Page 2 of The Expat Affair

“Why did you answer the phone?” she says now. “Get your ass in there. What is it you Americans say? Do it for the team.”

She hangs up before I can correct her.

I toss my phone to the bed, telling myself that Ingrid is right. Ishouldget in there, mostly because it’s the opposite of what the old Rayna would do. The old Rayna would be chastising herself for spending a night with a man she just met and slinking out of here in shame. The new and improved Rayna, though—Rayna2.0—she knows how to have a good time.

On the other side of the wall, the shower is still going, the steam still creeping along the hallway runner. New city, new life, new me.

I push back the covers and slide out of bed. “Hey, lover. You got room in that fancy shower of yours for me?”

Like the rest of this place, Xander’s bathroom is a work of art. A great wash of veiny brown and cream marble stretched across the floors, climbing the walls, plopped onto floating cabinets and molded into sinks. LED lights blaze down from sleek spotlights in the ceiling, a light so bright it stops me in the doorway. I stand there for a minute, blinking into the steamy space.

A towel is tossed carelessly on the floor next to a bath mat.A tube of toothpaste lies on the edge of the sink on the left wall. The shower is still going, tucked behind a marble wall and a door of steamed-up glass, a steady clattering that echoes in the room. A tiny frisson of electricity crackles under my skin. He’s been in there an awfully long time.

“Xander?”

No answer.

I take a tentative step forward, and my bare foot lands in a tepid puddle. That’s when I notice the rest of the floor is wet, too, big pools of water like someone sprayed the marble with a garden hose. Next to the big square tub, a dented shampoo bottle lies on its side, burping up a purple-tinged goo, thick and slimy. A good ten feet from the shower door.

“Everything okay in there?”

Everything is not okay. Of this I am certain. I know it with every ounce of my being even if I can’t quite name what’s wrong. An instinctual kind of alarm bell, like running up to the edge of a cliff. I know it long before I step onto the drenched bath mat and tug open the shower door.

The first thing I see is a foot, male and knobby.Don’t lookdon’t look don’t look. It’s like an out-of-body experience—me screaming the instruction at myself from above, but it’s too late because I’ve already seen the foot and the angle is all wrong. Xander’s toes are pointed to the sky. Like he fell, maybe, whacked his head on the way down. Knocked himself unconscious and landed flat on his back.

Except no. This is more than unconscious. This is utterly, horrifyingly still. Despite the steaming water beating down on his motionless body. Despite me nudging his bare foot with mine.

My gaze wanders up his body. His long, lean legs, his athletic torso. One hand is curled in a loose fist on his chest, the other arm, his right, is stretched across the floor as if he’s reaching forsomething. For a full five seconds, I watch swirls of pretty pink spiral toward the drain before I realize what it is: blood, leaking from the stump where his pointer finger used to be.

But the finger isn’t the worst, not by a long shot. Xander’s eyes are open, but they’re wide and red and empty. His mouth hangs in a yawn or maybe a deep breath he can’t catch because his neck...

Oh my God. His neck. A thin band of opaque plastic is wrapped around it like a tourniquet.

It’s a zip tie. A fuckingzip tie.

I scream and lurch backward, one foot catching in the mat, the other skidding across the water-slick floor. My arms flail, and my feet fly upward. I land on a hip, hitting the marble hard enough to rattle my teeth.

Holy shit.

I scrabble forward on my hands and knees, and maybe it’s all the booze, but last night’s dinner comes up in a sudden and sour wave, a perfectly cooked piece of halibut on a bed of creamy peas and haricots verts. It lands on the marble with the water and the blood and the purple-tinged shampoo, splashing on my knees and thighs.

I stagger to a stand and stumble back toward the hall, but the floor is wet and the bathroom is spinning and this is really happening. Xander is really dead. Someone really killed him while I was sleeping in the next room.

Not dead.Murdered.

The hallway sways as I wobble my way down it, holding on to the walls, trying to comprehend what this means. That someone snuck into Xander’s apartment while I was unconscious. That they either surprised him or overpowered him enough to slice off his finger, strap a zip tie around his neck, and squeeze it practically in two. That someonemurderedhim while another person lay on the other side of the bathroom wall, sleeping off last night’s sex and champagne.

A man wasstrangledin the next room, and I slept through the entire thing.

In Xander’s bedroom, I pace the floor by the bed, my thoughts jumbled and fuzzy. Disassociation, shock—take your pick, though somewhere in the back of my head, a voice is screaming at me to snap out of it. To call the police and report a man’s murder. To get them over here so they can search for DNA and lift fingerprints before all the evidence washes down the drain—if it hasn’t already. To get the fuck out of here, and to fucking hurry.

That’s when I hear it—a thump coming from somewhere close, too close. I let out a shriek before I can stop myself.

I clap a hand to my mouth, my breath coming hard and hot against my fingers.

Is the killer still here? Is he still lurking somewhere in this apartment? Cleaning up his tracks, wiping down whatever evidence he might’ve brought inside? My eyes bulge with realization, with terror.

Run.

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