The Swiss scientist remained beside the crate.
Dileia's eyes filled.
“You wanted me desperate. You wanted me ashamed. You wanted me to believe my father's last twenty years were worthless.”
Harlon's face reddened.
“Watch yourself, girl.”
She stepped closer.
“No. You watch me.”
For several seconds, the two stared at each other.
Then Dr. Meier spoke quietly.
“Miss Ashford, before anyone moves or purchases any material, I strongly recommend that you preserve your records and obtain independent legal advice.”
Dileia slowly turned toward him.
He continued.
“Your father's work deserves careful scientific assessment. And your farm deserves protection from people making claims they cannot substantiate.”
Harlon pointed toward the scientist.
“You've got no business interfering in a local land deal!”
Dr. Meier looked at him.
“I agree that local property transactions should be handled through the appropriate legal processes.”
He paused.
“But I also believe scientific and commercial representations should be accurate.”
Harlon stared.
Then the scientist added one final sentence.
“Our organization did not accept your proposal, Mr. Whitmore.”
The developer's expression changed again.
Dr. Meier continued.
“We wanted to know who actually owned the crop before proceeding.”
Dileia looked toward him.
Then toward the roots.
For the first time in two years, she felt something she had almost forgotten.
Hope.
It frightened her more than the debt.
Because she knew how easily hope could turn into disappointment.
And standing beside an enormous crate of strange black roots, surrounded by people who had laughed at her only minutes earlier, she made a decision.
She wasn't going to sign anything.
Not that day.
Not until she understood exactly what her father had discovered.
And not until she knew why Harlon Whitmore was willing to risk so much to obtain it.
Unfortunately, the answer was buried beneath more than four hundred acres of Idaho soil.
It was also hidden inside a damaged tractor, an old bank file, and a set of cultivation records her father had deliberately separated from his other journals.
And someone besides Harlon already knew those records existed.
To understand why a twenty-three-year-old woman had arrived at the Nampa agricultural market carrying thousands of pounds of roots nobody wanted, you had to go back two summers, to the day Walter Ashford collapsed in a dry field while trying to save his final experimental planting.
The morning he died, Idaho was experiencing the kind of heat that made the landscape look almost unreal.
The sky was pale blue.
The fields shimmered.
And dust moved along the fence lines in thin, restless clouds.
Dileia was twenty-one.