ach's expression remained closed as Elizabeth waited for him to slide the key into the ignition and start the Jeep. It was roasting hot inside the car, the pavement surrounded by ripples of heat. She could feel perspiration collecting between her breasts and was glad he rolled down the windows as they drove out of the parking lot.

As she studied his profile, she noticed that the muscles were taut across the bones in his cheeks.

"Your father didn't mean to upset you," Elizabeth said gently. "He was remembering something that happened a long time ago."

"I know. It's just…it brings back memories, things I try not to think about too much."

"Prison, you mean?"

He nodded. "I talk to the boys about it. I try to make them understand that there are other choices they can make."

"Was it really bad, Zach?"

He cast her a look, then pulled the Jeep into the other lane to pass a produce truck plodding along the road. "Not as bad for me as it was for some of the other guys. I'd been hanging around with a pretty bad element for the past couple of years. By the time I went inside, I knew how to take care of myself. And living on the farm, I spoke Spanish like a native. I got in a fight with one of the Mexican gang members in my cell block. The guy was a real pit bull but I came out the winner. Another guy in the gang considered I did him a favor and from then on I never had a problem."

He kept his eyes fixed ahead, but his jaw was set as if he were seeing the past instead of the highway.

"What happened that night, Zach? The night of the accident?"

He sighed into the quiet inside the car. "To tell you the truth, I'm not really sure. I was so damned drunk and high I can't remember much of anything that happened that night."

"I know it was the summer I graduated from high school," she said. "The accident was all over the local news."

"I'd been hanging out at The Roadhouse a lot that summer. They had a really rough crowd and I fit right in. That night I was drinking with a couple of my so-called buddies. I smoked some dope, got good and high, and started drinking straight shots of tequila. The last thing I remember was arguing with my brother."

"Carson was there that night?"

He nodded. "He and Jake Benson came out there to get me. My father sent them. Jake was his foreman back then. I remember Carson telling me to get my ass in the car, that he'd drive me home in my car and Jake could follow us in Carson's car. I wouldn't do it. I said I wasn't ready to go."

"Your brother left you there?"

"I wouldn't go with him. What other choice did he have?"

"So how did you wind up driving home when you were that drunk?"

"That's the worst part. I don't know. It wasn't something I usually did. Carson and Jake drove off and I passed out in the parking lot. That's pretty much the last thing I remember. I've got a hazy memory of getting into my car, but I'm not really sure it's real. When I woke up, I was slumped over the wheel, blood running down my forehead and three of my ribs broken. I'd hit another car head-on. The driver was dead and it looked like I was the guy who killed him."

Elizabeth frowned. "What do you mean, 'it looked like you were the guy'?"

Zach's glance slid away. "Like I said, I'm not really sure. I refused to plead guilty at the hearing. I have a vague memory of getting into the car, but every time I think of it, I see myself climbing into the passenger seat, not the driver's side."

Elizabeth's eyes widened. "You don't think you were the one driving the car that night?"

"I might be wrong. It's possible."

"But if you're right, you went to prison for something you didn't do."

His hands tightened on the wheel. "Whether it was my fault or not, that wreck changed my life. If I hadn't gone to prison—if I hadn't realized the bad stretch of road I was heading down—God only knows what would have happened to me. Of course, I didn't feel that way the first year I spent in jail."

Elizabeth studied his lean, handsome profile. "If you weren't driving that night, who do you think might have been behind the wheel?"

Zach just shook his head.

She stared at him hard. "You don't think it was Carson, do you?"

For several seconds he didn't reply. "If it was, I don't remember. And I'm sure as hell not going to accuse another man of something like that when I was so drunk and stoned I was half out of my head."

"What did Jake Benson say?"

"He said they never went back to The Roadhouse."

"And you believed him?"

"I didn't have much choice."

Elizabeth said nothing. It took a lot of courage to accept responsibly for a crime you might not have committed. More and more, she was coming to admire Zachary Harcourt. She didn't want to. The more she liked him, the more it was going to hurt when their affair was over.

Elizabeth watched the flat landscape passing by outside the car window, the fields of Harcourt Farms cotton stretching row after row toward the horizon. Farther along the highway, swatches of bloodred roses formed a scarlet slash in the distance.

As Zach drove back to her apartment, she couldn't help wondering if Carson Harcourt was really the kind of guy who would let an innocent man go to prison.

* * *

Elizabeth and Zach were just finishing a breakfast of French toast and bacon the next morning when someone started hammering on Elizabeth's front door.

Pulling the sash on her pale blue terrycloth robe a little tighter, she padded into the living room to open the door. She was surprised to find Carson Harcourt standing on the other side of the threshold.

"Good morning. May I come in?" It was a polite request that didn't match the hard look in his eyes and he didn't wait for permission. His glance swung from her to Zach, who strode in from the kitchen barefoot, wearing only a pair of jeans and a shirt he didn't bother to button.

Zach stopped in front of him. "Well, here's a surprise. What's the occasion, Carson?"

"The occasion is that since you are no longer to be found at the local Holiday Inn—or in residence with your last paramour—I came to speak to you here."

Zach's features hardened. "You should learn to think of women as ladies, Carson, you'd have a lot better luck."

"What I think is my business, not yours—which is the reason I'm here."

"Go on."

"I want you and Elizabeth to stop snooping into Harcourt Farms business. Whatever it is you're trying to find out, it's none of your concern."

"There's no law against researching public records," Zach said calmly, hiding the same surprise Elizabeth was feeling that Carson had somehow found out.

"That's right, there isn't." Carson's mouth curved but it wasn't really a smile. "And there's no law against firing an incompetent employee. Stay out of farm business—both of you—or Santiago and his wife will find themselves out on the street."

Zach stiffened. He was every bit as tall as Carson, but leaner, his muscles harder, more defined. Still, Carson was a formidable opponent. While Zach had a past in San Pico, Carson had power and influence. Carson might be able to cause trouble for his brother, as well as the Santiagos. Elizabeth's stomach tightened at the thought.

"Mrs. Santiago is frightened," Zach tried to explain. "She's afraid for her unborn child and to tell you the truth, I think she has every reason to be afraid."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Elizabeth stepped forward. "Things have been happening in the house…things that can't be explained. Zach and I stayed there most of one night and it was terrifying. I know it's hard to believe, but…"

"But what?"

"There's something there," Zach said. "We're trying to find out what it is. If you would cooperate—"

"Forget it. I'm not about to encourage any of this. There is nothing the least bit wrong with that house. In fact, the inspectors thought it was in very good condition—you told me that yourself. Now I'm telling you—stay out of Harcourt business. If you don't, it's going to be the Santiagos who suffer."

Turning on his heel, Carson stormed out the door, leaving them standing there staring after him. The door slammed so hard the sound reverberated through the whole apartment.

"Sometimes I actually do hate him," Zach said darkly.

"If he does fire Miguel, the family will really be in trouble. Jobs are hard to find, especially one that pays well and includes housing, and they've got a baby on the way. What are we going to do?"

Zach paced over to the window. "I promised Raul I'd do whatever it took to help him and his sister. I'm not going to break my word." He turned to face her. "We're going to do exactly what we've been doing. We'll just be more careful about it."

"How do you think he found out?"

"Carson's got a long reach in this town. We'll have to find a way to get around it. I'll get word to Mariano Nunez. I've got to go back to L.A. tonight, but I'll try to set up a meeting as soon as possible."

"You think he'll show up?"

He nodded. "There's a little cantina he and his friends hang out in at the edge of town. I can get him to meet me there. I'll find out if Espinoza's wife had a miscarriage and if he knows of any other women in the old house who lost their unborn children. In the meantime, I want you to go back to the newspaper and run that list of names."

They had a fairly complete list now. It would make the research a lot easier. "There's an alphabetical index of names found in each paper," she said. "I'll call my office in the morning and have Terry cancel my appointments. I want to go over to the paper first thing." She glanced up. "What if Carson finds out?"

A muscle tightened along Zach's jaw. "If he wants to play hardball, two can play the game. They've got a strong farm union in this town. Even Carson doesn't like going up against those guys. He tries to fire Miguel without cause, and I'll have the union all over him. Carson likes things to run nice and smooth. Problems with the union are the last thing he wants."

"I hope you're right." She walked to where he stood at the window. Outside, two little boys played kickball on the lawn in front of the apartment building. She wondered if she'd ever have a child of her own. What kind of a father would Zachary Harcourt make? She thought of him with the kids at Teen Vision and the amazing thought struck that he would probably make a good one.

She took a breath, her chest suddenly tight. Unfortunately, Zach wasn't the type of guy to make the kind of long-term commitment it took to raise a child.

She turned away from the window, walked over to the sofa. "I wish I could call Maria, make sure she's all right, but Miguel wouldn't like it, and I don't want to cause her any more trouble."

Zach moved behind her, slid his arms around her waist and pulled her back against him. "We're doing the best we can. Maybe something will turn up tomorrow."

Elizabeth hoped so.

She wasn't sure what kind of danger Maria and her baby might be facing, but whenever she thought of the night she had spent in the house, she believed, soul deep, that danger was real.

* * *

Elizabeth left her office early Monday morning, drove down Main, then turned onto Fifth Street, heading for the redbrick newspaper building three blocks away.

She was thinking about the list she carried in her purse when she glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed another car turning the corner, a dark green pickup she had seen several times before. The day she had gone to So Cal Edison, she had noticed the truck two cars behind her. She remembered because another car had turned sharply in front of the truck and there had nearly been a collision, would have been if the driver of the truck hadn't fiercely blown his horn.

The pickup was there again today, three cars back. She passed the entrance to the newspaper office and instead of turning in, kept on going. She pulled through the drive-thru at McDonald's, ordered coffee and an egg McMuffin, then turned back onto Main and turned into the parking lot behind her office.

As she parked the car in one of the empty spaces, she saw the truck drive slowly past. She didn't recognize the occupant, a large man in a short-sleeved, checkered shirt wearing a battered straw cowboy hat.

Was he following her?

Surely not. She was just getting paranoid.

Still, she didn't want Carson to know what she was up to. She didn't want to risk Miguel's job.

Walking into her office, she made a couple of phone calls then went through a few of her client files. When a half hour had passed, she walked out the front door and made her way the few blocks over to the newspaper office.

The pickup was nowhere in sight. She just hoped the lady at the front desk wasn't somehow in touch with Carson.

"I'd like to do a little more work with the microfiche," she said to the gray-haired woman.

"Help yourself." The woman continued to type away on her computer. "You know where everything is."

"Yes. Thank you." Elizabeth made her way back to the room with the file cabinets and microfiche readers. She had already checked the names on Mariano's list, but now she had Fletcher Harcourt's more extensive list, which went a lot farther back.

As she moved through the years, starting clear back in the late nineteen fifties, she saw a couple of names that matched the ones in her notepad. Same name, different people, as it turned out. After she had pulled the actual newspaper article, she'd discovered that none were occupants of the house.

Another name appeared. A guy named Vincent Malloy that Fletcher Harcourt had mentioned living there in the early sixties was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. In nineteen sixty-five, a man named Ricardo Lopez was killed in a car wreck on Highway 51.

Elizabeth sighed and returned to the master index for the next ten years, comparing the names on her list to the names on the microfiche. It was eleven o'clock straight up, the morning slipping away when another of the names in her notebook appeared.

Consuela Martinez. Below it, listed alphabetically, the name of her husband, Hector, also appeared. The index covered the decade of the nineteen seventies, which, according to Zach's father, didn't match the time frame the Martinezes had occupied the house. But the older man's memory was hardly reliable.

Elizabeth blinked as her eye ran down the sheet of microfiche and she saw the two names listed half a dozen times.

Returning again to the file cabinet, she plucked out the roll of microfiche that covered the earliest newspaper article containing Hector and Consuela Martinez's names, September 15, 1972. The reel hummed and slowed as she searched for that date then found it. It took a while to locate the article, which was halfway down the page. Her heart nearly stopped when she saw it.

Fresno Couple Arrested For Murder.

Her pulse began to drum. She hurriedly scanned the article, then read it again. By the time she had finished, her heart was beating wildly, her mouth cotton dry.

According to the article, the Fresno couple that had resided for a brief time in San Pico, had been arrested for the kidnap and brutal slaying of a twelve-year-old girl. The child had been sexually abused before her death, and according to the article, both the man and his wife had been charged with the murder, which had taken place in their home.

Stunned, Elizabeth sat back in her chair. Though the crime had happened in Fresno, not in the house at Harcourt Farms, the violence of the act, the fact that the murder had happened in the couple's home and that the victim had been a child, simply could not be ignored.

For the next half hour, Elizabeth found, read and printed every article in the San Pico newspaper that mentioned the Martinez couple. Since at the time they were no longer residents of the area, the coverage was slim, with only sketchy information on the girl who had been killed and few actual details of the crime.

There was an item in the paper before the upcoming trial, then another when the couple was convicted of the murder. The most prominent article was headlined Hector Martinez Sentenced to Death. Because of the brutal nature of the crime, the jury had recommended the death penalty and the judge had agreed. Martinez's wife was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The last date listed on the index card was August 25, 1984, nearly twelve years after the couple was first arrested. It was a report in the Newspress printed the day after Hector Martinez was executed in the gas chamber in San Quentin State Penitentiary.

Tired but excited, Elizabeth picked up the material she had printed and left the office. The murder in Fresno might be completely unrelated. That the couple had once lived in the house in San Pico might simply be coincidence.

But something told Elizabeth she had just stumbled onto the clue that could help them find the answers to the frightening occurrences happening in the Santiago house.