“Then there’s no one to protect,” Sanchez said. “You scream like a girl and we send in the cavalry. But if he’s alive and he’s okay, you leave him there. If he’s alive and he’s not okay, you leave him there. No heroics. I just need to know his status. Then we make a plan.” Sanchez glanced at his watch. “I have to get back across the river,” he said.

“Can I expense the tuxedo rental?” Archie asked.

“No,” Sanchez said. He leveled his gaze at Archie. “We clear on this?”

“No heroics. I determine Leo’s status.” Archie raised his eyebrows at Sanchez. “And you stay away from Susan.”

Sanchez smiled, and Archie gave Ginger a tug and started back north along the trail. He only made it a few steps before Sanchez called his name. “Yeah?” Archie said, turning back.

“Happy birthday, buddy,” Sanchez said.

“I had plans tonight, you know,” Archie said.

Sanchez chuckled. “She’ll wait.”

Chapter 7

CHAPTER

7

Archie poured himself a drink to calm his nerves.

The morning’s blue skies had given way to cloud cover that had come in over the West Hills and hung low over the city.

The tuxedo he was wearing had a black single-breasted two-button jacket with a peaked lapel, and flat-fronted pants. At least that’s what the woman who’d helped him at the tuxedo rental shop had said. He must have looked helpless, because she’d taken him under her wing right away, outfitting him with the appropriate jacket, pants, shirt, shoes, and bow tie. He’d taken a pass on the cummerbund.

Archie lifted the hem of his pants and studied his socks—the only thing he was wearing, besides his underwear, that was his. They were black. He usually wore them to funerals.

The last time he’d had a tuxedo on had been at his own wedding.

He heard Henry and Claire in the hallway before they knocked. Specifically, he heard Claire’s laugh. It was girlish and merry, and always sounded wrong coming from her mouth. Archie had canceled the dinner out that the three of them had planned for his birthday. The fact that they had decided to stop by anyway did not surprise him.

Archie opened the door reluctantly. Claire was dressed to the nines in a black long-sleeved dress that hugged her growing maternity bump, and Henry was as formal as he got, in black jeans, his black leather jacket, a gray T-shirt, and cowboy boots. Their faces were beaming—apparently in the midst of a shared joke. Archie felt a surprising swell of jealousy. He missed that level of intimacy with another person. Whatever he and Rachel had, it was not a relationship in the traditional sense.

Claire looked Archie up and down. “Did you get a catering gig?” she asked with a grin.

Archie glanced down at his tux. “I thought I looked like James Bond,” he said.