Cooper tried not to breathe through his nose and ran his hands down the back of the boulder positioned up against the enclosure wall, just by the door. He had to lean in, shoulder pressed hard against the rock, and feel blindly for anything out of place. Up and down he swept his arm, the stone wet and much colder than the temperature of the room. He was just beginning to feel ridiculous when the tips of his fingers caught on the sharp edge of something sticking out from a crevice in the rock. Something hard wrapped in plastic was taped to the underside of a jutting ledge.

He checked that the crocodile hadn’t moved, then repositioned himself so he could reach even farther and get a grip on the thing and tug it free. A smartphone in a plastic bag.

It was about four or five years old, by Cooper’s guess, but was in good condition and powered on. As the screen loaded, he carefully stepped down out of the enclosure and closed the door behind him. There were no apps on it, no texts, no emails, no voice mails. Then he opened the camera roll.

There he saw Arthur Crane. A much younger, happier-looking Arthur Crane, but undeniably the same man. It was clearly a photo of a polaroid and someone had scribbled Ottawa babes!! in blue pen on the white bit.

Cooper zoomed in for a closer look. Crane was posed with a group of six other people, most of them grinning, all of them in their twenties, wearing loose, timeless sorts of clothing. T-shirts and sweatpants that made the date hard to place. Sitting head at hip level was a large brown-and-tan-colored wolf in fur, its eyes closed and mouth open. One of the women had a toddler propped up on her hip, face hidden in her neck.

Cooper exhaled shakily. He’d seen that woman before. She’d even saved his life once.

Daisy Boudillion. Park’s mother.

Cooper studied the other faces, not sure he’d know it when he found it...but he did. Park’s father looked a lot like Park’s uncle Marcus, who in turn looked a lot like an older Park. The same jawline, cheekbones, perpetually windswept, thick hair.

There were differences too, of course there were. Park’s father, Benjamin, had a narrower build, almost no muscle, a fuller mouth, but it was his expression that really set them miles apart. Mischievous. Arrogant. A touch challenging. Like a man about to dare you to do something he already knew you couldn’t. A man who was young and unhurt in a way Park had never got the chance to be.

Cooper flipped to the next photo. This one was some kind of document. He zoomed in again and—