Page 6 of Crocodile Tears
"Look," Finch said. "The Zap thing was bad, like catastrophically bad, but I really don't think he?—”
"Please don't make excuses for the famous multimillionaire," I growled.
Finch held up her hands. “Seriously,whathappened between you two?”
"Besides him using his clout to make a species extinct?" I exclaimed. "That's not enough of a reason for you?”
Finch eyed me, and I could tell she was trying to assess whether it was wise to poke the bear. I'd seen her take less consideration when deciding whether or not to tackle a crocodile.
"Alright.” She lifted her hands in surrender. “You win. Keep your prepubescent secrets to yourself.”
“Thank you,” I said, grateful she finally decided to leave it alone.
“But shoving these things down never ends well,” Finch called after me, and I rolled my eyes.
Of course she had to curse me with that ill omen as I walked out the door. I wasn’t shoving anything down. I was just actively avoiding my old friend turned movie star turned enemy like a completely normal, well-adjusted person.
Chapter Four
Dove
I rubbed my weary eyes and headed down toward the old monkey house to steal one of the twins' Red Bulls.
At least it isn’t as bad as baby-bird season, I told myself for the hundredth time today. There was sleep deprivation, and then there was baby-bird-season sleep deprivation. In only a few more weeks, I’d need a full-on IV drip of coffee to cope with however many chicks needed hand-rearing this year. At least we had two new vet tech interns coming to keep up with the workload. After Finch’s complete implosion last year, Mom had put her foot down and brought in more help. Maybe we’d even get through the season without anyone hallucinating cats on the ceiling . . . . That would be a win.
I swung my arms as I walked, humming a tune to myself to try and kickstart my energy back into gear.
Eighteen days. Just eighteen more days and the Deacon-sized shadow over the zoo will vanish.
My radio chirped on my hip. “Reptiles to birds.”
I picked it up. “Birds, go ahead.”
“What time do you want to leave for that school visit tomorrow?”
Shit. I’d completely forgotten. I’d been so focused on Deacon, I hadn’t checked my calendar in days. “Uhh, ten?”
“Roger,” Crane replied. “I’ll be bringing Darren and Velma so don’t bring Yellow.”
“Roger.”
Crane’s bearded dragon hated my sulphur-crested cockatoo, so the two of them could never be scheduled on the same school visits together. I’d probably bring Sunflower, our three-year-old sun conure. She enjoyed the chaos of children the most.
The zoo had been steadily growing our funding over the last few years, especially with the added income from the school trips and off-season events. We actually had enough money now to hire some more staff members, which opened up a new path for me to finally do something else . . . although I wasn’t exactly sure what that would be yet.
I enjoyed fundraising and event planning, and I was starting to take over more of Mom’s grant submissions and paperwork. Maybe I could move to the city and work for a big NGO, carry on my father’s legacy of saving wildlife on a larger scale than what one zoo could do alone.
But not yet . . . I still wanted the zoo to be well and truly sorted before I left. The zoo was owned by our family now, but that was only step one. We were earning more than we had in previous years, and that was step two. But I needed to make sure we couldkeepearning that amount with enough of a buffer for a few slow years before I was willing to move on entirely.
With my mind on my blurry future, I stumbled blearily down the back pathway past the gardens and almost barreled headfirst into a tall blonde zookeeper.
Zookeeper?
I paused and did a double take, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
"Hey," the lanky blonde said to me without looking up from her phone. She had an eerily symmetrical face, blindingly white teeth, and shining white-blonde hair that looked thicker than a horse’s mane.
"Hey.” I dragged out the word, more than a little confused. Had Mom hired Zookeeper Barbie without telling me? "Sorry, I thought you were . . . a . . . a staff member for a second.”
