The upstairs study was a large room with a vaulted ceiling and heavy beams, two stories high. An antique iron spiral staircase led to the catwalk on the second level. Dark wood paneling and custom wood cabinets with little drawers lined the walls on both levels. Each drawer was locked and labeled with a neat printed card slipped into a brass holder and listing the contents. There were hundreds of them. It was from this room that Emerson Pike ran his business, Pike’s Peak, investments in rare coins and precious metals. He had turned a small fortune in the last several years, especially as the stock market fell and wealthy people looked for tangible ways to invest their money.

Tonight he sat behind his desk with a certain look of exasperation on his face.

“Katia, please. You can’t wind yourself into the drapes. Sit down and relax or do something else.”

“Do what?” She shot an annoyed glance at him and refused to budge from the alcove in the window twenty feet away.

Katia was bored. Lately the only thing she wanted to talk about was going home, back to Costa Rica. This was the one subject he tried to avoid at all costs. He had hoped that with the meal tonight, and her joy in cooking a typical Costa Rican meal for a few friends, her mind would have been off the subject at least for a few hours. Unfortunately, this was not to be.

All the guests had left and Katia now toyed with the five-thousand-dollar cashmere curtains, pulling and wrapping them around her body, like a sumptuous evening gown, over the dress she was wearing. She seemed in full Latin pout.

To anyone keeping tabs, Katia Solaz was Emerson Pike’s latest flame. And she was gorgeous, five foot two, with a body to stop a clock, shimmering black hair, and a smile topped by smoldering eyes that could cause a man’s knees to buckle. She was also twenty-six, young enough to be his granddaughter.

This invariably invited glares of disapproval in restaurants whenever he and Katia dined out. Emerson enjoyed sticking his thumb in the eye of convention. So eating out with Katia became the high point of his day.

He would sit in the restaurant next to her with a brazen smile, swallowing up, like a galactic black hole, all the censuring furtive glances. Occasionally, he would set off a social panic, striking up a conversation with some lady’s husband and sending a nuclear shot of adrenaline through her heart by introducing him to Katia.

But as they say, for every silver lining there is a black cloud, and for Katia it was her moods. Mercurial did not begin to cover them.

Emerson had seen this often enough during the last five weeks that by now he thought he knew and understood her motivations well. In fact, he had no clue. Emerson thought that in Katia’s perfect universe, the woman always had both hands in the guy’s pockets, frog-marching him down the street like a human debit card toward the nearest ATM.

In fact, Katia had little or no interest in his money as long as she had enough to survive. Katia had never known her father. There had never been an older male figure in her life. For this reason she enjoyed being with Emerson and caring for him. But she had come to California with a different agenda-education. Katia was interested in the colleges and universities in the area, if not for undergraduate studies then in hopes of one day pursuing a graduate degree in the States. And if Emerson was willing to help her financially, Katia would not say no.

Emerson had his own reasons for bringing her here to his house, and none of them had to do with sex or some latter-day search for the fountain of youth. Katia had become the cheese in the trap. It was as simple as that.

Perhaps “simple” was not the right term. Because lately she was asking a lot more questions, most of them arriving at the same point-when would they be going back to Costa Rica?

He kept putting her off, trying to distract her with various forms of entertainment. As long as she was smiling and having fun, he thought, she wouldn’t ask to leave. To Emerson it was a test of his skills. If he was compelled to resort to force, it would be a clear indication that he was slipping, a warning that he had lost his mastery of the dark arts, the darkest of which was always deception.

“What are you working on?” She twisted herself into the drapes and leaned so that her weight, petite as she was, hung from the rod overhead.

Emerson was certain she would rip the curtain from under the valance. “Those are very expensive,” he told her.

“What?”

“The drapes.”

“So? I am worth it, no?”

He glanced at her, not exactly angry, but with paternal charm.

Katia gave him one of those mischievous, dimpled smiles. She was playing it to the hilt tonight.

Inside, Emerson was sure she was laughing at him. She had used the same line and twinkle in her eyes two days earlier when watching a movie in the media room as she removed polish from her toenails along with the finish from an eight-thousand-dollar ebony-lacquered antique table. Katia could be endearing when she wanted to be, and a hundred-pound wrecking ball when she didn’t.

“I can’t remember, did you call home today?” he asked.

“Yes, I called home today.” She mocked him in a singsong tone. “You already asked me. I told you, yes.”

“Senior moment,” he told her.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Emerson was engrossed in the photographs spread out in front of him on the desk.

“Why do you care whether I call home every day? Es not important. They don’t expect me to call.”

“I thought maybe your mother might worry.”

Her expression was something between irritation and suspicion. “I don’t have to check in with my mother. I’m an adult. What is this thing with you about my mother anyway? You keep asking me where she is, when she is going back home to Costa Rica. Maybe you should live with her.”

“Now there’s an idea,” said Emerson. “Is she as pretty as you?”

Katia ignored the question.

“I just don’t want her to worry about you, that’s all.”

“Nobody’s going to worry. And besides, I told you, my mother’s not there.”

“So you did. That means she’s still down in Colombia?” This was what Emerson wanted to know.

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

“That’s where you said she was.”

“So?”

“So you don’t care where your mother is? That’s not very nice.” Emerson was trying to appear casual, drawing her out as he studied one of the photographs through a magnifying glass.

To Katia, the constant questions about her mother, and Emerson’s obsession with the photographs, were becoming a major annoyance.

At first she’d been excited to come to the United States. Getting a visa to the U.S. usually took months, that is, if you could get one at all, but not for Emerson. He invited her to visit his house in San Diego on a Monday. Tuesday, he filled out some papers and had her sign them. By Thursday, he had gone to the U.S. embassy in San José and returned with the visa. To Katia, anyone who could do this could probably spin gold from straw. If he had those kinds of connections, perhaps he could help her get into an American college or university.

Her only initial concern was that her name on the visa was not complete. Pike had filled out the application in the American style, first and last names only. He had omitted her mother’s paternal name. Katia was concerned that because the visa did not conform precisely to the name on her passport, it might be a problem. But it wasn’t.

Thinking back now, she should have been much more worried about other things. Coming here with him was a mistake.

She watched him as he sat behind his desk looking like a miser counting his money. There were coins spread across the desktop, some in clear plastic envelopes, others lying naked, the yellow gold glinting under the light of the lamp. Emerson had a meeting in the morning with an investor. He was supposed to be assembling a selection of coins to show the man. Instead he was looking at the pictures again, this time with a magnifying glass.