Cry Wolf Read online

  “You think I’m being delusional,” Park noted, studying him.

  “I didn’t say that,” Cooper said. “I’m just...not sure what makes you think this is from her.”

  Park nodded. “That’s fair. But there’s an old story she used to tell us growing up. The Moon and the last abstersion of wolves. One of the lines in that was fallen flowers that could never again stand proud in the sun.”

  “We were definitely hanging out in different sections at the children’s library,” Cooper said.

  “It’s a wolf folktale. All about the irredeemably bad, flowers who couldn’t return to the light, and how one day the Moon would step out of the sky and punish the wolves who had hurt their packs for personal gain, thus restoring balance.” Park shrugged. “It sounds a lot less dark when you’re a kid.”

  “Does it?” Cooper asked skeptically.

  “Sure. All you had to do was make sure you never ever hurt the people you loved most in the world and you’d be safe. Easy peasy,” Park smiled wryly. “Anyway, it was just the usual fear-based mythos used to regulate any community behavior, but the heads of flowers is heavily associated with that story and the card mentions the moon.”

  “And Daisy sent this in order to say...what, exactly?” Cooper asked, and immediately regretted it when Park’s face flickered with pain and he looked down, hiding his expression.

  It was true, what Park had said. It was so much easier to hurt the person you love most in the world than Cooper could ever have fathomed as a child.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Really, I am. I speak and I think but never the twain do meet.”

  Park shook his head, still studying his feet. “No. You’re right. The worst part is I know I’m being ridiculous. I don’t know why I keep—I’m reaching for someone who doesn’t want to be reached. Every time. And I don’t even need her, so I don’t know why I keep trying to. Just to feel this humiliating—” He cut himself off, biting viciously at his lip.

  Cooper wrapped his arms around him and pulled him into a hug. He ran a firm hand over Park’s hair and down his back, and made some soothing nonsense noises. It was strange how someone Park’s size could feel so much smaller like this, his nose tucked into Cooper’s hair behind his ear, breathing deeply.

  They stood like that for a while, but eventually Park pulled back to rest his forehead on Cooper’s shoulder instead. “Two hugs in one morning. You are spoiling me,” he said.

  “I must have missed you or something.”

  “Maybe I should go away more often.”

  Cooper squeezed him. “You can try.”

  Park chuckled and was about to say something else when Eli sauntered into the kitchen with Boogie at his ankles, eyes sweeping over them both. “I hate to interrupt this sentimental tableau, but might I remind you, someone I hold very dear is being blackmailed? And while nauseating me to death is certainly one way to put a stop to it, I was rather hoping for something a bit more impressive from the Trust’s top two private dicks.”

  “Is everyone you’ve ever dated an asshole?” Cooper groaned.

  Park just shrugged. “Maybe I have a type.”

  * * *

  Cooper was quiet as he and Park walked through the zoo a little later that day. He had called Sophie long ahead of time and asked if she’d mind giving them that informal tour she’d been offering. He’d given her a very loose explanation of what was going on, too. While Cooper didn’t want to violate Eli’s trust, he also didn’t feel right about dragging Sophie into this without her full knowledge of what he actually planned to get up to. She’d agreed anyway and told them when she had a spare hour, excitedly offering to introduce them to some of the staff for “optimum snooping,” which was nice of her.

  Cooper knew he didn’t deserve it. Not after he’d dodged so many previous invitations, olive branches and built bridges. When his family had needed to practically drag him out of the house yesterday just to spend time with them. For the years of his life when he wasn’t out to them, that protective distance had made sense, and he couldn’t say he regretted it.

  But now that they knew about him, about Park—hell, even about werewolves—and Cooper was still holding that distance...? Well. Part of it was out of habit. But part of it was Cooper simply liked his space. He’d never been one to crave a big, close family always in each other’s business or, you know, the presence of others in general, as his attempted guest list last night had more than demonstrated. That just wasn’t him.

  Park, on the other hand, more than wanted love and connection. He needed it. Whether that was a wolf thing or if it had something to do with his early abandonment, the conditional affections of the grandparents who raised him, or the fact that most of his own kind were terrified of him and his past as the Shepherd, was a question best theorized by the likes of Dr. Ripodi. But what Cooper did know was that for someone who so yearned for easy, plentiful affection, Park had certainly managed to hitch his heart to the wrong horse.

  That didn’t mean Cooper had any doubts about the relationship. Park was a grown-up and had shown time and time again that he wanted to be with Cooper. Who the fuck was Cooper to tell him he was wrong?

  What he did wonder, though, was as a partner, as a fiancé, as a husband, what was his responsibility in stepping out of his own comfortable habits and healing some of that hurt? What about as Park’s supposed alpha? As far as building a pack went, Cooper had contributed Boogie, and though she certainly doted on Park, that wasn’t exactly the same thing, was it?

  “There’s Sophie,” Park said, breaking Cooper out of his thoughts. He turned to greet his sister-in-law.

  “Hey! You made it!” she said, waving as she approached. “I was surprised to get your call.”

  “Surprise does seem to be de rigueur this season. I really appreciate you agreeing to show us around,” Cooper said.

  “Are you kidding? I practically had to lock Dean in the bathroom to keep him from coming along, too. He’s been whining about being voted off the quest all day. Although I’m not clear exactly on what you expect to find.”

  “Information, mostly,” Park said. “How long James has been working here, if he has an office, where he spends the majority of his time.”

  If Eli was correct and James was stashing the recording somewhere here at his work, their best bet was to trace his steps as quickly and thoroughly as they could before he was alerted to their presence. Cooper pulled out his phone and showed her the picture of James he’d had Eli forward both him and Park this morning. “Ever see this guy around?”

  Sophie squinted. “I think so. But you’ll have better luck talking to one of the other keepers. I can find someone for you to ask.” She led them down the trail.

  “You’re the vet on set for some kind of video project, right?” Cooper asked as they walked.

  Sophie laughed. “Not exactly. The zoo already has a great medical team here. But they’re hugely busy and my research back in the day specialized in the effects of stress on captive reptiles. Because the crew is primarily handling those, I was brought in to consult.” She shrugged. “Honestly, I was kind of surprised to be asked. But it’s been lots of fun.”

  “What is it exactly that they’re filming?” Park asked.

  “The zoo is partnering with a conservation organization to raise money: Wild Nature Conservation. The director of the org is some ex-TV star, so they’ve been filming a series of quick little shorts with her for the website as an educational campaign and kicking it all off with a big fundraising party tomorrow.” She grinned. “It’s a haunted Halloween gala, actually. There will be a couple keepers onsite with some of the more manageable animals. Tickets are eight fifty a pop. Dean and I are getting in free.”

  “Eight fifty, as in eight hundred and fifty dollars per ticket?” Cooper choked.

  “Well, I didn’t mean eight dollars and fifty cents. It’s a charity
gala, not a lemonade stand,” Sophie said, amused. “And that’s just the single ticket prices without any of the perks. If you want your name listed as a friend of the zoo in the next newsletter, you’re dropping five grand or more for a table reservation.”

  “A thousand dollars isn’t friendly enough?” Cooper murmured.

  “You wanna come?” Sophie offered. “I can try to finagle you some tickets. We could wrap you in a feather boa and call it a joint bachelor party.”

  “I would rather you wrap me in boa constrictor and call time of death,” Cooper said, “than attend a haunted Halloween gala, my god.”

  Sophie turned to Park. “You know, it’s never too late to call off this engagement. You’re a catch, you’ll find someone.”

  Park sighed. “I was cursed by an old witch to find him charming.”

  “That’s some dark magic,” Sophie said, then pointed to a building off the trail tucked back, away from public curiosity, behind the Andean bears exhibit. “The crew’s scheduled to be filming in here today.” She swiped her card across the electronic reader to unlock the sturdy metal door marked Zoo Personnel Only.

  “This space primarily contains a medical bay, small lab, containment pens, and a kitchen for food prep,” she continued, leading them down an industrial sort of hall with floor-to-ceiling cages on one side, a bit like a prison cells but much larger. Cooper noticed two of them were separated not by a wall, but metal mesh that appeared latched.

  “That’s a howdy door,” Sophie said when Cooper pointed it out. “It’s used for safe, no-contact introductions between the animals to see if they’re receptive to mating or not, that sort of thing.”

  “Could have used a howdy door once or twice in my life,” Cooper muttered, glancing at Park to share in the joke, but Park was distracted, gaze fixed down the hall. It soon became clear on what. One of the pens was occupied.

  “Male Andean bear,” Sophie said as they all stopped to look. Inside was a bear with black fur and a white pattern around its eyes and nose sat on the floor, grooming its paw. “I think they were supposed to be filming with him toda—”

  A door at the end of the hall opened and a woman walked through arguing with none other than the interrupting curator of the day before, Ryan the Lion.

  “I have the B-roll,” the woman was saying. “I can’t shoot any more B-roll. What I don’t have is one goddamn primary—”

  Ryan caught sight of them and startled, nearly dropping the clipboard in his hands. “Dr. Odell,” he greeted Sophie with surprise. “And... Cooper, right? What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you chased in another peacock.” He laughed, and beside him, Cooper could practically hear Park’s eyebrow raise.

  “Cooper is my brother-in-law,” Sophie said smoothly. “He had such an amazing time on your jungle tour yesterday, he insisted on coming back today with his fiancé, Oliver.”

  Cooper bit back his knee-jerk reaction of unhinged laughter any time someone called Park his fiancé. “Yeah, it was really, uh, something. I hadn’t been to the zoo since I was a kid, you know. You get different stuff out of it now.”

  Ryan looked bashfully pleased. “Really?”

  Sophie leaned in a little conspiratorially. “I was saying to them I might be able to hook them up with a behind-the-scenes tour.”

  “Oh! Yes, yes, we can do that,” Ryan said, glancing at the woman next to him. “Have you met my colleague, Niko Hirano?”

  “We spoke over the phone, actually,” Sophie said. “Ms. Hirano was who asked me on to the project.”

  Hirano nodded a bit stiffly. “You came highly recommended. We’re happy to have you.” She appeared to be a middle-aged woman of Japanese descent, with dark hair cut bluntly above the ear on one side and shaved to the scalp on the other. She had very dark, sharp eyes that seemed to be cataloging every phrenological detail about Cooper and Park, her gaze intense and...expectant? No, that wasn’t right. But Cooper couldn’t quite place his finger on the right word.

  “Ms. Hirano is on the zoo’s board of directors and heads up all of our educational and publicity initiatives,” Ryan explained for Cooper and Park’s benefit. “She’s the point person overseeing the video series.”

  “If there’s going to be a series,” Hirano said. “I can’t keep scheduling a film crew to wait around on the off chance that Crane acts like a professional and shows up to her own damn shoot.”

  “We’re having a bit of a missing talent problem today,” Ryan explained apologetically to the rest of them.

  “We’re always missing talent,” Hirano muttered. “Whether our self-proclaimed star shows up or not.”

  “Genevieve Crane is a star—” Ryan started.

  “—of one ridiculous TV show that’s been off the air for a decade,” Hirano finished like this was a conversation they’d had before. For someone on the board of directors, she was certainly dressed very ruggedly in her dark green khakis and a matching shirt unbuttoned halfway down her chest to reveal a ribbed white tank top. Cooper could almost imagine her trekking around the wilds if not for the thick-rimmed, very expensive designer glasses that she was cleaning with a lens cloth sporting the same designer’s logo.

  “It looks like one of your actors is ready to go,” Cooper said, gesturing at the bear that was now hunched a bit defensively across his pen, watching them.

  “Where else is he going to go?” she pointed out sharply. “Before this job, I had a whole career in nature documentaries. Tracking animals across hundreds of miles of terrain, species like fisher cats and timber wolves who have been fine-tuning their stealth for millennia, and not one of them was as much trouble as this one woman.”

  Hirano put her glasses back on and did a slight double take when she saw Park. She pointed at him, lens cloth dangling from her hand like an old-fashioned handkerchief. “You done any extras work? Reenactments?”

  Park looked unusually wrong footed. “Oh, no. I’m not an actor.”

  “What about ads?” she demanded. “Have you done any spots I might have seen?”

  Park shook his head, and Cooper intervened. “Nature documentaries sound like cool work.” Frankly he didn’t know jack squat about them. His preferred movie genres usually involved a lot more dialogue and hard drinking than the average panda got up to, but he figured if he wanted them to buy that he was the sort of person to find the jungle tour thrilling enough to come back for seconds, he’d best show a little enthusiasm here as well. “Do you usually film in zoos?”

  “God, no,” Hirano said. “Filming a wild animal free in its own habitat is the only way to get a true representation of their natural behaviors, social dynamics.” She gestured at the Andean bear, who had started pacing his cage. “The only true thing footage of this guy tells your average viewer is that his species is in trouble.”

  “Not really what I expected to hear from the zoo’s primary publicist,” Park said wryly.

  “On the contrary, after twenty years in the field, I believe in supporting our commitment to conservation research more than ever,” Hirano said promptly. Then added, “Plus, my partner’s not too keen on me going on six-month stakeouts in the wilderness just in the hopes of catching that perfect shot of moose bucks sparring or wolf pups emerging from the den. After my accident, I promised her no more. Now the most frustrating part of my job is trying to track down flighty philanthropists who commit to filming and then don’t show.” She squinted at Park. “I swear I’ve seen your face before. Modeling? Porn?”

  Park smiled. “I’m flattered, but no. Maybe we crossed paths in the wilderness sometime.”

  Beside him, Sophie laughed, which she quickly turned into a cough. “I should probably be getting back to work soon,” she said, glancing questioningly at Cooper, who nodded, grateful for her help.

  “No problem,” Ryan said, checking his watch. “I’d be happy to give you guys a tour. As long as you don’t mind waiting
while I do the sea lion feed—”

  Behind them, the bear suddenly slammed against the cage, startling everyone, and let out a deep lowing sound.

  “That’s odd,” Ryan said, frowning. “He’s normally pretty disinterested in people. I’ve been dealing with reports of atypical behavior all day.”

  “Animals always know when something is up before you do,” Hirano said, looking grim. “Who’s on shift today? James?”

  Cooper carefully didn’t react.

  “No,” Ryan said, checking the clipboard in his hand. “Selena. Though I’m sure James is around somewhere. It is a filming day, after all.” He chuckled, and even Hirano looked briefly amused.

  “Come on then.” Ryan clapped his hands. “The sea lions get grumpy if they don’t keep to their schedule. After that I’ll give you the deluxe behind-the-scenes tour.”

  They said their goodbyes to Sophie and Hirano, and followed Ryan around as he collected a bucket of fish and led them out of the building. He kept up a steady stream of informative chatter as they went—apparently taking his duties as tour guide to heart—and it was a while before Cooper got an opening to casually turn the conversation back toward James.

  “I hope we’re not putting you out, showing us around like this,” Park said. “Things seemed a little hectic before.”

  “Oh, not at all. I think we’re all just a little wound up,” Ryan said, cheerfully swinging the bucket as they walked. Cooper couldn’t help but wince at the slapping sound the dead fish made against the sides and the intensity of the smell wafting up at him. “Niko—uh, Ms. Hirano—has put a lot on the line to make this happen. Add to that a film crew, the Genevieve Crane from Labyrinth of Love, and the gala tomorrow night...well, it’s the most excitement we’ll see around here for a while. Sometimes it feels like more work keeping the staff out than the animals in.”