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    Green In the Emerald City
    Green In the Emerald City
    Green In the Emerald City
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    Green In the Emerald City

    By Juli Bunting

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    About this ebook

    Samantha Green, the sharpest investigator for Heartland Global Insurance is on the case again. This time, readers are transported to Seattle, where Sam uncovers the mystery behind a stolen book dating back to the fifteenth century. She encounters a handsome detective along the way whom she suspects has romantic intentions, or at least interests. Samantha senses some chemistry worth exploring, too-at least until she meets the darkly handsome stranger who is Seattle's resident expert on rare books. In Green in the Emerald City, we again travel with the smart and beautiful Samantha as the secrets of her late parents and her uncle unfold in this spellbinding, page turning novella. This second book in "The Green Series" will have readers holding their breath, as the quick-witted insurance investigator digs into the past to learn the truth about her parents death, her uncle's long lost love, and the centuries-old book that brought them all together.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublishereBookIt.com
    Release dateApr 26, 2016
    ISBN9781936688593
    Green In the Emerald City

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      Book preview

      Green In the Emerald City - Juli Bunting

      Prologue

      Samantha Green was feeling sure-footed and self-secure again as she walked her four miles on the Forum Nature Trail with her beloved dog, Teddy. Sam was excited to see a call coming in from her boss at Heartland Global Insurance, Tony Jackson. She had spent too many days becoming more and more angry as she watched her boyfriend of one year, Mark Wentworth, load up his belongings. Sam had said goodbye to him for the last time and sent him packing when she caught him kissing another woman. The call from Tony was to put his most talented investigator on a new case in Seattle, which meant Sam would be going back to the Pacific Northwest, where she had completed a case only a month ago. As the lead investigator for Heartland Global Insurance, Sam’s job was to investigate insurance claims of their most important clients, usually wealthy ones. Most of the cases involve the theft of valuable art collections but Sam has also investigated her share of claims where a greedy spouse has killed for insurance money.

      Barely a year ago, Samantha worked on a case in Orlando investigating the theft of several stolen paintings. Although the case was solved and the artwork recovered, she still held her conviction that the cops had the wrong guys. Two small-time local crooks were arrested and charged with the theft of the paintings and the murder of an Orlando detective, who Samantha came to know while working on that case. The detective was killed when his car blew up, but the murder wasn’t the part of the investigation that concerned Samantha. She strongly suspected the involvement of Milos Dragic, the owner of a high-end sound system company. Dragic’s company, Resident Resonance, had wired the client’s mansion for sound and Samantha suspected they were actually the thieves, despite the confession from the two petty crooks. And now her boss told her that he believed Milos Dragic was somehow involved in the new case in Seattle. She asked him to explain it further as she watched Teddy dance on his leash, anxious to continue their walk.

      What makes you think Dragic is in Seattle? Sam gave Teddy the hand signal to sit, which he promptly did.

      His company wired the Seattle client’s home for sound. Can you be ready to fly to Seattle tomorrow, Sam? Tony knew she would read the particulars of the case on the plane.

      Yeah, Tony. I’ll be ready. They said goodbye and Sam and Teddy finished their walk before returning to her car.

      Chapter One

      The impact was so loud, it threw her almost out of her seat. She slowly turned around to look at the back of the plane and could see flames through a cloud of smoke. The flames were growing higher and higher as if the top part of the plane had blown off. She turned to look toward the cockpit and all of a sudden the nose of the plane dropped so precipitously, her body was straining against the seat belt. Bags were flying out of the overhead bins as the latches were popping and the doors springing open. Something had hit the plane and they were going down. She started shouting as the plane started spinning, spinning, spinning. The plane was out of control and the water getting closer and closer and . . .

      Samantha Green bolted upright as she awoke from her nightmare. She looked at the man sitting next to her and he smiled as if nothing had happened. Out the window of her first class seat on the flight from Chicago, the peaks of the Cascade Mountains were barely visible through the clouds. She thought the plane must be getting close to Seattle as the mountains appeared and disappeared below. Soon the sky was a tundra of clouds that looked as if you could just step out of the plane and walk to your destination. She was shaking a little—the remnants of her nightmare. She had been thinking about her parents before she drifted off to sleep and now she tried not to think about them as she gazed at the desolate clouds. Long flights like this one sometimes caused her to dwell on her parents’ deaths and she wondered now, if those last few moments were anything like her dream.

      Not a lot was known about what happened that day except that Korean Airlines Flight 007 was shot down by Soviet fighter pilots on September 1st, 1983 during the final leg of a flight from New York City to Seoul. The flight refueled in Anchorage, Alaska, and that’s where noted archaeologists Ralph and Anita Green boarded the ill-fated flight. From there, the plane supposedly wandered into Russian airspace and just like that, boom. It was shot out of the sky as if it had never existed. Sam was only three, but as she grew older she read all she could get her hands on about Flight 007. There was a lot of material out there. The incident spawned dozens of conspiracy theories, several books and two films. It also brought left-wing and right-wing conspiracy theorists out of the woodwork. Other than fantasizing and romanticizing for a brief time at the age of twelve that her parents had actually been spies and were on a secret mission foiled by the old Soviet Union, Samantha accepted that the shoot down was a mistake, the Soviets tried to cover it up, the passengers had all perished, and life continued for her as the charge of her namesake, Unk, her mother’s brother, Dr. Samuel Carson.

      She forced her thoughts back to the present. This was business. She was on her way to Seattle to investigate an insurance claim worth millions. The theft of a valuable art collection combined with excessive vandalism could have her employer, Heartland Global Insurance on the hook for close to twenty million dollars.

      Sam was used to handling cases that involved stolen paintings, as did the last major claim she worked in Florida, but the collection in Seattle also included a couple of sculptures, some Dale Chihuly glass art and—and this is what Sam found truly fascinating—a collection of rare books. It was the second case in just over a month in Seattle involving a rare book collection. The last theft was staged by a woman who ended up killing her husband for insurance money. Sam suspected the woman after the husband turned up dead in the middle of the investigation. The book theft was a subterfuge to distract the cops and when Sam, with the help of a fine art theft expert with the Seattle Police Department, discovered the stolen books in a warehouse owned by a man who had ties to the dead man’s spouse, the woman became the prime suspect. Tony, an executive at Heartland Global and Samantha’s boss knew the two Seattle cases were not connected, even though they both involved rare books. But there was a possibility this case was related to a theft she investigated in Orlando last year. Both burglarized homes were wired for sound by the same company. Sam wasn’t quite sure what to think. She didn’t really want to think about the case in Orlando. It had ended badly and she had had to take some time off work to recover.

      Would you like another glass of wine? Sam looked up at the flight attendant who was holding a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc wrapped in a white linen napkin.

      Yes, please. I would love another glass. The flight attendant poured the wine. Thank you. Samantha watched the flight attendant walk back to the galley and looked at her iPad2. The Seattle case file was up and she began reading it again, trying to commit the basic facts to memory.

      The file meticulously detailed the case of James Wu, an incredibly wealthy high-tech wizard who was forced to return early from a vacation in China because his Mercer Island mansion had been burglarized. Four paintings, a half dozen Chihulys, three sculptures, some jewelry and some of the priciest rare books in the world, most of which he obtained at auctions in New York and London, were missing. The rare book list was very impressive—the most valuable dating back to the fifteenth century, was valued at over three million dollars. The title, roughly translated to The Rising of the Empire, was written by an author named Vanja Radic. There were no other details in the file about this particular book, which caught Sam’s eye because of the author’s name and the high value of

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