Page 75 of The Expat Affair

He orders me behind the wheel and Ingrid to the passenger’s seat, then drops into the back seat, scooting to the very middle. He taps the gun against our biceps, both a reminder and a warning. First mine, then Ingrid’s.

“Start the car. Plug in the address. Van Diemenstraat 408.”

I hit the brake and look for a button, but there’s no need. The car fires up and Google Maps pops up on the screen. Ingrid enters the address, and the system spits out the route, a twisty tour along the edges of the city to thehouthavens. A solid fifteen minutes with traffic, and I think of Willow, the gravity of the situation dragging down her voice as she tells me to call the detective. I just hope that whatever we find there, it’s not too late.

I put the car in reverse and ease out of the parking spot, slammingthe brakes to let a biker pass. Once he’s gone, I back out and wriggle the car into Drive.

“At least tell me why,” I say, sparing a glance at Ingrid while I follow the little blue line to the next corner, where it directs me to take a left. “What did you and Xander need me for? What was the plan here?”

She gives a pointed look to Lars over her shoulder, but he must want to know, too, because she turns back with a sigh. “Xander was spooked. He said someone at Prins knew what we were doing. He didn’t dare to meet face-to-face anymore. He wasn’t meeting with any of his people, apparently. He said we needed to find another way to communicate, another way to get the stones from him to me.”

“Only Xander died before you two could use me as a mule.”

Ingrid doesn’t respond. She stares out the windshield and presses her lips into a tight line.

“Hedidn’t? How?”

She glances over with a roll of her eyes. “He put them in a lipstick tube and dropped it in your bag for me to remove the second you got home.” She twists around on the seat to face Lars. “And before you start, I don’t have those diamonds. They were stolen. I’m guessing by you.”

It takes me a couple of beats to catch up. Ingrid is referring to the break-in, and it was diamonds—not cash—that disappeared from her room. No wonder she clammed up as soon as the police arrived. No wonder she got so mad when I asked her if she was insured. How do you insure stolen diamonds?

The navigation dumps me onto a wider road, two lanes flanked by bike paths and separated by two sets of tram tracks. It’s a lot to keep an eye on, especially when there’s a gun pointed at the back of my head. I grip the steering wheel, and it’s a good thing thespeed limit is a snail’s pace, because after Ingrid’s little tidbit, my mind is spinning with more than traffic.

Ingrid, who pointed me to Tinder and helped me craft my profile. Who yanked my phone from my fingers and selected things like age, height, location, and maximum distance from the apartment we shared. Who would have told Xander all those things about me to help him zero in on my profile. Maybe he got lucky, or maybe he swiped for days. Either way, I’m guessing they also had a backup plan.

But the more pressing point is, Xander didn’t want to date me. He wanted to drop diamonds in my pockets and use me to courier them to Ingrid. I think of the way he didn’t take his eyes off me at the bar and later the restaurant, leaning in as he peppered me with questions about my work, my travels, my life. He laughed at my jokes, made me feel funny and interesting. He made me feel beautiful. It was a classic case of love bombing, but Xander didn’t like me, he wasmanipulatingme.

A biker comes out of nowhere, swerving over the line as it merges into the thick stream of bicycles pedaling next to us in the bike lane. I see it in my periphery and overcorrect, almost sideswiping a tram in the process.

“Watch out!” Lars shouts from the back seat, and I slam the brakes, both from the volume and the pressure of holding the car steady between moving objects on both sides. Ingrid squeals and grabs the door handle.

“I’ve never driven in Holland before, okay?” I say, my gaze flitting from tram to bike to the Opel riding its brakes in front of me. “How do you people do this? Your streets are like a freaking obstacle course.”

The light flips to red and I hit the brakes again, breathing a sigh of relief at the chance to regroup. I slow to a stop behind the Opel,Ingrid’s earlier words bubbling up in my head. She said that she and Xander wanted to use me to communicate. “Communicate how? What, did Xander drop a note for you in my bag?”

“No, on your Instagram.”

I think back to his flurry of likes on pictures going back months. But there was only one he commented on, the shot of me in front of the butterfly mural in Nashville.Nice wings, he wrote.Next time you go to Music City #ImIn.

And then there was Ingrid, commenting on every picture I posted, fragments of run-on English that felt random and often a little confusing. I brushed it off to her clunky language skills, but now I’m thinking of the comment she posted on the picture of me in that necklace, three fire emojis followed by words I didn’t understand at the time:#readywhenyouare.

He’s in. She’s ready when he is. I’m a fucking idiot.

By now we’re on the north side of town, where the iconic facades of stair-step rooflines with white piping have fallen away into something grittier. Big modern buildings dingy with soot, a maze of dark bridges and tunnels. The navigation system points us down one where passenger trains rumble overhead, the tracks leading to and from Central Station. We come out the other side into an area that looks nothing like the Amsterdam I’m used to seeing. Spacious. Modern and bright. A mix of new homes and old industrial warehouses, plenty of water and sky.

A couple more turns, and Lars shoves his upper body in the space between us, the gun resting on the console. “Find a parking spot. It’s just up there.”

He juts the gun at an ugly square building of yellow brick. Ifind a spot a hundred meters further down and squeeze the Tesla in. Lars orders us to sit tight while he pulls up the parking app on his phone and pays for an hour’s time, and the absurdity hits me. Acriminal who’s afraid of a parking ticket.

Ingrid swivels around in her seat, a rush of vehement Dutch I take to be a plea for him to let her go. He points the gun at her forehead, and she shuts up.

He swings the barrel to mine. “You know the rules.”

I shift on the seat, and the flimsy nail in my pocket pokes me in the thigh. I’ve brought a nail to a gun fight. I nod.

“Then let’s go.”

With no other choice, Ingrid and I clamber out of the car and let Lars march us inside.

---