Then, finally. Across the pool near the wall, Park broke the water’s surface, a man held to his chest, limp and unmoving. Bizarrely, Park’s jacket was wrapped around the man’s head, obscuring it entirely. It was...unsettling. Something about not being able to see his face, read his eyes, made Cooper feel like at any moment the man could jerk into motion and drag Park back below the surface. Their slow and awkward progress back to the rocks was torture.

As soon as Park swam close enough, Cooper got on his knees and pulled the man’s frigid, waterlogged dead weight up. It was harder than he’d expected. The man felt unexpectedly shaped in Cooper’s hands. His hips stayed stiffly bent, legs at a forty-five-degree angle, even when Cooper managed to wrestle him to his back on the rocks. An injury? Rigor mortis? The rest of his body didn’t feel stiff, though.

The cheers of the crowd had changed to shouts and screams, barely audible over the terrified barks of the sea lions as they all rolled and dove into the water once more. Park hoisted himself gracefully onto the rocks, and Cooper reached out and touched his arm briefly, needing to feel him alive and safe, before checking the man for a pulse.

Nothing. It wasn’t impossible to come back from a drowning, though. The cold of the water might actually be helpful. He reached for the jacket covering the man’s face, prepared to do CPR, but Park grabbed his shoulder, stopping him.

“No. Look.” He tugged the man’s dark shirt up, revealing four long, open gashes through the gut. “He was dead before he hit the water.”

Cooper swallowed the wave of nausea. He felt absurdly lightheaded, overheated, and worst of all, a little bit like he might cry. Stupid. He had seen countless dead bodies before, many of them worse than this. But just because these wounds were exactly like the four thick scars on his own gut, he was on the verge of fainting. He hated it.

“Are you okay?” Park asked.

“Yes, fine. What were you saying?” Cooper asked quickly, realizing too late Park hadn’t been saying anything.

Thankfully Park didn’t push it. “Look at this.” He tugged the dead man’s sleeve up, revealing bright greens, pinks, oranges and purples of a garden tattooed on his forearm.

Cooper blew out a long breath. “James, I presume.”

“Seems that way.”

“Why did you cover his face?”

Park hesitated and glanced around as if judging how clear a view the gathering crowd had. “Something’s...wrong,” he murmured.

He shuffled over slightly to block the man from view and carefully lifted the jacket, just a little. Cooper still had to duck his head to see. Then jerked back in surprise.

“Jesus,” he said, glancing at Park, who looked grim. “What—?”