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Mirax ran her hand over the wooden wall paneling. “Genuine, not some fiberplast substitute. Very stylish and very expensive.”

“Easy to do when you’re on an Imperial expense account.” Iella slowly shook her head. “If Mem Wooter hadn’t decided to get greedy, he could have been in the clear.”

Mirax smiled and curled a scarlet lock of hair behind her left ear. “I thought you were the one telling my father that snatching Wooter and sweating facts out of him couldn’t be done because we weren’t sure he was involved. I thought you were reserving judgment.”

“Well, I was.” Iella shrugged uneasily. “Fact is I’m as bad as Corran in resisting suggestions your father makes.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Okay, maybe I’m not that bad.” She laughed lightly. “After spending years hearing horror stories about him, though, I’m not comfortable doing what he suggests. This is especially true when it comes to the realm of crimes against a person.”

“And what we’re going to be doing is different?”

“Crimes against property, big difference.” Iella hooked her thumbs through her toolbelt as the lift stopped and the doors parted. “I tell you, Supervisor, they made unauthorized repairs to their own line that caused the problem.”

“The problem was unauthorized lum consumption, Splicist.” Mirax led Iella down the hallway to the double doors with the firm’s name emblazoned on them in gold Aurebesh lettering. She knocked firmly on the door, then waited. Under her breath she commented, “Looks like a Kambis Ninety-Four-Hundred lock. Not bad.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Iella fished a square packet from a toolbelt pouch. The device fit neatly in the palm of her hand. With a flick of her thumb she turned it on and a slender tab the thickness of a keycard snapped out on one of the long sides. She flashed it down through the keycard slot once quickly, then twice more. On the third try the door clicked open.

Mirax blinked. “How did you …?”

Iella shrugged. “Whistler could have opened this door.”

“So could I, but folks would have heard the blaster whine.”

Iella ushered Mirax into the office foyer and closed the door behind them. “Intel has some interesting toys. Set it for the lock type, flash through once to blank the current code, a second time to set a new one, and a third to open the door.”

Mirax smiled. “Know where Cracken gets those things?”

“I doubt he’d want you having one.”

“Hmmm, then I guess a brisk trade in them would be out, too.” Mirax looked into the office. “Then again, if this office is any indication, working for the Imps might be far more lucrative.”

Iella couldn’t argue with Mirax there. The office entry-way had halfwalls topped with turned wooden pillars that upheld a reflective silver ceiling. A massive desk crossed the foyer. Off to the right a number of very comfortable-looking chairs surrounded a table in a small waiting area. Off to the left an open doorway led back into what, on the blueprints for the office, had been the research center, file room, utility closets, and small food prep station. Back behind the desk stood three doors to the partners’ offices.

Iella inclined her head toward the open doorway. “File room first, then Wooter’s office. If there is evidence here, we’ll find it.”

In reviewing the evidence collected from the raid on the Xenovet facility, Iella had realized there was very little at the actual site that hadn’t been gone over. She stepped back from the physical evidence and began to examine the environment in which the facility had been located. The presence of the Xenovet site was indeed a physical fact, but the circumstances surrounding its use were not. The prisoners had said that they thought they had been in that facility for years, but that conflicted with the history of the site according to area residents.

Or, if the prisoners had been there during that time, the Imps also ran the breeding business as a cover.

In widening her search for details concerning the Xenovet facility, Iella ran across a local attorney named Mem Wooter. Wooter had made a living during the Imperial era