Zeerid sat alone with only uncomfortable thoughts for company in a stairwell that smelled of urine and vomit. He had let his daughter down. To try and give her a better life, he had turned himself into the kind of man he once would have regarded with contempt. And what did she have to show for it? A decrepit apartment and an absentee father who could die on his next run.

And a hoverchair, he reminded himself. But still …

He had to get out of the life. But there was no walking away until he’d cleared his debt with The Exchange. So he’d make a last run to Coruscant—

The door to the stairwell on the ground floor opened with an angry squeal. At almost the same moment, he heard the rumble of the lift coming up the shaft.

Alert and tense, he went to the railing at the edge of the stairwell and peered down. Light from the fluorescent fixture attached to the ceiling two floors above him did little to illuminate the stairwell. Shadows coated the lower floors but Zeerid thought he saw a form there, humanoid, and watched it start up the stairs.

Meanwhile, the chime of the lift announced its arrival on the fourth floor.

Cupping his blaster in his hand, Zeerid flattened himself against the wall near the doorway of the stairwell. The footsteps coming from below continued their slow ascent. They stopped from time to time, as if the person was unsure of his or her destination, or was stopping to listen.

The lift doors opened and Zeerid heard the soft susurrus of quiet movement. The lift doors closed.

The footsteps on the steps started again, stopped.

Zeerid waited a three-count and poked his head around the doorway to give him a view of the hallway.

A cloaked figure stole down the corridor, about the size of the man he’d met in the park. He was checking the doors for apartment numbers. Zeerid could not see the figure’s hands. He shot a look back at the stairwell, heard nothing, and stole out into the hallway.

The figure stopped before Nat’s apartment and consulted a palm-sized portcomp, as if confirming an address.

Zeerid had seen all he needed to see. He brandished the E-9.

“You! Move away from that door.”

The figure turned toward him, reached for something at waist level. Zeerid did not hesitate. He pulled the trigger, and the muffled whump of the E-9 sounded like a polite cough.

In near-perfect time with Zeerid pulling the trigger, the motion so fast that it was blurry, the figure whipped free a silver cylinder that grew a glowing green line and deflected the E-9’s bolt into the floor.

Before Zeerid squeezed off another shot, the figured cocked its head and deactivated the lightsaber.

“Zeerid?”

A woman.

Zeerid did not lower his weapon or his temperature. He could not make sense of the lightsaber. A Jedi?