“Skylar, if you tell us everything you know, we won’t do any of that,” Kierk says. “You’ll be able to keep your job here. You’ll have to disassociate yourself from SAAR, of course. Stop seeing them. Avoid them. Do whatever you have to. Make something up. But we won’t tell anyone.”

“But only if you to tell us everything you know about SAAR.”

Emotions ripple across Skylar’s face. They wait as she processes the situation.

“Okay . . . Okay. But you’re promising you won’t bring me into it?”

“We won’t.”

“What . . . What do you want to know?”

Carmen contains a triumphant smile.

“Do you know who Allen is?”

Skylar nods, one hand still gripping her phone but not using it.

“Allen said that you helped pull off a job for SAAR two weeks ago. Some kind of direct action.”

Skylar nods. “Ever since the thing with Double Trouble they’ve been trying to get more photos, videos, whatever, anything. The reaction was so huge. But SAAR can’t file for those freedom things—”

“Freedom of Information Act requests,” Carmen fills in for her.

“Right. So I was like, supposed to get people into the monkey rooms. I swiped them in to see the cages.”

“When was this?”

“It was, ummm . . . after that big storm.”

“You mean Saturday before last?”

“Right. Friday it had like, rained a lot. I remember that. We spent a few minutes taking pictures and videos but then the guard came by on like, a patrol or something and we like, hid in one of the rooms. Anyways, it was scary so we all just left right afterward . . . I don’t actually know who has the photos or what they’re going to do with them. They might already be up on websites.”

“We don’t care about some pictures, Skylar. That’s below our pay grade,” Kierk says. Carmen catches his gaze and rolls her eyes, imperceptibly shaking her head.

“Actually, Skylar, show us the photographs. Prove that you took them,” she says.

Skylar quickly thumbs through her phone, holding up a photo of a macaque in a skullcap screaming at the photographer from its cage. Carmen grabs it from her to a weak protestation and then thumbs through the photo roll, both Kierk and Carmen watching the pictures go past of monkeys screaming, baring their teeth, close-ups of their cages and the droplets of blood around their skullcaps. They recognize in the background a few of the people from SAAR meetings, and Allen is clearly identifiable in one picture with a camera in hand.

Skylar looks guilty and tired. “Allen would hit the cages. He was like, attacking the cages and hissing at them. That’s why they look so furious. It was really intense.”

Carmen, nodding to her, texts the entire roll to her own phone number.