Page 55 of The Expat Affair

I look up, returning the detective’s stare. “The answer, for the record, is zero. I spent zero nights in jail, and it wasn’t assault. It was disorderly conduct. That’s an important legal distinction.”

“You drove your husband and his fiancée off the road. You almost killed her.”

I roll my eyes. “She broke a couple of bones. She’s fine.”

Even now, a year and some change removed from the incident, thinking about that day still fills me with red-hot shame. Seeing her BMW pulling out of my old neighborhood, chasing them down a country road, her surprise at looking over and seeing a hysterical me alongside her, gesticulating and screaming out the passenger’s window. I didn’t drive them off the road. I didn’t even cross the center line; it was all her. She gave a nervous jerk of the wheel andboom—they were in a ditch. Thank God there was an eyewitness, a farmer plowing a nearby soybean field who saw the whole thing go down from the seat of his tractor. He saved me—well, him and my tearful apology in front of a judge.

It’s also why, as furious as it makes me that Barry offered Dad a job, I can’t really blame him for taking it. All those charges Barry filed, the mountain of legal bills, the look on my father’s face whenhe posted my bail. My parents don’t have that kind of money. They cleaned out their retirement account for me.

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t do any of those things the people out there are accusing you of,” Detective Boomsma says, not all that unkindly. “It only means you got lucky.”

I roll my eyes. “I spent six months on a pullout in my parents’ basement and in an ankle bracelet. I walked away from a seven-year marriage with nothing, not one red cent. I hardly think any of that makes me lucky.”

At the far end of the hall, a door swings open to reveal the nosiest of my neighbors, an elderly woman in a housedress and slippers. She and the detective have a brief conversation, a quick back and forth of guttural gibberish, and that’s when I notice the rest of him. A pair of slim-cut slacks, a navy shirt peeking out from his leather coat, boots of dark brown suede. Even his hair has been tamed, finger-raked off his head. He smells nice, too, a mix of spice and leather. Not a kid’s party this time.

The neighbor shuts the door. The detective turns back to me, and I hate the pity I see on his face. I shake my head, eager to talk about something else.Anythingelse.

“Sorry if I ruined your night. Which obviously I did. Sorry.”

He waves it off with a grunt. “The trackers?” he says, and I drop them into his palm. “I’ll take these to the lab tonight. It may be a day or two before I know anything. You’re sure these are the only ones?”

“Pretty sure. I tore my room apart. Those six are the only ones I found. Do you think that’s what whoever broke in was there for, to put trackers in my things?”

“It’s certainly plausible.”

“I remembered something else. Xander used a key fob to work the elevator. We couldn’t get to his floor without it.”

“Those fobs work via radio frequency, a technology that’s particularly vulnerable to hacking. You don’t even need access to the actual fob; you can copy it simply by proximity, through his pants pockets, for example, by sitting next to them on the train. All you need is a cloning device, which you can buy for €17.99 on bol.com.”

“So what are you saying, that the killer hijacked his fob?”

“I’m saying it’s a distinct possibility.” His gaze dips to my coat, wedged under an arm, and my keys, clutched in a fist. “I hope you’re not planning on going anywhere.”

“Better than the alternative, waiting upstairs like some kind of sitting duck.”

The detective slaps a hand to the door he just came through. “After the burglary upstairs, your neighbors all know not to buzz just anyone in, and you live on one of the most well-secured streets in all of Amsterdam. There’s not a store on this street that doesn’t have cameras watching every car and bike and pedestrian who goes by. My colleagues and I are watching, too.”

“So you’ll know what my killer looked like, then. Excellent.”

The detective’s expression softens. “I’ll order some extra patrols and put a rush on the trackers. Just... stay inside. Go upstairs and lock the door. Don’t let anyone inside.”

I bite my lip, but my heart won’t settle. The thought of sitting upstairs in that tiny apartment all night alone, of pressing my ear to the door so I can hear the ambush coming for me sends an uneasy feeling churning in my stomach. It’s been building for days now, ever since the break-in and now, the trackers. Do I really want to go back up there? Even with all the cameras and the detective’s extra patrols, do I feel safe? The answer is a hard no.

He reaches for the latch. “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”

There’s a swell of voices, more shouted questions from the reporters as he steps outside, and for once, I’m glad for them. Those assholes might be trapping me inside, but at least they’re keepingeverybody else out, too. I’m steeling myself for a face-off with them when I hear my neighbor’s door swing open behind me.

She smiles, says something to me in rapid-fire Dutch.

I shove my arms in my coat sleeves and give her an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. I don’t speak Dutch. I don’t understand.”

But she must be the only Dutch person on the planet who doesn’t speak even a few words of English, because she keeps going, the loose skin of her neck quivering, her arms making a swooping motion.

I may not understand the words, but I understand the gesture. “You want me to come inside?”

She bobs her head in an enthusiastic nod, her wrinkly lips forming around a word so heavily accented that it takes me a couple of seconds to recognize it as English.

Alley.The woman said alley.

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