The Export by J.K. Kelly (read along books txt) 📕

tease. He was still hungry but pushed it away, stood up, and excused himself. As he left the dining room, two Marines, Hadden and Terry, were standing on either side of the doorway in the hall. With no door to provide any privacy or reduce any sound, they had heard everything.

“Which way did Ray go?” Matt asked Hadden, who then pointed in the direction of the ambassador’s office in the residence.

Someone needed to console the young man. Ray’s competition with his father, bedding local women, had turned serious. One of them had gotten Misha pregnant, and Matt could tell by the way Ray had spoken about her that he was clearly hurt, not just by his father’s constant attempts to prove he was the “better” man, but by the loss of a girl he cared for. Ray had probably never felt anything other than lust for any of the girls he had known back home or in Russia, until now. Misha had gotten to him, and her rejection, hearing she didn’t want to see him ever again, was tearing him apart.

Matt followed Ray to his father’s office. He found the young man standing behind the massive desk, center drawer pulled open, and a Colt 1911 .45 caliber gun in his hand. Tears filled the boy’s eyes.

Matt stopped dead in his tracks and spoke softly to him. “Ray, we can sort this out, put the gun back in the drawer, please, before someone gets hurt.”

Ray didn’t move. He sobbed, tears flowing down both cheeks. Finally, he looked at Matt and let it all out.

“I can’t do this anymore! I hate it here. I hate my father, and I hate being alive,” he cried out.

Matt could hear footsteps coming down the hallway. He again calmly cautioned Ray to put down the weapon and move very slowly.

Suddenly Wilkerson strode into the room and burst into a verbal rage. “Put that damn gun back where it belongs, Raymond, before I come over there and take it from you!”

Wilkerson shot Matt a look, who returned an expression Wilkerson read as back off.

“Bullshit,” was the response he gave the man sent to fix the ambassador’s problems. “I know how to deal with this.” The ambassador turned to face his son and started toward him, then charged toward the desk and the weeping boy standing behind it with a gun.

Matt watched it play out with a sense of helpless horror. This was something that had been brewing between the Wilkersons for years, through drug abuse, multiple arrests, rehabs, and then their twisted sexual competition. What happened next took an instant, but to Matt, it played out in slow motion. Ray began to raise the gun to his own head and demanded that his father stop. Wilkerson kept coming, and suddenly, the gun came down and was pointed at him instead.

“Ray, stop!” Matt shouted, loud enough for anyone in the hallway to hear.

Wilkerson dove forward and reached for the gun, grabbing his son’s hands that were wrapped around it. As he overpowered his son, he shoved the gun up into Ray’s face and shouted at him. “Point that at me, you useless shit!” he shouted.

Matt could hear more footsteps rushing down the hallway. Wilkerson shoved the barrel of the gun against his son’s left cheek, and as quickly as their scuffle had begun, it ended. Whether Ray pulled the trigger intentionally, accidentally, or his finger was squeezed as they fought for control of the gun, it went off. The bullet tore through Ray’s face and up through his skull, exiting at the top and stopping in a book on the shelf behind him. He dropped to the floor and disappeared from sight behind the desk.

Wilkerson stepped back and stared at his son lying dead before him. The gun slipped from his hand and slid out into plain view. Matt stood and glared at Wilkerson in disbelief. His ears rang from the noise as the familiar smell of gunfire spread through the room. Two Marines ran into the room, sidearms drawn, but they stopped inside the doorway. One took a kneeling stance as the other stood above him.

“What the hell’s going on?” the first one through the door demanded, surveying the room for threats, looking for the shooter and a gun.

“My son just killed himself,” Wilkerson murmured. He slowly backed away from the body and turned toward the Marines.

Matt shook his head in disbelief at the man.

“Is that what happened?” the lead Marine asked.

Matt nodded his head slowly as if to affirm the ambassador’s statement, but the look he gave both Marines told a different story. “They struggled for the gun, and it went off.”

More Marines and staffers were arriving at the office doorway. Panic began to spread as the sobs and screams echoed down the hall. Radio calls were being made between the security elements at the residence and the Embassy. Before long, the State Department, CIA, and NSA would be notified – and the hell they were now in would take on another level of pain.

The Marine guards immediately restricted entry into the room. Wilkerson collapsed onto the sofa and looked down at the floor, not uttering a word. The sound of high heels running down the hallway made everyone turn toward the doorway. Sarah would be there in seconds. The Marines tried to stop her, but she wasn’t having it and shoved through, demanding they let her by. Matt stepped in front of her to try to block her view, but it was too late. Her son’s foot protruded from behind the desk. She screamed and tried to fight her way past him.

“You don’t want to see him this way,” Matt whispered as he restrained her.

The cries coming from a heartbroken mother made even the toughest men in the room bow their heads. She struggled with Matt but gave in to his embrace and sobbed uncontrollably on his chest.

Terry pushed his way through the crowd and was allowed entry by the guards at the door. The