Millionaire M.D. (6 page)

“We've only been waiting a few minutes,” Dakota assured him.

Again, Justin looked around. “Hell. If this isn't enough to put chills up your spine.”

Just like the others, he'd hightailed it to exactly this site when the plane had first gone down, but it wasn't dark now; there were no flames, no crying passengers…there was no sound at all but the shriek of a winter wind. Acres of Texas flatland stretched in all directions, bleached of all color and life at this time of year, and in the middle of that ice-gray desert was the mirror-silver of the plane, just sitting there. She was listing a bit, but she didn't look as if she'd crashed or had an emergency landing. She just looked like an alien vehicle in the middle of a Star Trek episode. Big. Silent. A scream of high technology in a land of rattlesnakes and coyotes. And the door to the small jet gaped open like a mouth waiting for a dentist's probe.

“I'm still surprised that the cops called us.” Matthew brought up the rear as they all strode toward the metal plane stairs.

“I don't believe it was the cops' idea that we were called in. I suspect it was Princess Anna's family. No one in Asterland or Obersbourg has any real contacts in America except for the Texas Cattleman's Club, so I think it's pretty natural they'd want us as part of the investigation. They know us. They trust us.” Dakota led the way inside the plane. “It'd be different if some clues had surfaced as to the cause of the emergency landing. Of course, a fire's the best way in hell to destroy evidence. But right now, I think everyone's still worried about sabotage. If some answers don't surface real soon, I'd be surprised if Asterland doesn't send over its own team of investigators.”

“Well, I hear you, but you're retired from the Air Force,” Matthew said to Dakota. “If anyone belongs here, you do.
God knows, I'm willing to help, but I can't imagine anything I can really do.”

“Same here,” Justin said. “But I think the point is to get a fresh pair of eyes on the site. Experts have already been over the place with a fine-tooth comb, but we're the only ones who knew all the people on board. I think they're hoping we'll find something that no one else had any reason to notice.” He frowned. “But I thought Aaron and Ben were going to join us?”

Dakota nodded. “Ben is. In fact, he should be here shortly. He cell-phoned a few minutes ago just to let us know he'd been tied up. Not Aaron, though—Aaron took off for Washington a couple days ago and he isn't back yet.”

“He went to Washington? Related to this problem?” Matthew asked.

Dakota shook his head. “I don't really know what Aaron's doing there, but when he was home over the holidays, I knew there was some problem with his job. I understood that he'd taken a leave of absence from his diplomatic work, so I figure he's at the embassy in Washington—but all I really know was that he was really unhappy and worried about something.”

“I had the same impression,” Justin agreed. “In fact, I tried to talk to him at our Texas Cattleman's Club shindig.” But then he'd gotten caught up watching Winona dance. Watching Win smile. Watching Win breathe. And that fast, she stole into his mind all over again. Memories snapped into his mind, of her holding the baby, and then of her holding…him. Kissing him. Coming alive in his arms in a way he'd never believed could happen.

The plane-crash scene, though, slapped him back to reality. And Matthew was still talking about Aaron Black.

“I tried to talk to him the night of the party, too, but then he got dancing with that plain-faced teacher with the sweet smile. What's her name? Pamela?”

“Pamela Miles,” Justin affirmed. He remembered her, not
from the night of the party so much, but from treating her the morning after the plane's emergency landing. “She was on this plane flight, in fact. Headed to be an exchange teacher in Asterland—at least before the crash.”

“Well, she sure didn't have her mind on teaching that night. I'd never guess that Aaron would go for that kind of gal, but they were sure glued closer than peanut butter and jelly for a while there. Anyway, I never got a chance to ask him anything about his job. He left early the night of the party. And in the meantime…”

In the meantime, all three of them fell abruptly silent as they slowly walked through the plane. Justin glanced at the other two men, but the view seemed to disturb all of them the same way. The whole group had been here the morning of the crash landing. Justin remembered it well. He'd gotten the phone call, driven here like a bat out of hell, saw the smoke billowing out, hurled out of his car and started working. He'd been a doctor that morning. Nothing else. Trauma medicine used to be his adrenaline flow, his heartbeat.

It wasn't anymore.

He couldn't let it be.

But the morning of the crash, for damn sure, all he'd seen were the passengers, their injuries, their frightened faces. Now the silence was eerie and the devastation inside the plane as frightening as a bomb site.

“Hell. What a mess,” Matthew muttered.

“It could have been worse.”

“A ton worse.” Dakota's gaze riveted on the cockpit, with which he was obviously more familiar than either of the others. “You saw more of this than any of us, Justin.”

“Because I was inside right after the crash? Yeah, I suppose. But I only saw people. Patients. It's all I was looking for or looking at. I never gave a second look to anything about the plane.”

“Well, let me fill you both in on what I know. This is where the fire started…” Dakota motioned, and then mo
tioned again, “Robert Klimt was sitting here. And Lady Helena across the aisle there. Not surprisingly, those two were hurt worse than anyone else on the flight.”

The three of them had a passenger list and a diagram showing where each person had been seated, but Justin couldn't keep his eyes off the plane's interior. The overhead compartments were all yawning open, debris spilled all over the aisles and seats. No one had been allowed to recover their personal belongings yet. The fire had left a gaping hole with black char climbing the walls and the carpet still seeping and stinking from the water and extinguisher chemicals.

“As bad as it is, it's still like looking at a miracle,” Matthew said soberly. “I don't know how anyone walked away from this. It's too damn easy to imagine everyone being killed, the whole thing up in flames.”

“Yeah. If this was the act of a terrorist, I hope to hell we get him. And soon.”

For a moment Justin couldn't speak. His fingertips went ice cold, the way they did when he woke up from nightmares sometimes, memories of Bosnia still moaning through his mind. This kind of crisis was exactly why he'd accepted the Texas Cattleman's Club's invitation to join their group. Maybe outsiders thought they were a male bastion social club, but Justin knew how committed the men were to saving innocents. Too damn often, neither the law nor any government could protect innocents. Not in any country.

He sucked in a breath, forcing those old nightmare memories to fade. At least there'd been no small children involved in this plane flight.

His gaze swept and reswept the plane's interior. He saw an overturned romance paperback on the floor. A woman's red high-heel shoe lying on its side. A black driving glove. A small carry-on had upended, revealing a spill of lingerie that looked like a bride's trousseau—Matthew muttered something about Jamie Morris and what he'd heard about her marriage to some higher-up dignitary in Asterland's govern
ment. Down the aisle a little farther was a snakeskin purse, also lying open, with lipsticks and combs and what all strewn down the aisle. There was a sweater here, a coat there. The acrid after-smell of burned plastic and chemicals.

The door to the pilot's cabin stood ajar, the cold morning sun streaming through the windows. It seemed crazy to notice the dust spinning in the sunlight, as if anything about this scene were remotely normal.

But then a sharp, bright glint caught his attention. On the carpet, near where Lady Helena had been sitting on the flight, Justin hunkered down, frowning.

“Matt. Dakota.”

“What?” Matthew bent down, too, but Justin raised a cautious hand to prevent him from touching anything.

Dakota pushed closer, sensing from the sudden excitement and seriousness of the other two that they'd found something important. He looked over Justin's shoulders. “That
can't
be what I think it is,” he breathed.

The two stones were just lying in the carpet, not noticeably separable from all the other debris. A handkerchief wasn't far. The black driving glove. Ash and messes from the fire. But the two stones were a startling contrast to everything else.

One was a black harlequin opal.

The other, a three-carat emerald.

Justin exchanged glances with Dakota and Matthew. Matt's face had bleached white. Probably his own had, too.

None of the men could give a holy hoot about gems—but all of them recognized these two stones. The jewels were too rare and distinctive to be mistaken for anything else, even by lay people such as them.

The whole town knew the legend of the Texas Cattleman's Club's three jewels. And Justin distinctly remembered the old story being retold at the last Texas Cattleman's Club party— Riley Monroe recounting the old yarn to one of the Asterlanders. The townspeople never seemed to get tired of the
jewel tale, even if they never believed it was true. It just didn't matter. It was a great story, and specifically a story with a message about the values of leadership, justice and peace—the Club's motto.

Two of the stones in the old legend, of course, were a black harlequin opal and a great big green emerald.

Just like these two.

Amazingly like these two.

Exactly like these two.

Matthew wildly shook his head. “I don't get this. Someone tried to steal our stones? But I didn't think anyone really believed they existed—much less that anyone had a clue where we had them locked up all these years.”

“Neither did I. In fact, none of this makes any sense. If there'd been a break-in at night, Riley Monroe would have immediately contacted one of us. And obviously nothing happened during the day, when people are around, or we'd have easily known about that, too.” Justin was already lurching to his feet. So was Dakota. “But the frightening thing is…if those two gems
were
stolen—then where is our red diamond?”

All three men swore at the same time, even as they were pawing and prowling around the plane, searching every nook and cranny and sifting through all the debris. All three stones were priceless, but the red diamond was so rare it was literally beyond price, beyond even a collector's dreams. “It doesn't make sense that anyone would have taken the other two stones and left the diamond,” Dakota grumped.

“It doesn't make sense that any of them could have been stolen to begin with,” Justin shot back, and then sucked in a swear word.

“What?” Dakota demanded. “Did you find it? The red diamond?”

No, he hadn't found the stone. He'd found a creased sheet of paper that would never have drawn his eye if the word
emerald
hadn't been written on it in a big, slashing scrawl.
Frowning, he noted the Asterland stationery. “I don't know what this is,” Justin told the others. “It's not a letter. It doesn't seem to be written to anyone specific—at least there's no name on the stationery. But someone jotted down the town legend about the jewels. The whole history. The Texas soldier who found the stones on a fallen comrade in the War with Mexico, took the stones home to Royal, then made it rich on oil before there was any reason to spend them….”

“What else?” Matthew couldn't see at the same time as the other two men.

“The whole thing about the jewels. That red diamonds were traditionally called the stone of kings because they stood for leadership. There's a scrawled history of black opals here, specifically black harlequin opals, and how, symbolically, they were credited as being healing gems as well as allowing their owners to ‘bring justice' to those around them. And the emerald is described as a symbol of peace and peacemakers.” Justin looked up.

“Leadership, justice, peace,” Dakota echoed. Again, the men exchanged quiet glances. They all knew why those words had been chosen as the Texas Cattleman's Club motto—and what each man had vowed to protect when he'd been asked to become part of the group.

“I still don't understand any of this,” Matthew said irritably. “The whole world knows about the legend. But who could possibly have known that the stones were real, much less know where we had the jewels locked up? Where's the damn red diamond? And…for God's sake…do you two think the jewel theft had anything to do with the crash landing of this plane?”

Justin lifted a hand helplessly. “I don't know how it could. But the coincidence is pretty hard to ignore.”

Dakota said swiftly, “We need to get together—as soon as we can get hold of Aaron and Ben. But even sooner than that, at least one of us needs to get to the Club. Find out if
the red diamond is still there. Talk to Riley Monroe. And find out what happened to our safe.”

Justin pushed a hand through his hair. “I'll volunteer to do anything you want…but to be honest, I'll have a hard time meeting until later tonight—say, eight o'clock, earliest. I have patients back-to-back until then. I realize how critical this is, and I
can
cancel patients if I have to, but—”

“No, it's all right, Justin. I'd rather wait until after dinner tonight, too,” Matt concurred. “We've got a better chance of Ben joining us. And if Aaron isn't back, we could at least have consulted with him by phone before then. Because of his diplomatic connections and knowledge, I really think Aaron should be brought into this before we make any decisions.”