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

Matt watched as Lois ran full speed for the bone he’d just tossed, and then spent the next few minutes chasing a grey rabbit that had made the mistake of wandering into the dog’s domain.

That’ll be me on this bitch, he thought to himself.

“You’re planning on flying back out there soon to spread her ashes. Maybe it’s time we both go and sit down at the ranch with our dear Sam – the scandalous sheriff.” Matt agreed, but there was no way he could wait. He wanted on a plane and wanted to be standing in front of Sam as soon as possible.

“It’s not necessarily his fault, Matt, boys will be boys, but unfortunately, some girls will be girls,” Dale stated. “You realize that. But someone got past the people in charge of our national security. That scares me more.” He stared at her, but then his expression changed from anger to sadness.

“I agree. I’m still shocked that whoever this woman was got through to Helene.”

Dale agreed and shook her head to indicate it.

“Remember, we don’t know why the maid did what she did, if she did it on her own for some reason, if she was coerced, or if she was working for someone. That’s what my team is deep into now.”

“This has so many elements to it my head’s going to explode. How can you trust anybody after an abortion like this?” Matt’s mind was racing again. “Do you think Sam thought he would inherit the ranch when Helene died?”

Dale shrugged her shoulders. The two went back and forth on scenarios, but then she said something that added to the speculation even more.

“Matt, the only way Sam would have inherited the ranch would be if he survived you. Helene had it in her will that if you were dead, the place went to Sam, and if you inherited it and died, it went to Sam, not any of your heirs.”

Matt walked into the house and came back a few minutes later with more beer. “So on another subject, want to see the inside?” he asked.

“Come on, Lois,” Dale yelled at the Mastiff. As Matt walked back through the screen door, he smiled. Gotcha, he thought to himself. He just wished it had been under happier circumstances.

Dale and Matt wound up talking late into the night, and the next morning drove to BWI and took a small private jet Matt chartered to Jackson Hole. They hadn’t been at the ranch long before Sam pulled up to the front of the main house and was welcomed and invited in. Matt and Sam hugged like long-lost brothers preparing to say a final goodbye to a very special woman. There wasn’t much to say, not right now. That could wait. Thirty minutes later, the three of them drove in Sam’s SUV out to a spot at the base of the Grand Teton mountain range.

With some encouragement from Dale in the back seat, Sam drove the SUV up a trail and then turned off to the left.

“This looks like a fitting spot,” she suggested, and the men agreed. After sharing a few of their favorite stories, right at the stroke of high noon, Matt knelt down and poured Coleman’s ashes into a space protected from the wind and rainwater, a spot much like where they would all have rested during a summer hike in younger, happier times.

On the ride home, despite Dale’s request that they wait until they get back to the ranch, Matt couldn’t contain himself any longer. After laying out everything Dale had shared with him back in Annapolis, Sam abruptly pulled the vehicle over and got out. Matt followed.

“You know I would never have done anything to put her at risk, Matt, you know that,” Sam said, almost in a state of shock at what he had heard.

Dale watched quietly from the car, checking emails and hoping the two wouldn’t wind up wrestling around in the dirt.

“It’s none of my business why you were seeing this woman, Sam,” Matt assured him. “I just want to locate her and find out who she worked for.” But then he continued. “Dude, this girl – Susannah – or whatever her real name is, she must be something special to have lured you away from Liz.”

Sam shook his head in dismay.

Dale looked up from her phone and watched as Sam pulled his wallet from his back pocket then took something out of it. Suddenly, Matt and Sam began running as fast as they could toward her. Matt was yelling something, but she couldn’t hear. She opened the rear car door and stepped out just as the men arrived.

“Claire, Claire!” Matt was yelling. “She’s not Susannah. This is Anika Ivanov – the Russian flight attendant who was banging Wilkerson! This is Anika! Call Wilson and Adams in Russian affairs at Langley. They can send us what they have on her.”

“She’s a damn good chameleon,” Sam stated. “Best New York accent I’ve ever heard.”

*

Sam was ashamed and embarrassed but also very angry and drove as quickly as he could back to the ranch while Dale and Matt both made calls to alert their contacts within the intelligence service and with others in Russia. Now that they knew for sure who had killed the DNI, every asset available to the United States and its allies would be turned loose to capture this woman and bring her to justice.

Within an hour of Matt’s identification of the murderer, her image was on every police and intelligence service communication around the world. With facial recognition technology, fingerprints obtained from Aeroflot, verified as the same ones the NSA screeners had taken from her, and a large reward posted by the United States, it wouldn’t take long to find her. Matt just wanted to be the one to bring her to justice. He hoped she resisted him.

If the person or entity she was working with were in the intelligence loop, they