"They aren't in," he said. "I checked."
"We'd like to wait in their room," Qui-Gon said. The young man shrugged.
Adi spoke crisply. "They left word that we could enter, didn't they?"
The clerk looked down at his datascreen. "I guess so."
"Then let us up." Adi's voice rang with authority. The young man pushed a key card across the table.
"Suite 2344. Have a ball."
The Jedi stepped into the turbolift. It rose swiftly to the top floor. They found the room. Qui-Gon knocked, and when there was no answer, he inserted the key card. A series of numbers flashed, and the door slid open.
The room was modest. Two sleep couches were in an alcove, and a desk stood against a wall. Vidscreens and datascreens were recessed in the wall. One window overlooked the street but was covered by a gray curtain.
Siri checked out the travel bags near the sleep couches. "Looks like it could be them," she said. "Basic necessities are still here."
"So we wait," Adi said.
Qui-Gon went to the window and slid the curtain back a slight bit. He looked out onto the street. Obi-Wan watched his face.
"He let us up too easily," Qui-Gon said.
"We were expected," Adi said.
"He didn't ask our names."
"He didn't seem to care much about security," Obi-Wan said.
"Yes, he seemed to advertise his indifference," Qui-Gon murmured, his eyes darting around the room.
Siri bent over to examine the items more closely. She fingered a few items thrown on the end of the sleep couch. Suddenly, she straightened.
"Something's wrong," she said.
Qui-Gon turned, his gaze sharp. "Tell us."
"They aren't coming back." Siri indicated the items at her feet. "I sense it. These items are camouflage. There should be something personal here, and there isn't."
"Their house was destroyed," Adi said. "They might not have any personal items left." She said this not as a challenge, but as an observation, trying to focus Siri's thinking.
"That could be true," Siri said. "But still. They have been here for three days, they said. There should be evidence that they have been living here. A crumb of food. A loose thread. A stain on the clothes. A wrinkle. A scent. Something."
"And the clerk.." Qui-Gon said, but he didn't finish his thought.
"If they felt they had been traced here…" Siri said.
Obi-Wan looked at the others. He had felt nothing, no surge of the dark side. He had only felt the normal uneasiness of being in a strange place, knowing that who they were looking for was being hunted. He felt a flash of envy of Siri, who seemed tuned into Qui-Gon's thoughts.
Just then, Siri looked up. Her hand flew to her lightsaber hilt.
Qui-Gon was already moving, streaking to one side of the door. "The clerk. He's coming," he said, just as the door slid open and blaster fire pinged through the air.
Chapter 3
The being who burst through the door bore little resemblance to the bored clerk. Now he wore black armorweave body armor. A holster for a blaster rifle and vibroblade crisscrossed his back, and wrist rockets were strapped to his forearms. His long fair hair streamed behind him as he rolled into the room like a droideka, surprising the Jedi by the unusual angle of attack.
He rolled a Merr-Sonn fragmentation grenade into the center of the room. It exploded immediately, sending shrapnel in all directions. He rolled to a stop, crouching behind a lightweight shield.
Qui-Gon felt the air shimmer with the blast, and the shrapnel exploded around him. He leaped in front of Obi-Wan and Siri to protect them. It was hard for even a Jedi Master to deflect grenade shrapnel. It was fast, unpredictable, random. It took all of Qui-Gon and Adi's concentration to block it. The shrapnel was flung back from their lightsabers and slammed into the walls and floors. A few deadly missiles thudded into the bounty hunter's shield, but they bounced off.
Qui-Gon saw the flash of surprise on the bounty hunter's face at the sight of lightsabers. No doubt he'd been expecting a standard Senate security force, not a Jedi team. He fired off two wrist rockets in rapid succession, then backtracked, rolling out through the door again.
On his exit, he tossed another grenade inside the room. Qui-Gon leaped forward and turned it into a hunk of smoking metal before it exploded. He kept his eyes on the bounty hunter. He had paused for an instant outside the door. A flash of something lit the bounty hunter's eyes, and he turned around and fled.
Qui-Gon raced out as the bounty hunter blasted a hole through the hall window with his wrist rocket, then flew through the shattered panes. Qui-Gon saw a liquid cable line arc out.
He reached the window and looked down. He could just see the silver cable slithering back down through the air. The bounty hunter had landed on the pedestrian walkway below. Within seconds he had been swallowed up by the crowd, disappearing underneath one of the colorful awnings.
Adi stood next to him. "He was waiting for them. Figured he would take us out in the meantime."
"At least we know one thing," Obi-Wan said. "He doesn't know where they are."
"I'm not so sure about that," Qui-Gon murmured.
He strode back to the hallway outside the blasted door.
He stood where the clerk had stood. A flash of surprise had lit his eyes, a revelation, and then smugness and purpose. All of this Qui-Gon had seen.
The bounty hunter, once disguised as the clerk, knew where they had gone.
There was so little time. The bounty hunter was already on his way. But Qui-Gon didn't let himself think of that. He slowly considered each object he could see from this vantage point.
Floor. Corner of a window. Corner of vidscreen. A pillow on the sleep couch. The edge of a pack.
Nothing.
Qui-Gon looked at the door itself. Then the keypad that they'd used to enter.
"The keycode," he said. "I know hotels like this. The occupant chooses a code that is easy to remember. The code is entered into security and on the individual cards. The occupant can either use the card or key in the number to get inside the room."
Adi nodded.
Qui-Gon lifted a hand, and the door card flew from where he'd left it on the sill and into his hand. He swiped the card and noted the number sequence that flashed.