“Okay.” Cooper exhaled. “Look, I didn’t know if I should say it before, but the photo I saw on Arthur’s phone with the group of people? I recognized a couple of them.”

Park tilted his head, curious, looking sweet and unworried. Cooper wished there was an easier way to say this. Once upon a time in his life, he might have just avoided saying it at all.

“He was with, ah, Daisy.” Park’s face sort of stilled. “And a man that I think was probably your dad.” Park didn’t respond, and after a moment, Cooper hesitantly went on. “Daisy was holding a toddler. And it said, um, Ottawa babes on the Polaroid.”

Silence.

Then, “Must have been Camille,” Park said distantly. “They lived in Ottawa before I was born, with some other WIP members.”

“Okay,” Cooper said slowly. “So, does that mean Arthur ‘I’m not a wolf, I’m a real boy’ Crane was once part of the WIP with, um—”

“He said himself he didn’t get along with packs. The WIP is actively trying to dismantle the pack rule system. James Finnigan could have recognized Arthur, known he was WIP back in the day.”

“Is that really blackmail-worthy, though?”

Park shook his head. “No. No, it isn’t. We must be missing something. Probably more than one thing.”

Cooper nodded, thinking. “I wonder if he recognized you. Arthur, I mean.”

“My parents were probably using a different name. Boudillion or hell, any other random alias, I don’t know. Anything but Park. The WIP are very pack-averse.”

“No, I mean I wonder if he recognized you because your dad looked a lot like you,” Cooper explained. At that, Park’s gaze drifted to the side, staring unfocused around Cooper’s shoulder. “Although it was dark in that fish room. And he was wearing tinted glasses. And the picture was taken over forty years ago, so maybe not. I wonder what happened to the other people in the photo. One of them was in fur too, did I mention that? I mean, I don’t know if it’s important but—”

“What did he look like?” Park interrupted.

“Um, kind of brown with tan patches?”

Park looked back at Cooper. “No, my dad. You said he looked like me. How? I don’t—my grandparents only had pictures of him as a kid, so...”

Never mind the murder investigation, the blackmail, the crocodile. Cooper wished he’d managed to hold on to that phone if only just so he could hand Park the photo to keep and look at whenever he wanted, for as long as he wanted. Because it wasn’t fair that Cooper could know what Benjamin looked like while Park had to cling to a child’s fading, unreliable memories.