Triple Threat - James Patterson Page 0,73

give her rescue breathing. The girl’s chest doesn’t rise. No air is getting in. Logan puts his hands together, palms down, and presses on the girl’s abdomen.

Water bubbles up out of the girl’s mouth, and Logan quickly turns her on her side. Lake water faucets from her mouth and nose.

“She’s breathing,” Logan announces, “but she’s still unconscious.”

Hannah thinks this seems like a good place to stop filming. She presses the red button and pockets her phone.

Logan puts his arms under the girl and lifts her. She’s in a one-piece suit, and her arms and legs flop like pale, boneless noodles. Logan rushes past Hannah and the girl’s sister. He places the girl down in the boat.

“Everybody in,” he says, taking the sister’s hand and helping her into the boat. He takes Hannah’s hand, and before she knows it, she’s sitting in the boat next to the unconscious girl.

“I’m going inside to call an ambulance,” Logan says. “Hopefully they’ll meet you at the parking lot.”

Hannah opens her mouth to say they’ll wait for him, but then stops herself. As if he can read her mind, Logan says, “You’ll waste valuable time if you wait for me. I’ll run down the path and meet you there.”

The boat pilot needs no more instruction. He yanks the starter cord and the motor fires up. He presses the throttle and spins the boat in a tight arc, aiming it back the way they came.

As the boat speeds away, Hannah cranes her neck and watches as Logan runs into the cabin.

Chapter 4

The paramedics lift the unconscious girl and place her on a stretcher. Hannah and the older sister watch from the dock. The pilot of the boat stays in his seat, out of the way.

“My dad told me to take care of her,” the sister says to Hannah. “But when she didn’t come up, I just panicked. I didn’t know what to do.”

“She’s going to be okay,” Hannah says.

The girl looks up at her with puffy, tear-filled eyes and says, “Is she?”

Hannah puts her arm around the girl. It’s not a gesture Hannah would normally be comfortable making—always the professional asking questions, not the friend providing comfort—but it seems to be what the girl needs. She collapses into Hannah, beginning to sob.

The paramedics roll the stretcher down the pier, toward the parking lot and the waiting ambulance.

“Come on,” Hannah says, and she keeps her arm around the older girl as they follow.

The paramedics put the girl inside and begin to work on her: putting an oxygen mask over her mouth to help her breathe, placing an IV in her arm. When they’re about to close the doors, Hannah says, “Can her sister go with her?”

The paramedics look at the girl under Hannah’s arm skeptically.

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” the girl says.

For a moment, Hannah thinks the girl must be lying. She barely looks old enough for high school.

“I’ll call my dad when we get to the hospital,” the girl says. “He’s in town already.”

“Okay,” the paramedic says, relenting.

The girl climbs aboard, and the doors slam shut. The sirens come to life, and the ambulance pulls to the edge of the parking lot, hesitates for an instant at the intersection, and then races away at high speed.

Hannah takes a deep breath. She can’t believe what just happened. She hopes the girl is going to be okay, and she has a good feeling she will. The girl was breathing and was in good hands.

Hannah turns toward the lake. Everything seems incredibly vivid—like her senses are heightened. The colors of the trees and the water seem to stand out. The fresh air is delicious. Every sound—every birdcall, every bug chirp—seems to vibrate with discrete clarity.

The pilot of the boat comes walking toward her. He’s carrying her daypack, as well as Logan’s.

“Some morning,” he says, with a grin on his face telling her that he’s feeling the same intense adrenaline rush.

He asks if she wants a ride back across the lake to the trailhead.

“No thanks,” she says. “I think my plans for the day have changed.”

She glances toward the path along the lake, expecting Logan to come jogging up. But there’s no sign of him.

The boat pilot offers her daypack to her, and then he holds up Logan’s pack, as if unsure what to do with it.

“I can put this behind the counter inside,” he says. “Or I can leave it with you.”

Hannah thinks for a moment and then tells him to put it behind the counter.

Before the kid walks off,