arson Harcourt leaned back in his expensive black leather desk chair. The morning paper sat neatly folded on a corner of his rolltop desk, read hours ago when he had first come into his office. A farmer's day started early and Carson always had work to do.

He'd been busy going over a list of pesticide invoices, products used in the rose fields, when the telephone rang. He had recognized his foreman's voice on the other end of the line and listened with growing fury as the man made his report.

"Keep an eye on them," he told Lester Stiles. "And keep me posted. I'll call if I need you." Clenching his jaw, he slammed the receiver down in its cradle.

"Goddamn, I knew it!" His fist crashed down on the top of his desk, the sound echoing through the open door out into the hallway. Carson didn't care. He'd been certain his half brother had been up to no good the last time he had come out to the farm. As soon as Zach had left the house, Carson had phoned Les Stiles and asked him to nose around, see if he could find out what Zach was up to.

Spending his nights in Elizabeth Conners's bed, Stiles had discovered, which by now Carson could have guessed.

Zach had a way with women. Always had. Carson had falsely believed that Elizabeth would be able to see beyond the flashy cars and designer clothes, the smooth lines and sex appeal. He had hoped she would be interested in a man with a future, a man who had opportunity and power within his grasp.

Apparently Elizabeth was no different from the other women Zach had charmed, just another Lisa Doyle.

It didn't matter. What mattered was discovering what the two of them were up to. And Stiles was the man for the job.

Les Stiles had been working for Carson just under four years. Before that, he'd been in the Rangers, then spent time in South America doing some kind of mercenary work. But he'd been born in San Pico, raised on one of the big farms in the area, and four years ago, tired of the life he'd been leading, he had returned.

He had answered an ad for the foreman's job at Harcourt Farms, and Carson had hired him. Over the years, the job had grown into something more than just supervising work on the farm. Stiles did whatever Carson needed him to do, no matter what it took. He didn't ask questions and he was compensated well for his loyalty and competence.

Stiles had told him that whatever Zach was involved in had something to do with the Santiago family and the house they were living in, and that meant it had something to do with Harcourt Farms.

Carson ground his jaw, silently cursing his half brother. Zach had been a thorn in his side since the day his father had brought the sullen, dark-haired boy home and announced that Zach was his son.

Fletcher Harcourt had made it legal, adopting Zach, giving him a room of his own in the main house and enrolling him in school as Carson's brother. Even now it set Carson's teeth on edge to think of the gall it had taken and the hurt it had caused his mother for the old man to bring home his bastard son.

His mother was dead now. Carson figured Zach had helped send her to an early grave.

His thoughts returned to his conversation with Lester Stiles. Stiles had tailed Zach all last weekend, then kept an eye on Elizabeth through the week. According to his foreman, Elizabeth had been dredging up old utility company records, trying to find out who had lived in the Santiago house over the years. Zach had asked the same question last weekend when he had been out at the farm.

Johnny Mayer, a friend of Stiles who owned the FoodMart out on Highway 51, had told him about a woman who had stopped to ask directions to the compound at Harcourt Farms. She had mentioned that she was in town to help the people who lived in one of the houses—supposedly some kind of psychic or something.

"I think this has something to do with a ghost," Stiles had laughed. "Can you believe it?"

Carson wasn't laughing. Whatever their reasons, they had no business digging into Harcourt Farms affairs. And Carson intended to put a stop to it—once and for all.

* * *

Elizabeth got a call from Zach on Friday afternoon saying he wouldn't be arriving in San Pico until late.

"I've got an afternoon appointment with the attorneys for Themoziamine. It's going to take us a while. And the traffic's always bad on Friday night."

Elizabeth's fingers tightened around the phone. "I…um…tried to call you Wednesday night, but you weren't home."

"Why didn't you leave a message?"

"I figured you were…I thought you were probably…"

"Probably what, Liz?"

"Out on a date."

Silence fell on the other end of the line. "I've never even thought about going out with someone else, not since I started seeing you."

"You don't owe me anything, Zach. I didn't mean for it to sound as if you did."

"Are you dating other people?"

She swallowed, thought about lying. "No."

"Then neither am I."

"Okay." The relief she felt made her dizzy. It was a very bad sign. "I guess I'll see you tonight."

"Count on it."

She waited for him to end the call but he didn't.

"Why did you call me on Wednesday?"

"I wanted to tell you I didn't find anything in the papers. I can try the police blotter but it's going to take a lot of time and I don't really think I'll find anything useful."

"I was really hoping you would."

"Maria called me yesterday morning. She saw the ghost, Zach. Up close and personal. A little blond girl. I'll tell you about it when you get here. She was really scared, Zach."

Zach blew a breath into the phone. "I'm going out to see my dad first thing in the morning. Maybe he'll remember something."

"I hope so. Maria looks terrible. I'm really getting worried about her, and the baby." She hoped Maria wasn't alone in the house tonight.

"Just hang in there. We'll come up with something. I'll be there as soon as I can."

* * *

Zach arrived even later than he had expected, but Elizabeth waited up for him. She hadn't imagined he would stride through the door and sweep her into his arms, carry her into the bedroom and make passionate love to her, but he did.

She smiled as she padded into the kitchen at nearly midnight to fix them a snack while they talked about Maria and what she claimed to have seen in the house.

"If the ghost really is a little girl with blond hair and blue eyes," she said, "that eliminates a number of children who lived in the house over the years."

"Unless this has nothing to do with a child who actually lived there."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe she was a friend of someone who lived there."

Elizabeth blew out a breath. "I hadn't thought of that. For the present, let's just stick with the theory we have."

"Yeah, this is all hard pretty hard to swallow in the first place. Let's not complicate matters unless we have to."

They snacked on cold roast beef Elizabeth made into sandwiches while she filled him in on her failed efforts to discover the secrets of the house. Sometime during the night, they made love again. Still, neither of them slept very well.

Elizabeth worried about Maria and what might be happening to her in the house, and Zach worried about Raul and whether the boy would do something crazy if he found out his sister was in trouble.

He brought up the possibility as they dressed the next morning to drive over to Willow Glen to see his father.

"I hope she keeps her brother out of this," Zach said, pulling a short-sleeved, yellow knit shirt over his head.

"I know she'll do her best. She's very protective of Raul. And she wants very badly for him to succeed."

"They seem to mean a lot to each other." There was something in his face, something that looked strangely like envy.

"I guess that isn't the way it was with you and Carson."

A disgusted sound came from his throat. "Carson hated my guts from the moment he laid eyes on me."

"How old were you?"

"Eight, the day I moved in. Carson was ten."

"Ten. That's pretty young to start hating people. How do you feel about him? Do you hate him, too?"

Zach shook his head. "Not really. Hating someone takes too much energy. Besides, I guess I always felt a little sorry for him."

"You felt sorry for Carson? Why?"

"Because my father expected so much of him. Carson never seemed to come up to scratch, no matter how hard he tried. Me, my father mostly ignored."

"Until you got out of prison."

"Yeah. I don't know exactly what happened. Maybe he figured he was partly to blame. When he found out I was serious about turning my life around, he did everything in his power to help me."

"Which probably didn't please Carson."

Zach grinned. "Yeah, he was about as pleased as a bole weevil with a crop duster overhead."

"Carson seems to have done a good job running the farm."

"I think he has. The place means everything to him. In a way I think he's glad the old man is out of the picture."

Elizabeth said nothing to that. Since Fletcher Harcourt's accident, Carson had become the power behind Harcourt Farms. Running the multimillion dollar farming operation gave him a position of prestige and influence most men would envy, though Zach didn't seem to want any part of the business.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"Let me get my purse." She grabbed her straw bag off the coffee table, and they headed out the door. Zach was driving his Cherokee today, she saw, and Elizabeth tossed him a smile.

"I guess you aren't trying to impress me anymore."

Zach gave her a wicked grin. "I was hoping you were already duly impressed."

Thinking of his skillful lovemaking, Elizabeth laughed. "I suppose I am."

She waited while Zach opened the door then slid onto the brown leather seat. They rode in silence out to Willow Glen, and she could tell that Zach was getting more and more nervous.

"You don't have to go in," he said. "You can wait out in the lobby, if you want. I never know what to expect when I see him. Sometimes he seems almost normal, other times he can hardly speak. There are times he gets mad and throws things. Sometimes he'll remember the past and think it's the present. You just never know."

"You said the doctors believe there's something pressing on parts of his brain."

He nodded. "When he fell down the stairs, small bits of bone chipped off the inside of his skull. If there was a way to remove them, his speech would improve, his motor skills as well, and more of his memory would probably return. He could live a fairly normal life."

Zach didn't say more, just wheeled into the parking lot and turned off the engine. Once they were inside the building, he led her down the hall toward his father's room. "Like I said, you don't have to go in."

"I was out here teaching once a week up for a couple of months. It gave me a fairly good idea what goes on in a place like this."

They kept on walking, stopping just outside Fletcher Harcourt's room. One of the staff doctors passed along the corridor about the same time.

"Hello, Zach."

"Hi, Dr. Kenner. How's he doing?"

"You're here at a very good time. He's having one of his more lucid periods."

"Great." He turned to Elizabeth. "I'll let him know I'm here and that I've brought a friend."

She nodded.

"By the way," the doctor said, "Dr. Marvin wants to talk to you. He's planning to call your office on Monday morning."

"Dr. Marvin's the neurologist who's been handling Dad's case," he told Elizabeth, then returned his attention to Kenner. "Do you know why he's calling?"

"I'm not sure. Something about some new, experimental surgery. He was pretty excited about it. That's all I know."

"Thanks, Doc." Kenner waved and continued down the corridor.

"I wonder what's up," Zach said.

"Maybe they've found a way to help your dad."

"I don't want to get my hopes up, but, man, that would sure be terrific."

Zach stepped quietly into the room, said something to his father, then motioned for her to join him.

"Dad, this is a friend of mine, Elizabeth Conners."

Fletcher Harcourt nodded. "Pleased."

"Hello, Mr. Harcourt." She smiled, and he managed a partial smile in return. Even sitting in a wheelchair, he was an impressive man, tall, heavy through the chest and shoulders, with iron-gray hair and the same gold-flecked brown eyes as Zach. The lines of his face were strong, weathered by years of outdoor work, but the four years since his accident had taken their toll.

The muscles in his throat had begun to sag, as well as the skin along his jaw. And yet she could see that he had been handsome. At sixty-seven he was still an attractive man.

"Liz came to talk to you about the farm," Zach said gently. "She's interested in the history of the place. She thought you might be able to help."

He stirred in the wheelchair, seemed to sit up a little straighter. Though his speech was slow and a little bit slurred, his mind seemed to clear as they began to discuss the farm, Zach easing his father into memories of the past.

"Do you remember the old house, Dad? The overseers' cottage you tore down so you could build a new one in its place?"

"I tore it…down?" He slowly shook his head. "I never…tore any of the workers' houses…down."

Zach flicked a glance her way. "I guess you were just thinking about it. Place must have been there since you were a kid."

"You're talking…about the old gray, wooden house…the one my dad built. Been there as long as I can…recall."

"That's the one. Do you remember any of the families who lived in the house? Way back, I mean."

Amazingly, Fletcher Harcourt launched into a lengthy discussion of one family after another, most of them non-Hispanic back in the early days of the farm, which might be important, Elizabeth thought, since the vision of the child Maria believed she had seen had blond hair and blue eyes.

Talking slowly, the old man continued his discussion of the past. Back forty or fifty years ago, men worked for the same employer for long periods of time so there were fewer names than she would have thought.

Using the small notepad she carried in her purse, Elizabeth wrote down each of the names he mentioned, then asked a little about each family. He had been too young in the forties to remember anything useful, but as they moved through the fifties and sixties, a few more memories surfaced.

"Let me see…there was a man…Martinez…Hector Martinez…that was his name. Had a wife. I think her name…was Consuela. Had to fire him. Got real…belligerent toward the end. Wife was…pregnant. Hated to…do it."

Elizabeth's ears perked up. "His wife was pregnant?"

He nodded. "Moved to Fresno…last I heard."

She flicked a glance at Zach, who was thinking the same thing she was. No one but Maria had been troubled by the ghost—at least that anyone knew of. If the Martinezes were still in Fresno, maybe they could find them. Maybe Consuela had also seen the ghost. Maybe there was some connection to the fact that the women were pregnant.

"Do you remember, Mr. Harcourt, if any of the other women who lived in the house were going to have a baby?"

Fletcher's heavy gray eyebrows drew together. "Long time back. Can't…recall. Seems like Espinoza's wife. Think she lost it…though."

A chill went down her spine. They're going to kill your baby. They'll take your baby if you don't leave.

Elizabeth swallowed. Juan Espinoza was Mariano Nunez's friend. Elizabeth made a note to find out if the man remembered anything about Espinoza's wife having a miscarriage or if losing an unborn child had happened to any of the other women who had lived in the house.

Fletcher looked up at Zach and frowned. She could see they had tired him.

"You behavin' yerself, boy? Stayin' out of trouble? You aren't getting drunk? Aren't smokin' that damned weed again, are you?"

Zach just shook his head. "No, Dad."

Fletcher flicked a glance toward Elizabeth. "Looks like you got a nice girl there, for a change. You see you treat her proper." He pinned Zach with a glare. "And tell your mama I'll be over to see her in a day or so. Soon as I get outta this damned place."

Zach's voice faltered. "I'll tell her." He tipped his head toward the door and Elizabeth started in that direction. "We gotta go, Dad. You take care of yourself." Zach reached down and squeezed the old man's shoulder before he headed for the door.

Behind them Fletcher grumbled something Elizabeth couldn't hear.

"Connie!" he shouted. "Get your ass in here, woman. And bring that good-for-nothing son of yours with you. I gotta bone to pick with him."

Zach said nothing as they headed down the hall, but his face looked grim. It was obvious seeing his father that way bothered him greatly.

Elizabeth reached over and took his hand. "Maybe Dr. Marvin will have good news."

"Maybe."

But she could see he didn't really believe it.