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?”