Page 2 of Heatstroke

"You're a doctor?" he asked in French.

Daniel didn't answer. He was counting seconds, tipping the boy's chin, beginning compressions. His voice, when he finally used it, was clipped and exact.

"Check for obstruction. I need space."

The man crouched beside him and obeyed without question. The muscles across his back, sun-dark and slick with seawater, rippled as he turned the boy gently. His movements were deft, respectful, professional.

Daniel felt a faint return of rhythm beneath his fingers.

He exhaled, barely.

Behind them, the tourists began to cheer. He hated that.

Daniel stood on the wet edge of the beach, salt itching at the seam of his trousers, the damp hem slapping gently against his ankle with each step toward dry land. His hands—still trembling with the residue of adrenaline—hung by his sides like tools notyet stowed. No one asked for his name. No one needed to. The boy was alive. That was enough for them.

The crowd had already begun to dissolve into themselves again, resuming cocktails, sandals, plastic-tipped laughter.

But the man hadn't moved.

He lingered in the breath of space beside him, feet buried easily in the damp sand and water dripped down the ropes of his sun-bleached dreadlocks. Each strand trailed over bronzed shoulders like seaweed clinging to driftwood.

His chest rose with easy control, breath deep and unhurried. Swimmer's lungs. His board shorts, plastered to strong legs, bore the salt with the comfort of long habit. And there was that smile again—mild, open, with a mischief that made Daniel itch.

"You don't sound local," the stranger said at last, in English this time. His voice had that ocean-soft warmth of islanders, round at the edges, low in the chest.

Daniel glanced at him without warmth.

"I'm not."

"Mm," he hummed, eyes scanning Daniel's linen shirt—half-transparent now, clinging to his lean torso, the tattoo beneath it a blurred dark bloom of ink. "That shirt gives you away. Linen is what tourists wear when they want to feel tropical but end up looking hot and vaguely betrayed."

Daniel didn't respond. The salt was drying on his skin, tightening across his olive-brown arms. Sweat gathered again at the back of his neck, soaking into the collar of his shirt. The field watch strapped to his wrist gave a discreet beep—four o'clock. He dismissed the alert without looking.

The stranger stepped closer, still barefoot, toes making small half-moons in the sand as he bent to retrieve Daniel's discarded shoes. He held them out casually.

"Doctor?" he asked.

Daniel took the shoes in silence.

"Or do you just enjoy dramatic CPR in linen?"

"There was no one else."

"I was there," the man said, lifting his brow. "Like lightning. Cut through the water like I was born for it."

Daniel arched a single brow. "You talk a lot."

"I'm friendly," he corrected, grinning. "And you look like someone who forgot how to be."

Daniel turned to leave, brushing sand off his forearms.

"Thierry Batiste," the man called behind him, light as a sea breeze. "Occasional hero. Full-time local menace."

Daniel's shoulders tightened beneath the linen. He paused at the edge of the boardwalk, already resenting the fact that Thierry's voice seemed to echo louder than the others, as if the island conspired against him to amplify it.

"You're barefoot," Daniel said without looking back. "There's reef in that surf. You want infection?"

"The sea knows me," Thierry said with a shrug. "Besides, I walk soft. Are you ever going to tell me your name?"

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