In Too Deep - 39 Clues 06 Read Free Page A

shocker. You're a Lucian.""Naturally, I feel the Lucians are best equipped to handle ultimate power.
    We combine the best qualities of all the Cahills. We are leaders. We have a global network in place. But you and your brother ... you're so alone. Your parents are gone, Grace is gone, there's no one to protect you. I only want the little girl I remember-- the girl in the nightie I cuddled in my lap so long ago -- to grow up safe. If you only knew what..." She hesitated.
    "What?"Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Isabel turned in the direction of the noise."Trust me," she whisper ed. And then she hurried away.
    CHAPTER 3
    Amy pounded on the cell door. "Hello? Help?" she yelled.
    Dan appeared and looked inside the bars. "Whatever you did, I'll always stand by you," he said."Don't be a dweeb. Get the guard and open this door!" Amy yelled.
    Dan pushed on the door, and it slowly swung open.
    Amy blinked. Why had she thought the door was locked? Come to think of it, Isabel had never said that it was.
    She felt her legs trembling. She was more shaken up than she wanted to admit."C'mon," Dan said. "I found this awesome collection of knives.
    One of them still has bloodstains on it!"
    "Dan, Isabel Kabra was here," Amy said."Isabel Kabra? Multiplying Cobras. Which one is that?"
    "Ian and Natalie's mother!""Oh, m an. Those kids have a mother?"
    "She was almost... nice," Amy said. "She actually apologized for Ian."
    "Too late. Her kids are the hounds of suck." "She said the Lucians should win .. "
    "Duh."
    "… and that I should trust her. She was about to tell me something."Dan made a face. "Let me guess. Go home, little children, this game is too dangerous for you, you're going to lose. Blahbaddy blah.
    We've heard it a million times since we started. So which branch got the originality gene? They all sound the same."Amy decided to leave out the part about Ian really liking her. She wasn't buying it, of course. But Dan definitely wouldn't buy it."She said she met me when I was little, but I don't remember her at all," Amy said.
    Dan was barely listening. "We'd better get outside or Nellie is going to have a freak attack."As they walked toward the exit, Amy stopped in front of the wall of mug shots. "Why was she here?" she wondered. "It wasn't just a coincidence.
    She stopped here, at the mug shots. She was leaning in, right-- " Amy stopped. "Dan! One of the mug shots is missing!"Neatly cut out from behind the Plexiglas, one small photograph was gone."Now we'll never know who it was," Amy said.
    Dan closed his eyes. Amy knew he was going over the photographs in hi s mind. Even though there were about a hundred on the wall, she knew he'd remember the one that was missing."Follow me," he said. Amy hurried after him to the gift shop. There was a framed poster on the wall showing the same criminal faces.
    Dan put his finger on one, a youngish man with dirty hair and a blank expression. One side of his face showed white scars from his forehead to his chin. "Him."
    "Bob Troppo," the clerk behind the register said."Is that some sort of Aussie greeting?" Dan murmured to Amy. He waved. "Bob Troppo!" he called.
    The clerk came from around the counter. "The bloke you're looking at. He was called Bob Troppo.
    Nobody knew his real name because he never spoke. 'Gone troppo' is an Australian expression for someone who's lived in the tropics so long he's gone a bit weird. He lived in Sydney in the 1890s."
    "What did he do?" Dan asked. "Feed someone to a croc? Tie him to the railroad tracks?"
    "He tried to assassinate Mark Twain."Amy and Dan exchanged a glance. Mark Twain was a Cahill descendant. He was a Janus, the clever, artistic branch.
    The clerk, a burly young man in khaki shorts, leaned against the counter. "Twain was on a lecture tour, you see, back in 1896.
    Troppo was seen talking to him in an alley outside the hall where he spoke. Apparently, they had words, and Troppo smashed him on the shoulder with a cane!"
    "That doesn't sound like an