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the past week. She had kept an earnest vigil, but
    unfortunately Julian Colter was right. It was impossible for one person to keep a round-the-clock surveillance project
    going.
    Julian Colter. Why did the one person who offered help have to be him?
    She was on the point of cursing her bad luck when Emelina happened to remember the expressions on the faces of
    the other diners in the coffee shop that morning. She had known exactly what was passing through their minds and
    she had a hunch Julian knew, as well. What was it like going through life drawing that kind of attention?
    Well, it was his own fault. He shouldn’t have chosen his particular line of work if he didn’t care to cause such
    comment! Then again, perhaps he hadn’t chosen it. Maybe it was something you were born into. Perhaps Julian had
    never had any real choice in the matter.
    Her mind drifted off along that tangent for a while longer as she tried to picture a young Julian growing up as the
    heir apparent in a crime family. Distractedly she shook herself free of her musings and returned to the problem at hand.
    Julian Colter’s life work was definitely not her concern.
    Yet every time she reached the turnaround point on the floor in front of the bay window overlooking the ocean,
    Emelina found her mind returning to the subject of Julian Colter. He could help her. If anyone could, it would be he.
    Instinctively she was more certain of that than she had been of just about anything else in her life.
    In debt to a man like that? What was she thinking of? Emelina Stratton knew what it meant to be in debt, but she’d
    never been involved in that sort of obligation!
    Out of sheer desperation she grabbed her note pad and threw herself down on the lumpy couch in an effort to take
    her mind off her problem by focusing on her writing. After all, she had promised herself that in between trips to check
    on Leighton’s house, she would do some real work here on the coast.
    It was a pointless exercise. Her active imagination simply would not concentrate on the characters of her space
    gothic. It insisted on returning to the subject of
    the man in the cottage at the end of her street. And to the problem of helping her brother.
    Julian Colter would probably know how to go about solving her brother’s problem.
    That one inescapable fact kept returning to tease and tug and cajole. Yes, he would know what to do, but what
    price would she wind up paying? She would have to make it absolutely clear that if she did accept his help, she was
    the one under an obligation to pay the tab, not her brother. Could one make deals like that with people like Colter?
    Would he honor his side of the bargain and hold only her responsible?
    She could always ask him, couldn’t she?
    Emelina threw down her pen in a gesture of self-disgust. What was the matter with her? How could she even think
    of running such risks?
    For her brother’s sake, of course. Keith was closer to her than anyone else in the world. She rarely saw her
    beautiful but flighty mother, who had remarried and was happily living in luxury on the East Coast. Her father had
    disappeared during her junior year in college, leaving behind all those debts. Her marriage had been a disaster.
    Through it all Keith had been her friend as well as her brother.
    What it all boiled down to was the simple fact that she would do anything she had to do in order to help him. And
    when she looked at the matter in its simplest terms, Emelina decided shortly after sunset that evening, the options
    narrowed considerably.
    She needed the best available help, and she knew where to get it There was no reason to hesitate any longer.
    Squaring her shoulders, Emelina dragged a
    striped Hudson Bay blanket-coat out of the closet and belted it on. Resolutely she turned up the high collar and
    pulled open the door of die cottage. She really had no choice.
    The walk up the street was one of die longest Emelina had ever undertaken. It lasted forever and yet