Page 30 of The Expat Affair

I stare at Ingrid, half expecting her to open the plain brown door and shove me back outside. The journalists are still out there, shouting their awful questions through the wood, though there are fewer of them and a lot less venom in their voices now that I’m gone. Their last little bombshell rings in my ears, snuffing out all the street noise.

Rayna, how do you respond to police naming you the lead suspect?

“You’re the lead suspect?” Ingrid says, her pretty face crumpled into a frown. Light filters through the frosted glass window at the top of the door, glowing like highlighter along the tops of her cheekbones.

I shrug. Shake my head. “No idea. That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

Ingrid waves a dismissive hand, swiping a pile of mail from the stairs and flipping through it. “Don’t believe it, then. If you were the lead suspect, you would have heard it from the police, not a bunch of pesky journalists.”

I blow out a sigh of relief, though the worry isn’t gone, just... delayed somehow. Or maybe insignificant compared to those reporters out there. They pointed a camera at my head. They put a target on my building, my front door, my back. All those people tearing up the comment threads on Reddit and X and wherever else about me and the missing diamonds—they now know where I live.

“Thanks for saving me out there. Dutch reporters are hard-core.”

“Eh, they’re just doing their jobs. Here—this one’s for you.” She shoves an envelope at my chest and grins. “I was thinking of staying in tonight anyway. How do we feel about sushi and Netflix?”

A wave of gratitude washes over me. After the ambush on the stoop, the last thing I’d want to do is spend the evening alone. “We love them.”

The two of us start the long, steep climb up the stairs, Ingrid chattering away about her day. She tells me about the new technique she’s learning from the antique restorer she works for, how to make a bolus of animal glue and soft clay and shape it with her fingers to recreate the ornaments on the wood. I have no idea what a bolus is or if that’s even an English word, but I feign interest whenever she pauses for my response, which is often.

I interrupt her midstream: “Ingrid, what’s a Cullinan?” Xander’s comment—like a Cullinan, all sparkle and fire—was the first time I heard the term, and now from those reporters down on the street.

“Xander didn’t tell you?” She pauses just long enough for me to shake my head—at least I don’tthinkhe told me. Or maybe I was already too far gone. “Ten of the most spectacular natural diamonds that have ever been found. Flawless, colorless, irreplaceable. They’re also gone. Disappeared from the House of Prins vault early last year.”

“The reporters out there asked me if I knew where they were. Why would they think that?”

“Because they know you were in bed with Xander, literally. He worked for the House when the Cullinans disappeared, and the police can’t figure out how the thief got in the vault or how they got the diamonds out, so it’s not all that much of a leap to think it might have been an inside job. And since Xander was Xander and he worked there at the time...”

She doesn’t finish, but she also doesn’t have to. A giant, invisible ellipsis that I can fill in myself. Since he worked there, since hewas known in the diamond world as a villain, since he seemed to be coveted by plenty of people but not all that well liked. All those things make him an easy and logical scapegoat, especially now that he’s not here to defend himself.

“Do you really think—” I stop short at the top of the last staircase, the envelope crinkling in my fist. My skin prickles in alarm.

“Do I think what?” Ingrid keeps clunking up the stairs.

I shush her, and she stops, too.

“What? Why are we stopping?”

I fist a railing spoke with one hand, pointing with my other at the door. Our door. Light filters through the bottom, lighting up dust bunnies on the hallway floor, a thin slice of scuffed buttercream wall.

The door is cracked open by a good two inches.

Ingrid lurches forward, taking the last steps in one giant leap for the door.

“Wait.What if he’s still in there?”

It’s too late. Ingrid has already disappeared inside the apartment.

I step onto the top landing, unsure of my next move. If the intruder is still inside, if we’ve surprised him, then he would have heard us by now. We weren’t the least bit subtle as we clomped up the stairs, and Ingrid is even louder now, by the sounds of things, tossing her room. I picture someone else in there, lurking behind a door or under a bed as Ingrid lets out a shriek loud enough to shake the walls.

I exchange the envelope for my phone, tucked in the inside pocket of my bag, and tap the number for the detective’s cell.

“Arie Boomsma.”

“Detective Boomsma, it’s Rayna Dumont.”

“I know,” he says dryly. “Your name came up on my screen.”

“There’s been a break-in at my apartment. My roommate and I just got home to an open door.”

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