When he walked in, he couldn't see a face he recognized. It was a busy place; beings of all kinds lined up waiting to dispatch parcels or held datapads in their hands, checking in consignments. He intercepted a droid in GalactiSend livery skimming through the reception area.

"Is Shula around?" he asked. "Shula Pakasj?"

"She no longer works here," said the droid.

Well, that was sudden; it could only have happened recently, because the last time he'd spoken to Shevu, she'd still been here. "Thanks," he said, and wandered out to amble along the walkway and rethink his strategy.

He'd have to go direct to Shevu's apartment now. He hadn't wanted to, just in case Shevu was under surveillance, but he still had the passcard, and if Shevu had changed the code . . . well, that wouldn't slow Ben down much. He spent the next couple of hours taking a circuitous route to the apartment block. By the time he got to the last leg of the journey, he was tired and fed up with changing his clothing.

As in most apartment buildings in the capital, an array of crime prevention cams kept watch on the entrance. Ben visualized the sensors getting a sudden burst of intense light, using the Force to overload them for a moment to give him time to pass into the turbolift. All the monitoring system would see was a short period of dark shapes as the cam tried to compensate for the light levels its sensor told it were there. At the four hundredth floor, Ben slipped out into the corridor and stood outside Shevu's door for a moment, trying to sense if anyone was inside.

It felt empty. Ben tried the passcard and it didn't work. It took him a couple of seconds to Force-wipe the lock to its default setting and slip inside.

He'd stayed here before when Shevu had given him a bolt-hole so he wouldn't have to go home and face Luke; there was a sense of familiarity about it that was at odds with the feeling that he was violating his friend's privacy. But Shevu would understand. The clutter of personal possessions had gone -- Shula's collection of stuffed toy animals in unlikely colors, piles of holovids, the Heptalian embroidered throw that used to adorn a chair -- and Ben wondered if the pair had just sold up and left, and he was now in a stranger's home waiting for the new owner to walk in to find a Jedi burglar sitting on the sofa.

A quick check of the closets and kitchen cupboards showed that Shevu still lived there. Those were his uniforms, his bolo-ball gear, the boxes of pepper-flavored breadsticks he seemed to live on. But every trace of Shula was gone, even the holopics of the couple enjoying a vacation on Naboo.

Maybe they'd broken up. That would have been a surprise, but a job like the GAG put a strain on relationships, and under Jacen the GAG was getting harder for former CSF cops like Shevu to handle. Ben settled down facing the door, and resisted the temptation to comm his old captain to check which shift pattern he was on. That didn't seem to count for much with the GAG lately, though. It was a round-the-chrono job.

Ben occupied his time by reading his datapad and speculating. Four hours later, Force senses on edge, he felt a familiar presence and rehearsed all the different ways he could start telling Shevu that Jacen was now out of control.

Do I mention Mom first, or do I work up to that?

He decided to play it by ear. Footsteps paused outside the doors. The silence went on longer than Ben would have expected for Shevu to find his passcard, and then the doors parted and Ben realized what a bad idea it was to surprise a trained cop.

The whir of a charging blaster made him leap up just as Shevu burst through the gap and fired. Ben deflected the bolt, sending a stack of holozine pads smoking to the floor. "Sir, sir, it's me! It's Ben!" He held out both arms well away from his body. "Hold fire!"

Shevu, panting and wide-eyed, was down on one knee by the cover of an armchair with his service blaster still leveled at Ben.

"Stang, Ben," he snapped. His shoulders relaxed instantly and he shut his eyes for a moment. "Don't do that. Call ahead, for goodness' sake."

"Sorry. Sorry about the damage, too."

Shevu stepped back into the corridor and said something to a person Ben couldn't see. The neighbors had stuck their heads out of their doorways to see what the noise was about, and Ben heard a few words like thought I had a burglar, but it's a buddy before Shevu shut the doors behind him and stood looking down at Ben.

"It's lucky you're a Jedi." Shevu seemed much more shaken than he would have been on a genuinely dangerous mission. "Or you'd have been a dead buddy."

"I tried to find Shula first. I didn't want to compromise you by comming you direct."

Shevu picked up the scattered and melted holozines. Some had fused into a single lump. "You're in trouble."

"No . . . Jacen is."

"Oh, that's okay, then." Shevu flashed his eyebrows. "We're all in the poodoo. We've been told you're not GAG personnel any longer. Jacen didn't say why you'd left, but when he suggested that we tell him if we ever saw you, I reached my own conclusions. It's kind of hard to ignore the mayhem going on with the Jedi Council." Shevu checked himself as if he'd just made a terrible gaffe. "What kind of buddy am I? I'm sorry about your mother, Ben, I really am. That was thoughtless of me."

Ben took a breath and dived straight in. The cue was there. "It was Jacen who killed her."

"Yeah, you're right."

It wasn't the casual way Shevu said it that shocked Ben as much as the fact he said it at all. Shevu wasn't appalled. He wasn't even mildly surprised.

"You knew?"

"Come on, Ben, you know rules of evidence as well as I do. I've got nothing solid." Shevu checked the window locks and rechecked the door, as if he was used to watching his back these days. Then he went into the kitchen, and the noise of clacking plates, running water, and snapping cupboard catches drifted into the living room with the sudden scent of fresh caf. "It's got his fingerprints all over it, though -- not that Jedi leave any, of course. He'd be the first suspect whose collar I'd feel, believe me."