Archie stood in the doorway, confused. The pills were wearing off, and he felt headachy and tired. He had not expected Rachel to burst into tears at the sight of him. If his brain had been working faster, he might have been quicker on the uptake. But it took him a long moment, standing there dumbly as she sniffled, to put it together.

She had been worried about him.

Archie had not seen that coming. He’d been an idiot. It simply had not occurred to him that she would worry, not like Debbie had. It just wasn’t their dynamic. “I got your messages,” he said. She had left four messages last night, and another three that morning. He had not called her back. The texts had been casual, just checking in. He had missed the signals.

Their dynamic, apparently, had changed, when he wasn’t looking.

For a detective, he wasn’t very good at noticing these things.

Rachel wiped the tears off her cheeks. She was still sniffling. She could barely look at him.

“I had bad cell reception,” Archie said. He reached a hand and touched her wet cheek. “I’m not dead,” he said.

Her eyes moved up his face and stopped at his hairline. She swept a forelock of his hair to the side and studied his head wound, the line between her eyebrows deepening.

“You should put some ice on that,” she said. Then she stepped back. It was an invitation.

Archie slid past her into the apartment. She was wearing tight white jeans tucked into brown boots, and a fitted white T-shirt and vest. Her blond hair was tied back into a ponytail. He caught a whiff of vanilla and coconut and could feel his body respond. He tried to distract himself.

Rachel’s apartment was the same layout as Archie’s, but less depressing. The furniture matched. The walls were painted. She had cork floors and granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. There were always fresh flowers on the glass coffee table. Halloween decorations were tucked here and there—a ceramic jack-o’-lantern on an end table, a spider constructed out of the same black tinsel and wire as the cat in the hall sat on the kitchen bar.

“Sit down,” Rachel told him.

Archie walked to her butter-yellow leather sofa and sat down. He watched her in the kitchen getting the ice, the daylight blazed through her factory windows and made his skin warm. He worried that if he blinked too long, he’d fall asleep.

“I didn’t have cell reception until this morning,” Archie explained again. “And then”—he considered name-dropping the FBI, but knew he couldn’t—“I had a meeting.”

She walked across the room to him, carrying a gel ice pack wrapped in a dish towel. Then held the gel pack out, one hand on her hip. Her brown leather belt had a shiny gold buckle shaped like a lion.