A woman was waiting on the porch when Marsh pulled up, like she'd known he was coming. 'You're the insurance man,' she said. 'You're number seven. They always send someone.'
Marsh asked what 'number seven' meant. Six investigators had come before him, the woman said, each one drowned within three days of arriving. 'The claim isn't theirs,' she said. 'It's filed for them, by whoever wants them gone.' The victims had been investigators, just like Marsh.
Marsh asked why she was warning him. 'Because I filed the first one,' she said, 'and I've been trying to undo it ever since.' She'd started the scheme for the payouts, then lost control when someone bigger took it over. Now she just wanted it to stop. She wrote one name on a form and pressed it into his hand: Dana. His own boss had sent him here to die.