Eli didn’t wait long for an answer. Just shrugged and looked away again. “All I knew was I wasn’t going to let him control me like that. Not again. Not after what happened last time. It’s money now, but what happens if he wants something else later? I just want this to end.”

“I can talk to Cola, my boss,” Cooper said. “She can—”

“The statute of limitations has long passed in all states we stole within,” Eli said hastily. “So if you’re thinking of turning me in—”

“Of course that’s not what I meant,” Cooper snapped. The thought had honestly not even crossed his mind. Even if Eli could still be charged—a child on his own, manipulated into stealing by the closest thing to family he seemed to have, abused, abandoned, and tortured, now being blackmailed twenty years later, so let’s send him to prison? What the fuck was that supposed to do?

“I meant Cola can help you with the blackmail,” Cooper said.

“No, I can’t—” Eli was shaking his head as close to panic as Cooper could imagine him looking. “You don’t understand how close the Trust and the ruling packs work. Your boss and the Park pack have been allies for a long time. But your other colleagues belong to other packs. The werewolf community is smaller than you understand and gossip travels. You get the Trust involved and you might as well send that recording out in a chain email to every pack on the continent. I can’t take that risk.”

Cooper nodded, because unfortunately Eli had a point. “What about the Park pack? Isn’t that the whole appeal? They’re supposed to take care of you?”

Eli looked down at his hands, tugging restlessly on his thumb so that it almost looked like it was infinitesimally gliding up and down his wrist. With a fresh wave of amazement, Cooper realized that might actually be what was happening. “Helena and I...don’t see eye to eye on this particular matter, and how best to approach it. If at all possible, I would like to handle this on my own.”

Cooper frowned. On the one hand, he couldn’t believe that was the whole story. On the other, he was hardly the poster boy for wanting to get Helena involved in things or felt like encouraging anyone else into feeling...beholden to her.

“The only option is to find that recording,” Eli continued. “I searched his house but couldn’t find anything. He must be storing it somewhere at the zoo, he must. He doesn’t go anywhere else and he’s far too controlling to bear being separated from it for long.”

“The zoo is a big place,” Cooper said.

“Yes.”

“The recording is probably stored on, what, a phone? Or even something smaller?”

“The speed with which deductions are flying around this room is truly dizzying.”