us alone?”
“No, no. As long as you don’t rush off and tell Dad, because he thinks I’m over the Jacen thing now, and I don’t want to start him worrying again.”
Jaina sat down next to him, leaning forward, as if she was ready to hug him if he burst into tears. “It’s okay. I won’t say a word, and Mom’s the diplomat. What’s so bad that you can’t tell Uncle Luke?”
Cut to the chase. The longer he built up to it, the worse it would be. Ben concentrated on calm, rational language.
“I don’t think Alema Rar killed my mother,” he said. The words hung in the air as if he could see them. “I still think Jacen did.”
Leia just stood there, arms folded, but she didn’t react. Jaina shifted a fraction on the seat. If anything, they seemed…embarrassed. He waited in the agonizing silence.
“What makes you think that?” Leia asked at last.
“I’m not going to rely on what I feel,” Ben said. “Even though I feel it. I’m going by things that don’t add up. You know what police look for? Captain Shevu taught me. Motive, means, opportunity. And family doesn’t seem to mean much to Jacen. Look at the things he’s done to you and Uncle Han.” Ben recalled Jaina’s sudden exit from the Galactic Alliance military. “And you, Jaina. Look what he tried to do to you.”
“I know Jacen’s doing some terrible things, but let’s go through this a step at a time,” Leia said. “You’ve accused him before, but we’re all pretty messed up lately. Why is this still eating at you?”
“The way he found me on Kavan.”
“He’s good at finding people in the Force, Ben.”
“I was hiding. Doing my shutdown act. He’s not the only Jedi who can do that—he taught me to do it, and I taught Mom. I’ve even shown Dad how to do it, and he’ll tell you—once you switch out, even Master Amazing Super-Smart Jacen shouldn’t have been able to find me. And he still walked straight up to me in a tunnel on a deserted planet that’s the back end of beyond. That’s not luck, and it’s not finding me in the Force. He knew. And then there was the Sith meditation sphere that Lumiya had.”
He’d kept it to himself all this time. The longer you kept a secret, the harder it got. If only he’d disobeyed Jacen and told Dad about the thing. If only…maybe Mom would have still been alive.
Ben would never know.
“What about the sphere?” said Jaina.
“I found it on Ziost. I handed it over to Jacen when I docked it in the Anakin Solo. Next time I see it, Lumiya’s driving.”
Leia sucked in a little breath. “Lumiya was adept at taking what she wanted.”
“The Anakin Solo might be slack when it comes to stopping infiltrators, Aunt Leia, but I can’t see Lumiya just wandering in and stealing the sphere without someone knowing about it.”
“Okay, file all that under unexplained. How about motive?”
Jaina seemed