Crystal Heat

From the back cover of the DAW first edition: "Double bind - Gifted with the ability to communicate mind-to-mind, Shadith is the perfect employee for Excavations Limited, a high-tech private detective agency known for the special talents of its investigators. But when Shadith is hired to locate and return a creature who has been abducted by a smuggler - return it to people who mean to destroy it - she cannot in good conscience fulfill a mission, which will end in the murder of an innocent, intelligent being. But to save this creature from slaughter will take all of Shadith's ingenuity and abilities. For she must locate and overcome its smuggler, and elude the beings potential murderers as well. And beyond these enemies wait one far more dangerous, the man she has betrayed by refusing to to carry out her given assignment - Digby, the powerful and wily head of Excavations Limited. How can Shadith hope to evade capture by the one man who knows her more intimately than anyone in the galaxy?"