Page 21 of The Expat Affair

I spend the rest of the weekend in my sad, beige room, catching up on the work I’ve let slide since Xander’s death put a target on my back. On Saturday, Ingrid packed a bag and fled to her parents’ house, leaving me alone and my nerves jangling, my body jumping at every noise. The jarring ding of the bell from someone down on the street, the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs, a dog’s incessant barking in an apartment below.

And all weekend long, Willow’s words ring in my ears.

You need a gun, one that’s not printed out of plastic.

After the detective told me about the second murder, after his questions shifted in tone to imply that whoever killed Xander will be coming after me next, I have to admit it’s not the worst idea.

A gun, a real, metal, highly illegal gun. I think about her offer all weekend, but really, I don’t need that long. The last straw comes Sunday evening, as I’m sorting clothes in front of the washing machine at the far end of the hall.

I’m shaking out a pile of laundry, shoving the whites into the machine when something goes flying. A flash of metal that hits the wall before it disappears under the machine. An earring? A coin? I don’t have all that many of either, so I drop to my hands and knees and peer under the washer, but the hallway is too dark, the floor far too dirty. All I see is a thick field of dust bunnies.

I fetch a clothes hanger from the wardrobe in my room and use it to scoop everything out. The dust bunnies. A filthy sports sock with a hole in the toe. A million tiny pellets of what looks suspiciously like mouse droppings.

And another tracker. An identical match to the one I found in my bag.

I hold it in my palm, and it sizzles the skin because I know what it means. It means that first tracker, the one I shoved under my seat on the tram, wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t dropped in my bag by accident. It’s absolute, irrefutable proof that someone is following me, and I led them right to where I live.

I do a quick and frantic search through the rest of the clothing in the pile. I turn each piece inside out and give it a good shake, feeling every pocket and around every hem. Another tracker drops from the back pocket of my favorite jeans, pinging me in the toe.

I leave the laundry in a messy pile and return to my room, turning everything upside down and inside out, ransacking the place like a tornado. I peel off the bedding and flip the mattress up against the wall. I dump out drawers and move the furniture around to get underneath, running my fingers along every floorboard and crack. I roll the carpet into the hall and upend my suitcase and peer into the dark corners of the wardrobe. I shake out every book and bag and piece of clothing I own.

In the end, I find four more. One in my backpack, another in my purse, two more tucked in the pockets of my coats, including the one I wore to Xander’s funeral. I line the trackers up on my dresser, thinking about how whoever is behind them got close enough to drop these things in my bags and clothing. The idea makes me dizzy with dread.

I rummage through the mess for my phone and text Willow.

Yes to what we talked about. Found more trackers in my stuff.

Within seconds, she marks the message with a !!, and another second after that, the phone rings.

“Holy shit,”

she says by way of hello, and I fall back onto the bed, filling her in.

“Six, Willow. Two of them in my coats, which means they know everywhere I’ve been since I don’t know how long, including my apartment. I need that . . . item we talked about.”

“Yes, you do.”

She’s smart enough not to say the word out loud.

“How fast can you get one? How much?”

“Give me a day or two, and I’m guessing under a thousand.”

I don’t want to think about what a thousand-euro hole will do to my already tight budget, but I also can’t say no. I stare at the trackers on my dresser, and this doesn’t seem like the time to tighten the money belt. I need a weapon to protect myself no matter how much it costs.

“Okay. Thank you. Truly.”

Willow must hear the worry in my voice because hers softens. “Don’t worry about price. Pay me back whenever you can. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got something.”

I thank her again, and we hang up.

I check the time—almost seven, then pull up the number for the detective. He’s not going to like that I’m calling him after hours again, but I’m not going to make the same mistake twice. I need to get those trackers out of my house and into his hands, so he can tell me whose head I should point that gun at.

“Arie Boomsma.”

“Me again. I found some more trackers. Six, to be precise. They were in my things. I have no idea how long they’ve been there.”

“Where are you?”

“At home. They definitely know where I live.”

“I’m on my way. Give me fifteen minutes.”

He hangs up before I can respond.

Fifteen minutes to jump out of my skin at every voice outside, at every moan and creak and door slam in the stairwell. The whole time, the detective’s words scream through my head. Two people are dead, and I’d really prefer you not be the third.

I’d really prefer that, too.

I pace the apartment, and maybe it’s the mess, or the building’s slanted walls and low-lying ceilings sitting directly under the roofline, but I want to crawl out of my skin. There’s only one way out of an apartment at the tippy-top of a stairwell, and it’s the same way the killer would use to get in. My room, already cramped and claustrophobic, feels like a death sentence. I can’t stay here another second.

A buzzer rips the air, and I squeal, checking the clock. Thirteen and a half minutes since the detective hung up on me, but there’s no video on the door buzzer system, no way to see if it’s the detective or one of the reporters or worse, an armed killer, and I can’t stay here another second. I grab my bag and the trackers from my dresser, snatch my keys and coat from the hook, and make the long trek down the stairs.

I’m coming to the ground floor when I see him, the detective’s face peering through the frosted window at the top of the door. I spot the cluster of reporters behind him, their words tumbling over each other as they jostle for a prime spot. Detective Boomsma turns and barks something sharp, and they shut up. Telling them to back off, I’m guessing.

I scurry down the last few steps and conceal myself behind the door. But they must know it’s me on the other side, because the questions start up the second I crack the door.

, ! Did you really spray-paint the walls of your ex-husband’s home?

Take a baseball bat to his car windows?

Make a bonfire of his designer shoes and custom suits on the lawn?

Yeses across the board. His artwork, his watches and expensive clothes, the lead glass windows he imported from some stupid chateau in France, all destroyed. And screw it, I’ll just say it: ruining all his most precious things felt so damn good. It felt better than sex, definitely better than any orgasm Barry had ever given me, which were mediocre and clumsy at best. It felt like payback for the things he took from me.

My pride. My future. My former best friend.

The second the detective is inside, I slam the door in their faces, but not before they can fire off one more question.

How many nights did you spend in jail for assault?

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 and boom—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 when he 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. Anything else.

“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 keeping everybody 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.

I hustle down the hallway and follow her inside.

Her apartment is furnished exactly like I would have expected, with faded floors and outdated fixtures and furniture of heavy, carved oak topped with what look like mini Persian rugs, the fringe hanging down the side. Her curtains are drawn, but I can hear the reporters just outside, their voices muffled by the glass.

“Hufters,”

she says, flapping a dismissive hand in their direction, and from her expression, I’m assuming it’s something bad.

She leads me down a narrow hallway and into a galley kitchen where time has stood still. Formica table, square white wall tiles, metal countertops, an ancient water heater hanging from the wall above the sink, a relic from the time of World War II.

And at the very back of the house, a door.

I step to it and push the curtains aside, peering out the window onto a courtyard the size of a postage stamp. My gaze trails over the moss-covered tiles topped with a plastic table with two matching chairs, over a collection of potted plants and colorful garden gnomes in various poses, to a wooden gate set in the back hedge.

The alley. I had no idea, and how could I? The window in my place is set too high on the slanted wall to see anything but sky. I’d need a ladder to even open it.

“Thank you,”

I say, whirling around. “Dank u wel. You are a lifesaver. Truly. You don’t have any idea how amazing this is.”

The neighbor beams and shoos me outside with another surge of Dutch, and with one last wave, I take off across the backyard. Slowly, I peel the door open and peek into the alley. Except for a bike parked a few houses down, it’s blissfully empty.

I step into it and disappear into the night.