“Hello!” He pulled his foot back to kick again and paused. What if whoever had put him here had waited around, and now that Cooper was making too much of a racket, had decided to finish him a different way? He was completely vulnerable and exposed like this. No way to seek cover without getting back on the ground, and that sure as hell wasn’t happening.

The door cracked open.

Eli stuck his head inside. “Well, well, well, looks like the shoe’s on the other foot now. Found him!” he yelled in the other direction, then turned back to Cooper. “Pro tip: it’s usually a little more inconspicuous if you hide with an animal you can actually shift into.”

“I wasn’t hiding—” Cooper started, and Park’s head appeared beside Eli’s. Cooper wasn’t sure what he looked like, but from the way Park’s expression went from relieved to dangerously blank, he knew it wasn’t pretty.

Cooper smiled wanly. “I don’t suppose you picked up any other food besides fish.”

One look at the amount of blood in Cooper’s hair and he was hustled to the hospital without so much as a by-your-leave. Fortunately, his wrist and head had sort of split the damage evenly between them, so neither injury was too bad. Hurrah for teamwork.

Like most head wounds, the bleeding looked worse than it was, but he didn’t have a fracture and only needed a couple stitches. As suspected, his wrist was mildly sprained and would apparently be fine with a soft brace. All in all, it was barely midafternoon when Cooper and Park made it home with Eli in tow.

“So, what you’re saying is now you have even less hope of finding my recording than before,” Eli said, scooping up a delighted Boogie and planting himself on the large, squishy armchair in their living room. “Because you led my co-blackmail victim turned murdering arsonist directly to the evidence. Maybe so they’ll destroy it all. Maybe so they can use it against me as well. Only time will tell. If you were hoping for a job-well-done bonus, I, too, feel I must deliver some bad news.”

“Not less hope,” Cooper protested. “We at least know Arthur is on there for sure, which makes him a strong suspect for attacking me and stealing the phone, if nothing else. Oliver and I can speak to him again at the gala tonight.” He had told them about finding the phone and seeing a picture of Arthur Crane with a group of people, but not who else in that group he’d recognized. He wanted to speak to Park privately about it first, unsure what Eli did or didn’t know about Park’s parents, and they had yet to get a moment to themselves.

“Weren’t you supposed to be laying low?” Cooper asked. “What part of that means lurking around the scene of the crime?”