Chapter 4: The Shadow on the Reef

Lila spent the morning walking the Black Reef shoreline.

Before leaving Portland, she’d crammed for a week on the volunteer handbook from the city rescue squad. Tides, wind direction, the back-currents in the reef fissures—she had them memorized better than anyone. But standing on the rocks, the sea was far meaner than the books had made it sound.

She was a forensic artist; her eyes were her livelihood. She noticed things: the warning barrier that should have been at the reef entrance had been sawed through; several of the anti-slip iron spikes on the rocks had been pulled out; and on the back of the largest black boulder, she found a shallow scratch—as if someone had carved with a knife tip and then sanded it down, leaving only the tail end of a digit, maybe a three, maybe a five.

She knelt to take a photo.

The tide crept up her inch by inch. She checked her watch, and her stomach dropped—she’d miscalculated the tide table.

Seawater had already covered her first footprint.

She ran back, but the narrow rock-crack path that had been exposed yesterday was now a black channel. A wave hit from the side and soaked half her pants. She was trapped on the reef that jutted out over the water, surrounded by gray-white surf, the fog swallowing everything ten feet out.

No cell signal.

She forced herself to breathe, pulled the whistle from her bag—the one she’d bought specifically for this trip, clipped to her backpack zipper.

She had just put it to her lips when a low voice came from above, out of the fog:

“I’m counting to three. Drop the bag.”

Lila looked up.

A tall man stood on the reef’s crown, black rain jacket snapping in the wind. He had an old scar running from his brow ridge to his cheekbone, and his eyes were a cold gray-green.

“One.” he said.

“Wait, I—”

“Two.”

Lila gritted her teeth and shoved the bag with her camera and notebook toward the water. A wave snatched it away.

“Three. Come here.”

He leaned down, held out a hand. It was large and rough, knuckles scarred. Lila picked her way across the slick rock, and he clamped his grip around her wrist—strength like an iron band, half-pulling her up onto the reef crown.

They both pressed flat on the leeward side as a wave exploded into white foam where they’d been standing.

Lila looked up at him, gasping. “Thanks, I—”

“Lila Mason.” The man cut her off.

A cold chill ran through her. “How do you know my name?”

“Whole town knows.” He stood, looked down at her, rain tracing the path of his scar. “Cane Walker. Take my advice. Drive back to Portland in the morning.”

“Why?”

He crouched, voice low, each word ground out through his teeth:

“Because in this town, the people who dig up old secrets all end up taken by the sea.”

He turned and left. Two steps in, he stopped, without turning:

“Your bag, I’ll fish it out this afternoon. You’d better pray no one beats me to it.”

Lila watched his back vanish into the fog. She slowly raised her wrist—the one he’d grabbed, burning as if branded.

And at her feet, in the black rock fissure the waves kept washing over, half a water-rotted scrap of paper showed an edge.

Half a line of handwritten English, the ink bleeding out. She could just make out a name:

…Emily is n—

Her sister’s name.

She lunged for it, but a wave crashed down and sucked the paper into the white foam. It was gone.