Page 51 of The Expat Affair
But also, why? Xander’s safe has a fingerprint pad, yes, but it also opens with a code. Did Xander change it? Did he refuse to cough it up for the killer? A safe full of stolen lab-growns hardly seems worth losing your life trying to protect.
“I know,” she says at the look on my face. “It’s the stuff of nightmares. I probably should get some therapy.”
I blow out a breath, leaning into the table like she does, mimicking her body language. “And you didn’t hearanything?”
“Not a peep. I’m assuming that’s what saved me, that the killer didn’t know I was there.”
I nod because she’s not wrong. If Rayna had stumbled out of bed at the noise, if she’d followed it into the bathroom and witnessed Xander in his death throes, there would have been two funerals today, not one.
“Xander was stealing from the House, apparently. One of the Asian labs was sneaking extra diamonds into their shipments for him to sell under the table. I don’t know much more than that, only that my husband fired him the night of the murder. Don’t go spreading that around, by the way. The timing doesn’t look great.”
A smarter part of me knows that I’ve probably said too much, and maybe it’s the wine on an otherwise empty stomach, but the words came out before I can stop them.
She gives me a look like she did in that parking lot, filled with distrust.
“It’s true, Rayna, I swear, and that’s not even all of it. Six months after he came on board, the Cullinans disappeared from the vault. Six months after that, he was murdered in his shower, and now a diamond trader was found in the Amstel with a bullet in his head. You see why I had to warn you, right? Xander was caught up in something bad. Something that got him killed.”
My words seem to do the trick. She blinks at me, and her frown dissolves, her expression changing from wariness to resignation in a split second. She picks up her glass, then just as quickly puts it back down with a hardthwack. “Jesus. I sure know how to pick them, don’t I? A thief and a black market criminal. I mean... what the hell?”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. I know what a charmer Xander could be. He fooled a lot of people, my husband included.”
It’s shocking, actually, how long it took for Thomas to figure this out. I knew it the second I laid eyes on the man, when he rolled up to his own welcome party in a vintage Aston Martin and a Gucci suit. The hotshot gemologist Thomas lured from abroad to save the House from itself.
“I’m not savvy, as evidenced by... well, my whole entire life. And sorry, but...” She bites the inside of her lip, regarding me over the table. “Doesn’t that make you nervous?”
“Which part?”
“That there are two dead men. First Xander and now the trader. Two murders, both connected to the House of Prins. The detective told me the trader was shot in the head in the same breath he said Xander had a gun. A 3D-printed one, apparently. The detective asked me if I’d seen it.”
I sit up straighter in my chair. Xander had a 3D-printed gun. Thomas had instructions for a 3D-printed gun on his desk. According to Fleur, he claimed he found the papers on the printer. Could it really be that simple?
Rayna frowns. “What?”
“It’s just... Fleur asked me if Thomas had one. She said she found instructions on how to print a gun on Thomas’s desk and asked me if I’d seen it.”
“Willow, why does your husband need a gun?”
“I don’t know. Why does anyone need a gun?”
“Maybe because he’s scared.”
“Scared the scandal will impact his precious diamond house, you mean. That’s why they all ran off and left me like they did. After the newsflash about Frederik, they had to rush back to the office to do damage control.” I pick up my wine, my finger tapping the glass. “And there’s no gun. I’ve searched the house. If my husband owns one, 3D printed or otherwise, it’s not under our roof.”
“Still. That’s an awful lot of hypothetical guns floating around in a country where they’re highly illegal.”
“Tell me about it.” I glance at the people around us, the couple at the next table, the group of women huddled around the fireplace, the waiter carrying a loaded-down tray on his fingertips. None of them are listening, but I lean into the table anyway. “I really wish you had some of those missing diamonds.”
“Me, too. Though I don’t think the man in the baseball cap will see it that way. Even if—”
“Hang on.” Two words ping me like a tuning fork, and I sit up straighter on my chair. “What man in the baseball cap?”
“I’ve seen him twice now, first in a baseball cap and the second time in a beanie. I noticed him because I’d just found a tracker in my bag and there was something about the way he was watching me, the smile he gave when I shook him off, almost like a touché. It was creepy.”
“I don’t know if it means anything, but Xander said a guy in a ball cap was following him, too.”
Her face blanches. “I think it must mean something. Don’t you?”
My skin goes warm, and I think back to what I told Xander that night—that description could fit a million men in this country, a ball cap means nothing, stop being paranoid.
