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**Shifting Sands | Episode 52: The Sea’s Cruelty**
The moment the 911 operator answered, Sarah’s world narrowed to a sharp, cold focus. "My husband is racing to Cannon Beach to stop a murder," she said, her voice hard as flint. "We found a note from a woman named Cindy—she’s taken a woman named Allyson to one of four locations that flood at high tide." "You need to get units to the sea caves and the tide pools immediately!
My husband is already en route to the caves!" She hung up and moved like a woman possessed, grabbing little Alice and strapping her into the car seat.
On the road, Andrew was a man possessed. He had the list of four potential death traps from the note, and his mind was racing through the tide charts. He chose the sea caves at Cannon Beach—it was the only one that fit the ticking clock.
He pushed the SUV to its absolute limit, his vision swimming from the adrenaline. He reached the beach with minutes to spare, the Pacific already gnashing at the shore. He stumbled out of the car, his gait uneven with a pronounced limp, and charged toward the cave mouth.
The water was a churning, hungry beast, rushing into the dark throat of the cavern. Andrew didn't hesitate; he plunged into the increasing surge. Inside, the cave went back twenty feet, and he saw the rock face. He knew the ledge was there—the spot where people sometimes went for romantic picnics. With a primal, desperate strength, he began to climb.
The physical exertion was a nightmare. His weaker left side betrayed him on the slick, moss-covered stone. He stumbled and fell into the rising water, his balance failing him completely as a wave knocked him against the wall. He gasped, coughing up salt water, and forced himself back up, clawing at the stone with bleeding fingernails until he finally reached the top of the ledge
.
There he found her.
Allyson was lying on the rock, dead and gray. As Andrew’s shaking fingers brushed her cold skin, his mind suddenly fractured. For a split second, the roar of the ocean vanished, replaced by the quiet afternoon at his front door. He saw her standing there again, bathed in sunlight, holding a ceramic plate of warm cookies. He remembered the weight of the plate, the scent of vanilla, and that brief, electric moment when their fingers brushed as he took them from her. He could almost see Sarah standing in the hallway behind him, her head tilted in that sharp, protective way—the silent warning he had ignored.
The memory shattered as a wave slammed into the ledge, dousing him in freezing brine. The warmth was gone. The electricity was dead. There was only the metallic scent of wet stone and the silence of a woman who was no longer there.
Andrew reached out, his fingers finding no pulse. She was gone. He kissed her lips one last time, feeling no life left in her, and held her cold body while he cried heavily, apologizing to the silence. "I'm so sorry, Allyson. I'm sorry for our baby. I should be the one dead. I should have never taken that plate from you."
His hand brushed something in her jacket—a typewritten note inside plastic. He read the jagged words: “Now I’ve won. Hopefully you will drown with your cunt side-piece. Yours truly, Cindy.”
He tucked the note back into her coat, his heart hollow. He looked for her locket, but it was no longer around her neck; Cindy had even stripped her of that. As the cave entrance became almost entirely blocked by the tide, the image of the doorway faded. He thought of what Allyson would want. She would want him to go back to Sarah and Alice.
"I'm really sorry," he told her one last time, then he dove into the black water.
Andrew dove under the cave entrance, fighting the current as he swam underwater. He broke the surface outside, but his strength was spent. He was being bashed against the jagged rocks, the stone hammering his temple. Thud. Blood poured down his face, blinding him as he gasped for air. He was slipping under, grasping for anything to keep him stable, when he felt arms grab him and hold his head above the water.
In the SUV, Sarah had been sitting in the driver's seat, sobbing profusely, her heart breaking as she watched the water swallow the cave. She was certain she had sent him to his death. But then she saw him—a bloody shape being beaten by the rocks. She lunged into the freezing water.
Through the crimson haze and salt, Andrew saw a glint of gold—the ring on her finger. "I've got you!" she screamed, anchoring him with a desperate strength until the rescue vehicles came barreling down the beach.
As they reached him, Andrew wheezed, "She’s in the cave! Don't let the sea get her!"
The lead responder grabbed his radio, his voice grim. "Dispatch, we have a Code Black recovery. Female victim is deceased. Notify the coroner and secure the scene for forensics."
A paramedic named Vance established a 14-gauge IV in Andrew's left AC, hanging warmed saline. Sarah stood over them, dripping and shivering, barking out his history: "He’s a stroke survivor. He has a limp and some weakness, but he’s recovered. He’s on Clopidogrel and a statin. Check his pupils—his left-side unevenness is baseline. He has a bad laceration on his right shoulder, and he's a bleeder on those thinners!"
They loaded Andrew into the ambulance. Sarah scrambled back to her SUV, checked on a sleeping Alice, and threw the car into gear. She trailed the ambulance like a shadow, her eyes fixed on the flickering blue lights, refusing to let him out of her sight for a single second.
