Page 49 of The Expat Affair

But those storm clouds... My coat has a hood, but I didn’t think to bring an umbrella—always a mistake in a country with weather as fickle as this one. I’d really love to make it to the station before the sky starts dumping rain.

In the end, I just shrug. “Lead the way.”

It takes her a second or two to tap in the coordinates on Google Maps, then she points us away from the sheep and back toward town.

“Listen,” she says once the two of us have fallen into stride, “I’m in a weird position here. Not that any of this is about me, of course. It’s about you and Xander and the tragedy you witnessed—”

“I didn’t witness anything.”

“You didn’t see the killer? You can’t identify him at all?”

“No. I slept through the whole thing.”

“Still. You were there, in his penthouse when Xander was killed,which means no matter how innocent you may be of any wrongdoing, youwereinvolved. Sorry to say it, but that makes you a target.”

I pause to let a dusty Fiat pass by before we cross the otherwise empty street. Two-story row homes rise up on both sides, ugly yellow brick facades with lace-covered windows and overplanted front yards the size of a postage stamp. Such a far cry from the majestic buildings that line Amsterdam’s canals, it feels like we’re in a different country.

“The detective told me much the same, but I don’t have the necklace and neither does he. It’s missing, along with whatever else was in Xander’s safe. I’m kind of assuming the killer has it.”

“Even if that’s true, what about all the other people who’ve seen that picture of you wearing a necklace worth half a million euros? And by now, let me tell you, plenty have. Do you know what they’re thinking? I’ll tell you what they’re thinking, that you might be an easy way to score some diamonds.”

“But I don’thaveany.”

“That’s actually worse.” She shoots me an apologetic wince. “Sorry, but it’s true. At least with diamonds in your back pocket, you’d have some leverage. Something to barter for your life.”

A coiling sense of dread throbs in the pit of my stomach. All this time I’ve been so focused on proclaiming my innocence—I didn’t hurt Xander, I didn’t steal his diamonds—that I haven’t allowed myself to think very hard about the implications. Say someone confronts me. Say they hold a knife to my throat or a gun to my head, then what? Willow is right. They’re not going to believe I didn’t swipe a diamond or two just because I say so. Iwould be better off with diamonds to use as leverage.

A sentiment very similar to the one in that note.I hope for your sake you have the necklace.

I stop dead in the center of a two-lane street. A bike zooms by,a mother with a kid of around seven or eight standing on the back rack, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders. By now, I’m used to all the precarious ways people ride their bikes in this country—without helmets and at top speeds—but a kid balancing on the back of one like he’s some kind of tightrope walker is a new one for me.

But it must not be for Willow, because she doesn’t so much as bat an eye. She just waits for it to pass, then steps onto the sidewalk on the other side.

“You wrote the note, didn’t you?”

Willow turns around, frowning at me across the bike lane. “What note?” Her expression is practically theatric.

“The note, Willow. Oh my God, youwerefollowing me. It’s how you knew my running route, which house I lived in, which mail slot to drop that note into. Because you’ve been following me around town.”

“Get out of the street, Rayna.”

Up at the light, a car slides into the intersection, then rolls to a stop. The driver taps his horn, three staccato beeps in quick succession. My feet stay planted to the pavement.

“What about the tracker? Was that yours, too? And the break-in?”

Her eyes go wide. “Someone broke in to your house? When?”

“Tell me.”

The car honks again, longer this time, and she hustles into the street, grabs me by the wrist, and drags me to the curb.

“No, Rayna. I didn’t track you. I didn’t have to. But I did leave you that note.”

I wrench my arm out of her grip. “How did you find me?”

“Have you Googled yourself lately? Or done an image search on the picture that’s currently breaking the Dutch internet? Because you may have locked your socials down, but there are still plenty of screenshots of you, flitting around the streets of Amsterdam. Anybody who knows anything about this city can point to theexact spot on the map where they were taken, and anybody who doesn’t can check the geotag. Ever heard of it? Geotags have metadata that’s specific to locations, a geographic—”

“I know what a geotag is.”

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