Page 36 of The Expat Affair

“No, Rayna. I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself for not putting my money in the bank like a normal person, so please. Stop thinking this is on you.”

Itison me, though, and we both know it. The thief came here for me, for the necklace he thought I had stashed somewhere in the house. Ingrid’s cash was simply a consolation prize, and in the end, it wasn’t all that much. Less than a thousand euros—or so she said. Because now I’m wondering if she didn’t lowball that number because she didn’t want to admit to the detective where she got it,or that she wasn’t planning to include it on her tax forms. There’s a lot of black cash floating around in the antiques business, apparently.

Ingrid heads out, leaving me to spend the evening alone with my regrets... and my worries. I worry about the reporters downstairs, clogging the sidewalk in front of my door. I worry about whoever broke in here, and when, not if, they’re coming back. I worry about taking my chances out in the streets, if there’s a man in a ball cap waiting for his chance to drag me into a dark alleyway. I’m like my mother that way, my head rowdy with worry.

I decide to distract myself with work, with developing the pitch that’s been beating around my brain since walking in on Xander’s dead body—When Disaster Strikes Abroad. With my experience, an easy sell, at least.

I’m fetching my notebook from my bag when I find it, the envelope Ingrid plucked from the steps yesterday on our way upstairs. After the break-in, I’d forgotten all about it. I tug it from my bag and study the front. My name is slashed across the page in neat but unfamiliar handwriting. No address, no stamp. A hand delivery, then. I poke a finger under the seal and pry it open.

It’s a note, written on a sheet of paper that’s been hastily folded in thirds.

If I can find you this easily then so can he, and he wants that necklace. I hope for your sake that you haveit. Either way, watch your back. You’re not safe.

Adrenaline shoots through me, my heart thudding so hard I can practically see it through the wool of my sweater. I flip the paper over, check the back. Blank.

The apartment spins, and I can’t stay here. At the scene of the crime, trapped in an apartment at the tippy-top of a four-story building where a narrow stairwell is the only way in or out. Alone,jumping out of my skin at every footstep and door slam coming from the floors underneath me, staring at my own front doorknob and waiting for it to turn. When Detective Boomsma said he’d put us on the watch list and send a patrol car by every hour to keep an eye on things, I tried very hard not to roll my eyes. If all the security at Xander’s building couldn’t stop a diamond thief with a pocket full of zip ties, why would a scheduled drive-by?

I can’t stay. I can’t stay. I can’t stay.

I grab my keys and my coat and take off down the stairs.

By now, it’s past ten, and the reporters are gone, wandered off to their families and homes. I skirt up a mostly empty street in the direction of the city center, trailing a pack of noisy partygoers to a crowded bar on the edge of the museum quarter. I find a seat near the door and keep a careful watch on the crowd, searching their faces, taking note of their clothes and their hair and their height, filing the details away in case I see any of them again—either in a lineup or trailing me around town. When the partygoers pay their tab and move on to the next place, so do I.

We end up in a dingy basement club in De Pijp, a neighborhood on the southeast side of the city. It’s as good a place as any to pass a few hours, and the music isn’t bad, either. The DJ, a pimply-faced kid who’s barely tall enough to see over the edges of the raised booth on the far wall, spins old-school EDM I’m guessing he picked up from his parents, classics from Armin and Tiësto and Hardwell. I stand in the center of the crowd, sipping cheap vodka from a plastic cup and swaying to the beat like I’m not old enough to be his mom, like I’m not old enough to have mothered half the kids in this place. The club is hot and the floor is sticky, but the booze and the lack of men in ball caps is helping me not care.

A guy dances up to me, a cup of amber liquid clutched in a fist. He’s tall, thin, nondescript in a plain T-shirt and jeans. His body moves with the music, but he sticks close to mine, so close his armsbrush my hair. I meet his gaze, and his expression doesn’t change. Heavy lids, blissful smile, the sappy kind that comes from narcotics. I don’t think he wants anything from me but a dance, but after the break-in, I’m not taking any chances. I duck under his arm and move away, chasing a gust of cooler air to an empty space at the bar.

A bartender stands at the far end, a rail-thin woman in a tube top working the beer tap. Dozens of people vie for her attention, waving euro bills like colorful flags in the space over the bar. This is going to take forever.

A stream of Dutch comes from my right, a man with smiling eyes and Jason Momoa hair. Like the rest of the people in this place, he’s young, somewhere in his midtwenties, I’m guessing.

I point to the speaker above my head, blasting music that thrums deep inside my bones like a jet engine, and shake my head. “I didn’t catch a single word of that.”

He leans in and shouts in my ear. “I said, good luck getting a drink. I’ve been waving this twenty around for the past ten minutes.” He slaps it to the bar and pushes up on both hands, raising himself up above the crowd. “Yo,” he yells in her direction, along with more Dutch words I don’t understand. The woman catches his eye and rolls hers.

“You’re American,” he says, landing back on his feet.

Americans abroad learn pretty quickly their nationality isn’t always a good thing in the eyes of the rest of the world. Americans are loud, they’re rude and demanding, they wear running shoes and baggy jeans and don’t bother to learn the customs or languages of their host country. But this guy doesn’t say it like it’s an insult, so I nod.

“Cool,” he says. “Where from?”

“A teeny tiny town called St. Francisville, Louisiana. Blink and you’ll miss it.”

“What brings you to Amsterdam?”

I chew on a corner of my lip, lolling in the heaviness of a vodka buzz, considering how much to tell him. Thathomeis a place with too many triggers—the house Barry and I lovingly restored and the gazebo where he dropped to one knee, the church where we said our vows in front of two hundred of our closest family and friends, only for him to break them in such a horrible, awful way six years later. That town belongs to Barry now.

I lift both hands in a full-body shrug. “It was time for me to move on. Amsterdam seemed as good a place as any to do it.”

“Nice. And how’s that working out for you?”

I wince. “Honestly? So far, it’s been a bit too adventurous for my liking.”

“Uh-oh. Anything I can do to help?”

I look down at the plastic cup in my hand, empty but for the lone lime slice stuck to the side. “I suppose a drink anytime soon is out of the question.”

“Not unless you want to go back there and pour it yourself.” He glances down the length of the bar, to the bartender with her back turned, her shoulder blades sharp enough to slice the fabric of her top as she punches in something on the register. “There’s another place across the street, though. A bar, not a club. It’ll be a lot less crowded and loud.”

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