The scent of dried chamomile in the sanctuary went thin and sour. Santino didn't wait for an answer; he shoved through the screen door, trailing sandalwood and iron.
"Wait, what? Tonight?" Marisol scrambled to pack her steel probe and alcohol swabs. She latched the sterilizer bin with a sharp click. The rocky inlet off Playa Serena was where she gathered her wild sage every Tuesday dawn.
She followed him out, her sensible sandals crunching on the gravel path. His sleek, charcoal-colored automobile idled at the curb, its engine a low purr against the evening cicadas. Purple dusk bled across the horizon, leaving the shoreline dark.
"My schedule is packed, Dr. Lanza," she said, keeping her chin level. "I have charts to file, inventory to balance, and very little interest in scouring the dark for someone who slipped away from you."
He pulled the passenger door open. "Consider it fieldwork on coastal aromatics, Dr. Vega. Grant evaluators prize community botany, don't they?"
Marisol hesitated, then stepped into the car, keeping her elbows pinned close so she wouldn't graze his leather sleeve.
The drive took six minutes, the tires humming over the salt-crusted tarmac until Santino killed the ignition beside the boardwalk.
They stepped down onto the damp sand, surf foam hissing against the tide line. Marisol stayed three paces back.
“So, what exactly are we looking for?” she asked, breaking the silence, her voice a little too sharp. “A ghost? A mirage? Or just a woman who had the good sense to leave a reckless man in her dust?”
Santino turned, stopping beside an overturned skiff. "We’re cataloging whatever grows between the dunes and the surf, Dr. Vega. You know every root out here."
Marisol nudged a broken whelk shell into the froth with her toe, keeping her hands buried in her linen pockets.
"The salt spray stunts everything close to the tide," she said, kneeling to snap a fleshy sprig from a dune runner. "This is samphire. Too brine-heavy for any perfume. Wild rosemary only takes root past the ridge."
She walked backward a few steps, explaining the nuances of each plant, the subtle differences in their fragrance profiles. Her eyes, however, kept darting to Santino. He listened, his head tilted, a rare look of contemplation on his face. She turned to point out a patch of sea lavender, her heel catching on a rogue piece of driftwood hidden beneath a thin layer of sand.
Her foot twisted, the joint barking hot against her sandal strap. She pitched sideways, but his arm hooked under her ribs before she struck the sand.
Her palm flattened against his heavy woolen lapel, crushing the sprig of sea lavender between them. His chin hovered an inch from her brow, his breath smelling of the chicory coffee she had poured him an hour ago.
His pulse thumped hard under her palm, steady and fast. His glance dropped to her lips, his fingers tightening against the cotton of her smock.
"Are you alright, Dr. Vega?" he murmured, his voice husky.
Marisol tore her gaze from his lips, forcing herself to focus on his eyes, on anything but the dizzying proximity. She had to break this. Now. “Fine,” she gasped, pushing against his chest, her voice shaky. “Just… tripped. Clumsy.” She pulled back, putting a careful foot of distance between them, her cheeks burning despite the cool air. “Why are you so… obsessed with her, anyway? This ‘Valentina’?”
Santino straightened his collar, turning toward the black swell of the ocean.
“She’s… different.” He paused, searching for the right words. “For weeks, months even, my mind has been a storm. Constant noise. Schedules, hospital politics, the pressure… it never stops. The insomnia is just a symptom of the chaos in my head.” He turned back to her, his gaze intense, raw. “But that night… with her…” He trailed off, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “The noise stopped. For the first time in years, my mind was quiet. Perfectly, utterly quiet.”
Marisol swallowed. She had slipped into his suite out of spite and hurt pride, intending to leave him tangled in bruised ego, not realizing she had granted him the only quiet night he had known in months.
“She was the only one who ever managed it,” Santino continued, his voice laced with an almost desperate hope. “The only one who quieted the storm.” He looked at her, his expression pleading, as if seeking understanding. “I need that again, Dr. Vega. I need to understand how she did it.”
Before Marisol could answer, Santino snapped his head toward the water line. Fifty yards down the shore, a figure walked the wet pack: a silhouette in a floor-length sapphire gown, the cowl neckline and slit hem identical to the silk dress Inez had dropped at the charity depot that afternoon.
“Valentina,” Santino breathed, his voice a low growl of pure recognition. He didn’t wait. He didn’t hesitate. He simply took off, sprinting down the beach, a man possessed, his feet kicking up plumes of sand as he chased after the stranger in the familiar blue dress, leaving Marisol standing alone, terrified that he was about to corner an innocent woman and uncover the whole tangled truth back to Inez.