Neil laughed, darkness gone as quick as it had come, making Cooper second-guess if he’d seen it there after all, just like so many times before. “The FBI suspects cartel connections, drug smuggling. You could say I was sent in to find the bigger picture.”

“And? Have you?

“Oh, I found a picture, all right. I’m just not sure what I’m looking at, yet,” Neil murmured. Cooper frowned and waited for an explanation. “You’ve heard of conservation orgs backing paramilitary forces before, right? Getting involved in the politics of places they have no right to be, funding local violence?”

“Sure,” Cooper said. “Is that what you think someone is doing here?”

“I think James scared Arthur. Scared him a lot. Maybe whoever the Cranes are sending their embezzled money to sent a little present back, to keep an eye on things.”

“So, Arthur got mixed up funding some, what, terrorist group? Cartel? Then killed his watchdog so he can take the money and run?”

Neil didn’t answer, instead reaching for his cider, then seemed to remember it was empty and looked toward the bar. Cooper did, too. The group of partially costumed work colleagues had stumbled up front and he couldn’t spot Park anymore.

“I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I couldn’t get close to James,” Neil said. “He just...he had this way of looking at you. Like he was reading your very skin. And he thought it was so, very funny.” His gaze was distant and his lips thin. “You ever get the feeling that everyone else in the world knows something you don’t?”

“I’m not sure everyone in the world knows any one thing,” Cooper said.

Neil looked at him sharply. “You got a similar injury to the vic’s a couple years back, didn’t you? Got all cut up or something. You ever catch the guy who did it?”

Cooper hadn’t. But his ex BSI partner had. Caught him, killed him, and buried him deep in the woods with all his other victims. The only blood Jacob Symer spilled these days was in Cooper’s occasional nightmare. “Where’d you hear I was attacked?” he asked.

“You’ve been building a solid little reputation for yourself. Recruited right out of the hospital. Jumping up the shadow ranks.”

At some point during their conversation, Cooper had leaned closer and closer to Neil. He started to sit back now, and Neil reached out and snagged one of his hands, tangling their fingers together loosely. There was nothing threatening about it—to anyone watching, it meant nothing more than a simple wait, one more thing—but Cooper still felt a pulse of anxiety tinged with the usual disproportionate rage Dr. Ripodi had explained was his body releasing floodgates of adrenaline, gearing up to fight for its life.