"Killer."

"Excuse me?" Dabin asked the officer who'd met her, Sehun and Sunghoon at the end of the path where crime-scene tape was strewn the same way it was two days ago.

"That's what was carved into this body." He lifted the tape and ushered them through. "See for yourself."

Dabin hesitated, seeing the police chief standing at the shoreline, but he turned toward them and waved them forward.

The victim was at the water's edge. The police officers had dragged him slightly out of the surf, leaving behind deep grooves in the sand. Unlike middle-aged Kim Seunghwan, this victim seemed to be in his late twenties. He was far from clean-cut, with a design buzzed into his hair and a full sleeve of tattoos, some of which looked like jailhouse quality. Also unlike Kim, he hadn't been fully undressed—only his shirt was missing, probably to display the word killer carved into his stomach.

Just like the word cut into Kim, the slashes had been made by some kind of sharp tool, most likely a knife, and the letters were formed with deep, jagged slashes. The anger in those cuts suggested a personal kill.

But how many people on this little island could have horrible, hidden secrets for a killer to expose? Or was the chief right, after all? Was this a delusional perpetrator, or someone trying to send police in the wrong direction with fake messages?

She frowned at the chief, surprised he'd let her near his crime scene without a fight. "You have a name for the victim?"

"A name and a story," the chief said. "This is Kwak Hanbin. He was featured in an interview in our local paper a few weeks ago. He grew up here, but moved away for college. Anyway, he was in the paper because he went to jail five years ago. Manslaughter. He just got released early on good behaviour, which was the story."

"So everyone around here knew exactly who he was and what he'd done," Sehun said.

"Yep." The chief looked back at her. "Kim Seunghwan is one thing. We're doing our job, checking into his past for any ual crimes, but all indications are he's clean. This guy obviously isn't. What's the connection? What are we dealing with here, Special Agent Seo?"

He'd used her title again. Although no one had called her SA—the acronym for Special Agent—the half-dozen officers standing on t