Arthur sighed. “I was born a werewolf, of course, and spent many years living much like many of us do. But pack life never really agreed with me, and when I met Genevieve, an unaware human, I just...left. I’m not in the community anymore. I’m not bound to any pack or alpha. I have a new life, free of that world.”

Park looked vaguely disgusted. “But you must...shift, right?” Cooper asked.

“As needed,” Arthur said a bit tersely. “But I don’t linger and I certainly don’t involve my wife. So you see, we’re able to have a perfectly normal human relationship.”

Cooper felt deeply uncomfortable, but didn’t know what to say.

“What about James Finnigan?” Park asked finally.

“What about him?” Arthur asked. “I told you, I never spoke to the man.”

“You must have known he was a wolf,” Cooper pushed.

“Yes, and? Why would that require conversation?” Arthur took a long sip of tea. “He’s hardly the first wolf I’ve crossed paths with since my new life. But I haven’t had pack bonds in years. I spend less than a minute in the other form twice a week.” He shrugged. “It seems that at some point my lifestyle started affecting my chemical makeup. Now, as you demonstrated yourself, most can’t pick out my scent, even at close distances. It’s easy to go unnoticed.”

“Are you saying James didn’t know you were a wolf?”

“Having never spoken to him, I really couldn’t say.”

“Mr. Crane, two nights ago you and Genevieve had an argument. You wanted to leave town urgently. Can you explain why?”

“I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Arthur said, looking genuinely confused. “I have absolutely no reason to want to leave.”

The whoosh of the door sounded and Ryan appeared around the hall, breathing heavily. “You’re—you’re FBI, right? Please, help. I think—I think we’ve just been vandalized.”

Chapter Seven

“Looks like there is a bookroom after all,” Cooper said quietly to Park. “Or what’s left of one.”

They stood in the doorway of one of the visitor center’s many upstairs rooms used for classes, meetings and conferences. Now the long table had been flipped over on its side, chairs were cast around the room, and while the shelves were seemingly bolted to the wall, every single book had been taken out and thrown to the floor. Torn, stray pages peppered the mess, and someone had clearly tried to set a fire, though they’d done a pretty slapdash job. The room smelled of wet smoke and the walls were stained with sweeping clouds of black, but only a handful of book piles seemed to have really burned.

“They managed to put this out quickly,” Cooper noted.