A smile spread across his face. Rachel stood in the hallway with a hand on her hip. Her poppy-red coat was tied tight at the waist and showed a lot of cleavage and leg. It was short enough that he could see that the black stockings she was wearing came only to her upper thighs. The black pumps she wore had four-inch heels, raising her to his height and lengthening her legs. Her long blond hair was loose and tousled. Her eyelashes looked thicker than usual. She smiled back at him and batted her eyes. She clearly hadn’t seen the news. Archie thought about telling her; she’d find out sooner or later and wonder why he hadn’t. But the prospect of having one last ordinary night without the albatross of Gretchen Lowell around his neck was too attractive for Archie to resist. Once Rachel knew that Gretchen was back, she would look at him the way the others did.

“Is that your costume?” Archie asked.

She stepped forward and touched one of his shirt buttons. “Part of it,” she said. “You know, it will be Halloween in a few minutes.”

Archie moved his hand to her thigh, feeling the smooth stockings give way to warm bare flesh. His detective skills were leading him to believe that whatever she was wearing under that coat, it wasn’t much. He had a feeling he was going to find out for sure. “Well, you better come in, then,” he said.

She swept past him, her hips swinging, and the red coat lifted to expose the backs of her thighs above the stockings.

Archie glanced down the hall as he closed the door, wondering if the unit Sanchez had charged with protecting Archie from a beautiful blonde had noticed this particular beautiful blonde. But if Rachel had been in all evening, and just come upstairs, there’d be no way for his protection detail to spot her. They were monitoring traffic into his building, not people already here.

When Archie turned back to the room, Rachel was standing in front of his laptop, typing something on the keyboard. Archie felt a flash of panic, before he remembered that Ngyun had taken the flash drive with the boathouse footage. Rachel’s eyes were on the screen. She typed something into an open field.

“What are you doing?” Archie asked Rachel.

Rachel looked at him and winked. “Putting some music on,” she said. She hit another button and music started playing through his laptop speakers. It was some sort of seventies-era funk, which only served to remind Archie that the song had been recorded before Rachel was born.

Ginger threw an annoyed glance at the laptop and then put her ears back and trotted over to the couch.

Rachel walked to Archie’s desk and wheeled his desk chair to the middle of the room.