Page 1 of Heatstroke (Private Encounters #15)

ONE

SALT BURN

The moment his feet touched the dock, Daniel felt the heat claw up his spine like an unwelcome hand.

It was the kind of sun that bleached the air, thickened it, and made it cling to the entire surface of your body. He stepped away from the gangplank with a restrained exhale, the linen of his shirt already damp and clasping his back like a second, disloyal skin.

All around him, the little port of Sainte-Margot buzzed in undisciplined jubilation—tourists calling out in laughter-drowned French, engines hacking at the tide, music coming from no single source, instead seeming to bleed from the trees themselves.

His watch beeped once—a rude, insistent pulse—marking the hour with unasked-for precision. He silenced it with a thumb and let his arm fall. Already the band had printed a ring on his wrist, pale and irritated.

Daniel loathed arrivals.

The boat crew, all bronzed skin and loose-limbed ease, shouted something in Creole and tossed the next passenger's suitcase over the railing with elegant indifference.

One of them—barefoot and singing—held up a bottle of something orange and passed it along the line like communion.

There was no urgency to anything, only a slow, salt-blind rhythm that grated against Daniel's need for silence, order, reprieve.

He had come to Sainte-Margot against his better judgment.

A favor for a friend-of-a-friend with a guesthouse in need of a tenant and glowing reviews on social media.

" You'll hate it for a day and then fall in love, " the voice on the phone had promised, syrupy with nostalgia. Daniel hated it already.

Dragging his duffel behind him with visible disdain, he navigated the cracked walkway toward the mouth of the village.

The buildings—mostly two-story structures in fading colors—seemed to lean into one another like they were gossiping.

Rust bloomed on balconies, and vines crept freely through shutters left forever ajar.

The air smelled of mango rot and engine grease, and above it all, the blunted beat of a bass drum vibrated faintly.

It felt as if the island's heart were thudding right beneath his feet.

The sign for The Breakline was nailed crookedly over a paint-chipped veranda. Bar, guesthouse, café—it didn't know what it was and had made no attempt to choose. A tangle of frangipani arched over the front railing, and inside, the reggae was loud enough to disturb the teeth.

Daniel stepped into the tiled foyer and immediately regretted it.

The music—he recognized the voice, Peter Tosh or someone trying to be—boomed up through the floorboards as though the foundation itself were suffering through the verse.

Somewhere to the left, a fan ticked on a slow axis, managing to move only the scent of warm rum and lemon balm.

"Room Three," the girl at the counter said, without looking up from her phone. "Key's in the door."

He said nothing. He had planned to ask whether there was a quieter section, perhaps one facing the back garden. But the idea of engaging in any further transaction—with this place, with the day—repelled him.

He climbed the stairs instead, the duffel thumping on each riser like a second heart, and entered the room with the weary precision of a man rehearsing escape.

The ceiling fan above the bed was already spinning, though no one had turned it on.

Daniel closed the door and leaned against it for a moment.

Sweat gathered at his collarbone and ran, lazy and unhurried, down his chest. The air was hot and almost sticky, though the ceiling fan was starting to do its job.

Outside the window, a bird cried once, harsh and mechanical, like a screwdriver against glass.

Then came the screaming.

It came not from the town, but from the water. A high, slicing wail that turned into gasping panic. Daniel peeled himself from the door and moved, driven by instinct. His body knew how to respond before he'd consented to it.

Down the stairs. Through the foyer. Past the girl who had not looked up before and still didn't look up now. The beach lay beyond the back terrace, and already a loose collection of people was running in no particular formation toward the surf.

Daniel saw the boy in the shallows, thrashing, until he wasn’t.

He ran.

His shoes sank briefly in the wet sand before he kicked them off. A woman to his left was sobbing into her hands, her husband shouting uselessly at the horizon. The tide had pulled the boy outward, and now he floated, facedown, in the churn where the reef dipped just out of reach.

Daniel's breath shortened with each step. The heat, so consuming a moment ago, dropped away into a kind of tunnel. He marked the angle of the waves, the spasm of the tide. He moved into the water, the coolness slicing up his thighs.

And then a flash—dark limbs, strong and fluid—cut through the surf beside him.

A man, barefoot and bare-chested, dove with astonishing grace beneath the current. No hesitation, no drag. A pair of sunglasses vanished beneath the waves with him.

Daniel paused only long enough to watch the man reemerge with the boy in his arms.

Together, they staggered backward, Daniel reaching to support the child's head. He dropped to his knees as soon as the sand was beneath him, fingers already at the neck, behind the jaw. No pulse. No breath. Water gushed from the boy's mouth like a confession.

The other man stood beside them, hands on his hips, breathing with practiced calm.

"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 not yet 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?"

Daniel paused. "Daniel Voss. Good luck with tetanus."

That amused Thierry. He approached again, this time walking a slow arc around Daniel until they were once again face-to-face.

The sun was behind him now, throwing his silhouette long and golden across the sand.

His eyes, honey-brown and maddeningly bright, dipped to the exposed skin on Daniel's arm.

"That's new."

Daniel followed his gaze and saw, too late, that his sleeve had ridden up, and the black ink of the tattoo stark against his arm: a coiled lotus encircling a caduceus, thin and delicate lines intersecting, curving along his arm.

"It hasn’t healed properly yet," Thierry went on, not touching but close enough that Daniel could smell the salt and citrus clinging to his skin. "Hurt?"

Daniel tugged his sleeve down with deliberate calm.

"You're observant."

"I like stories," Thierry said simply. His expression was unreadable now. "Especially the ones people don't want to tell."

There was no accusation. Still, the words dug under Daniel's skin.

He gave a final, withering look, then walked off.

The sand was coarser near the guesthouse path, flecked with fragments of coral and broken shell.

A cicada whined somewhere in the palms overhead.

His feet, even in shoes now, felt the grind of each step.

He passed a young couple sipping coconut water from a chipped ceramic bowl, their legs intertwined like vines. The woman laughed—too loud, too free.

At the porch of The Breakline, the reggae returned. It was deeper now, the bass line thick as syrup, bleeding through the walls of the guesthouse. Daniel pressed past the beaded curtain and up the narrow stairwell, the scent of rum and old varnish riding the humid air.

His door was ajar. He closed it with a heavy hand, the clap of wood and brass echoing through the small room.

Inside, nothing had changed. The fan turned overhead, indifferent to the press of heat.

The air held the faint tang of mildew. His linen shirt stuck to his back.

He peeled the fabric from his chest and dropped it on the bed.

Through the open shutters, the sea sprawled into evening, a smear of violet and steel.

And below, barely visible through the balcony slats, Thierry walked away—still shirtless, still barefoot, his step unhurried, head turning briefly to glance up at the windows above.

Even from that distance, Daniel saw the smirk.

He shut the window with more force than required. The glass trembled in its frame. The tattoo throbbed faintly under his skin, as if it, too, resented the attention.

He sat at the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, and stared at nothing.

What unnerved him wasn't the rescue, nor the crowd. It was Thierry. The way he spoke directly, like someone who wasn't afraid of being wrong. The way he looked, not at, but into.

Daniel had built his life around silence, around not being read. And yet here, on an island he'd hoped would forget him, someone had seen far too much in a single afternoon.

And he had a feeling this Thierry guy wasn't finished.