Chanyeol looked at the young woman sitting across the table from him. They were in one of the private meeting rooms at the women’s detention centre. Cold and utilitarian as the rest of the prison, the room was so bare that their voices echoed slightly. A white gauze pad was taped to her head where a patch of long black hair had been ripped out. Small specks of blood had stained through the gauze and dried into brown pinpricks.

“Park Sooyoung,” he said. “Why did you try to kill Bae Joohyun?”

“Like I told the guards,” Sooyoung said, “I was paid. I’m not telling you any more unless you promise to get me out of here.”

“Attempted murder,” Chanyeol said. “On top of two robberies and one special robbery. Do you think all that’s going to magically go away?”

“I’ve known worse crimes get buried,” Sooyoung said. Chanyeol looked up at that. She was staring at him intently. “What’s the greater evil, Officer Park?”

She knew something, this girl. To say that, she knew Chanyeol was chasing someone far more dangerous than her.

“Who paid you to kill Joohyun?” He leaned forward suddenly. “Chen?”

Her eyes opened just a fraction wider. A reaction. She knew the name.

“Chen?” she repeated. “Do you really think I’d tell you if it was?”

There it was again. Chanyeol wanted to curse. Nobody would give Chen up, whether it was out of loyalty or fear. He sat back in his chair, his face blank as he stared her down, but his mind was racing. Irene was protecting Chen. Why would he have her killed? Perhaps he didn’t trust her not to talk. If that was it, Irene definitely knew something.

“Tell me what led you to try and kill Irene,” he said, “and I’ll do my best to get you a reduced sentence for cooperation.”

Sooyoung’s shoulders slumped, giving up on getting anything better out of him. “When I got my clean laundry back last night,” she said, “I found a receipt in the pocket of my pants for a transaction into my bank account. There was a note on the back saying it would be doubled if I killed Irene.”

“Where’s the receipt?”

“I ate it.” She grinned at him. “Sorry.”

Chanyeol scowled. The receipt could have been planted by any one of the many prison staff or contractors, and it wouldn’t have come directly from them either. It would have been passed through layers of people who didn’t know each other. Impossible to trace. Dead end.

“I can tell you something else, though,” Sooyoung continued, reading his frustration. “Irene had a visitor yesterday morning, and she didn’t look very happy when she came back. I overheard her talking to one of my cellmates. She said something about her visitor making threats.”

“Did she mention the name of her visitor?”

“Not that I heard.”

Chanyeol nodded and indicated the guard that he could take Sooyoung away.

“You’ll get my sentence reduced, right? Like you said?” Sooyoung called after him, a note of desperation coming into her voice as she was led away. “I only did it for my kids. I can’t support them from in here. Officer Park? Officer…”

Her voice faded out and was forgotten as Chanyeol headed down the hall in the other direction, towards the security office. He planned to talk to Seungwan too, see if she’d heard anything of Irene’s conversation, but first he wanted to check the security footage of the glass-partitioned visiting rooms where regular visitors met prisoners.

“This is the best I can get,” the security guard told him, freezing the screen. The camera was in the top corner of the room, and the visitor was wearing a peaked cap, blocking the top half of his face from view. Chanyeol leaned over the guard’s shoulder and used the mouse to zoom in on the face. He could only see his mouth and jaw, and his build was masked by a baggy hooded sweatshirt. But his height was right, and his approximate age. It could easily be Chen.

“Here’s the visitor’s log," another guard said, bringing him a printout. The visitor had provided a driver’s licence as ID. Chanyeol called Seulgi and asked her to run the licence through the system, but as he had suspected, it was fake. Chen – if it was Chen – wouldn’t be caught out so easily.

Chanyeol loaded a copy of the security camera footage onto his tablet and went to meet Seungwan.

“Irene’s out,” was the first thing Seungwan said to him, before she’d even sat down.

“I know,” Chanyeol said. “I came over as soon as I heard. Tell me everything you’ve got from her. Even if it seems insignificant, it could be important.”

He listened carefully as she described their conversations, and what had happened last night when Sooyoung had tried to kill Irene.

“It was a good move to fight for her,” he said. “She’ll trust you now, and saving her life puts her in your debt.”

“You make it sound like I only saved her because of that,” Seungwan said, looking at him reproachfully. “I would have done the same for anyone. And Irene was really nice to me when she found out about…” she trailed off, and both of them looked away. Chanyeol had to grit his teeth not to let his pain show on his face.

“Don’t even think about getting attached,” he said, his rebelling emotions making him speak a little more sharply than he’d intended. “Remember she’s protecting a killer.”

Seungwan pressed her lips together, but said nothing.

“This is the man who came to visit her yesterday,” Chanyeol continued. He spun the tablet towards her to show her the CCTV footage. “Did she mention his name to you?”

“No,” Seungwan said, leaning in to peer at the screen. “I asked, but she just said some friend of Jongdae’s, and that she didn’t know what he – Jongdae - sees in him.”

“Jongdae,” Chanyeol repeated. Irene had mentioned the boy she’d raised to Seungwan twice. He was evidently important to her. She might even consider him as her own child. Could Jongdae be the connection between Irene and Chen? If her kid was high enough in the syndicate to know Chen, it gave her a motive to protect the leader. Protecting Chen would avoid fallout landing on Jongdae, whether it was fallout from the police, or retribution for talking from within the syndicate itself.

“You can’t really see his face,” Seungwan pointed out, looking up from the tablet screen.

“He knows what he’s doing,” Chanyeol admitted. “He had a fake ID as well. Seungwan, it’s possible this man ordered the hit on Irene. It is also possible that he is a man known as Chen. He’s high up in the distribution ring, and he was involved in the deal where we arrested Irene. We suspect Chen of being directly involved in Baekhyun’s murder.”

Seungwan frowned slightly. “His name is Chen?”

“Yes. Has Irene mentioned him?”

Seungwan shook her head slowly. “It sounds familiar somehow, but I don’t think Irene ever said that name. Maybe I heard it somewhere else.”

“Keep your ears open,” Chanyeol told her. “His name is well-known in the drug circles, so some of the prisoners here will have heard of him. He’s extremely dangerous, so be careful. Don’t ask about him directly. Even mentioning his name could make people wonder how you know it.”

“And this is him?” Seungwan pointed at the frozen CCTV image on the tablet.

“I don't know for sure, but’s a possibility,” Chanyeol said. “He might have come to make sure Irene wouldn’t give out any information about him. If she didn’t convince him to trust her, he would have wanted to silence her permanently.”

“She did say he was making threats,” Seungwan said. She bent over the tablet again, her eyes moving back and forth over the image. “But she didn’t seem scared of him at all. It was more like she thought he was an idiot.”

“In any case, this footage is our only lead right now,” Chanyeol said. “Whether it’s Chen or not, anyone with a motive to kill Irene is going to be connected with the drug deal, and therefore connected to Chen.”

“I bet I can get Irene to let me meet Jongdae,” Seungwan said. “She talked about how we had stuff in common, me and him. Then I might be able to meet Jongdae’s friends, too.” She put the tablet down, looking up at him with bright eyes. “Can you drop me off at Irene’s hotel, so I can ask her for the job she promised me? Oh, but maybe take me home first, I’m dying for a proper shower.”

“What are you talking about?” In his surprise the words came out louder and more forcefully than he’d expected. “You can’t leave prison now.”

“What?” Seungwan looked like he’s just slapped her. “But – but Irene’s out – there’s no point in me staying here any longer –“

“It will be totally obvious if you get released straight after Irene. Your sentence is three months long and you’ve only done the first. You need to finish what you started.”

Seungwan's eyes filled with tears, and Chanyeol was stricken with sudden guilt. Frustration surged to combat it, and he had to fight not to clench his fists. She’d agreed to this, damn it. She’d agreed to spend three months in jail. Why did she have to stare at him like he was a monster?

“Don’t look at me like that.” Again, his voice was sharper than he’d like, but somehow he couldn’t seem to help it. “You wanted to do this, remember.”

“I know!” Seungwan rubbed at her eyes roughly. “I know I did, but you don’t know what it’s like in here!” She shook her head, and her voice went hard. “Whatever. I should've known better than to think you’d understand.”

“Seungwan -”

“I’ll complete my sentence, Chanyeol,” Seungwan said, standing up so quickly her chair fell over behind her with a clang. “And I’ll get closer to Irene. She cares about me, not just what use I am to her.”

“Seungwan...” Chanyeol struggled to find the right words, but it was too late. Seungwan spun on her heel and went to the door that led back into the prisoner’s side of the jail, pulled it open, and slammed it behind her. The clang resonated around the room.

Chanyeol dropped his aching head into his hands. “Well done, Chanyeol,” he muttered sarcastically. All the misgivings he’d had about placing Seungwan undercover rose back up to haunt him. She was too young. She wasn’t trained. She was too immature for this, no matter how good an idea Chief Park thought it was to plant someone innocent who nobody would suspect. He should get her out, send her to the police academy, and find some other lead on Chen.

But there were no other leads on Chen. Seungwan had already made such good progress with Irene