Allison (A Kane Novel) Read Online Free Page A

back, raising his voice to be heard above the surf.  “He’s not bothering me.”
    The woman, an attractive brunette in her early thirties, smiled at Mike with obvious interest.  “Not yet , maybe,” she shot back.
    Mike smiled in return, then kept working.  He had to get the beach footage to the newsroom by 3 PM, and time was getting short.  But as he started to turn back toward the ocean, a pair of young women caught his eye.  They had apparently just arrived and were laying beach towels on the sand near the lifeguard tower.  One, a raven-haired beauty who wiggled out of a skimpy pair of shorts and a sleeveless blouse to reveal a tiny red bikini, had great legs and knockout figure.  But it was the taller of the two who drew Mike’s attention.
    Momentarily forgetting the waves, Mike watched as she stripped off a pair of gray sweats.  Beneath the sweats she was wearing a black Speedo swimsuit cut high at the hips and low in the back, accenting a captivating figure that was both athletic and feminine.  Shaking free her tousled mane of reddish-auburn hair, the girl looked up.  Her pale-green eyes turned quizzical as they noticed Mike watching, her unabashed look displaying a startling directness that held his gaze.
    At that instant the boy began tugging on Mike’s arm.  “Hey, mister.  Look!”
    Reluctantly, Mike glanced toward the ocean, noting that the teenaged girls who earlier had been playing in the shallows had ignored a warning from the lifeguard and ventured into deeper water.  Caught in the outflow, they were now having difficulty making it back to the safety of the beach.  Abruptly, a strong backwash buffeted the trio, sweeping two of them over a sandy drop-off.  Realizing the danger, Mike kicked off his sandals, asked Dex to hold his camera, and started for the water.  He hesitated when he saw a lifeguard bolting from the guard tower, orange rescue tube in tow.
    A second backwash surged seaward, carrying away the third girl.  With a chill, Mike realized that the situation had turned deadly.  Noting another guard running from a tower a hundred yards distant, Mike retrieved his camera and resumed shooting, knowing he would probably need saving himself were he to enter the water.  He was a good swimmer, but not that good.
    Trailing his rescue tube from a nylon shoulder strap, the first guard dived in and swam toward the closest girl.  He reached her just as a six-foot crest of boiling foam rolled over them.  Mike kept his lens trained on the spot where they disappeared.  When they resurfaced seconds later, he got a shot of the guard wrapping the flexible orange tube around the girl’s body, securing the device with a brass clip.  By now the other guard had arrived.  Mike shot him entering the water, then raked his camera across the ocean, searching for the other girls.  A head popped up forty yards out.  No sign of the third girl.
    The second lifeguard had entered the water in an outflowing riptide, which was rapidly shuttling him seaward.  Mike kept shooting, hoping the guard would reach the teenager before she was carried into the breaking waves farther out.  From down the beach came the distant wail of a siren.  Mike turned.  A lifeguard jeep was speeding toward them, its lights flashing as it raced along the hard sand at the water’s edge.  It wouldn’t arrive for minutes.
    With a sense of dread, Mike kept shooting.  By now every eye on the beach was following the unfolding drama.  The second guard in the water had covered half the distance to the flailing youngster farther out.  It appeared he would reach her before the current carried her out to the break line, but getting her to safety would be another story.  The first guard, victim in tow, had given up taking a direct route to shore and was swimming parallel to the beach, attempting to move laterally out of the strong riptide.  The second guard would have to do the same.
    Suddenly Mike spotted the third girl, far