At first there were three victims. The killer dealt with women with particular cruelty. One was found in a river, the second in a waterfall, the third in a gorge in Abkhazia. Cropped hair, disfigured faces, unusual ugly wounds on the body - everything spoke of the special handwriting of a maniac. But this happened more than six months ago. Precious time to catch the criminal has been lost, the investigation is at a dead end. All that remains is to hope for a miracle or... The methods of profiling specialist Kira Vergasova are ambiguous, incomprehensible, infuriating colleagues, but they are the only thing that can still give results in this difficult matter. Very soon Kira becomes convinced that all these months the investigation has been moving in the wrong direction. And after the fourth victim appeared, she realized: the killer was not just a maniac, but a real inventor of torture... Why is she so sure? Perhaps because she herself was once in the role of a victim and knows how a non-human behaves when it smells blood...