Free The 39 Clues: Cahill Files: Silent Night by Riley Clifford

cut through the rusty grate, revealing a long tunnel. They had to walk slowly so as not to splash in the muck that ran down to the ditch. The air was cold and damp and small around them. But ahead was another grate, which led into a room with a boiler and a great series of pipes and vents.
    “There are so many rooms and hallways. We should each take a floor — we will never find him otherwise,” said Marie.
    “No,” said Rupert. “We stay together. We can’t do everything alone.”
    “Then where do we go first?” said Marie. She looked to the major, and Rupert did, too.
    “Well,” said the major. “We start at the beginning.” And he led them out into the hall.
    It was dark, with only a few overhead lights hanging every few yards. The floor was made of stones and was covered in a fine layer of damp. Rupert had a hard time remembering when he had ever been in a place so hauntingly dismal. The major motioned them on, and Rupert led them down the hall on their tiptoes.
    At the end of the hall they found a door, which led to a staircase. Rupert faltered. In a stairway, there was nowhere to run or to hide. Anything that they came across, they would have to face.

    The trio quietly skittered up the stairs, and Rupert, at the front, cracked the door at that level. A squad of soldiers was marching down the hall, coming at them from the left. Rupert jerked away from the light, hoping no one had noticed the crack or any quiver from the door. He held his finger to his lips as the sound of the footsteps grew closer and closer. Rupert, Marie, and the major all waited with their breaths bottled tight inside of them, their muscles tense and frozen and not trembling the slightest bit. The tiniest sigh or the softest scuffle would be their end — the end of their mission — the end of the world that they wanted to save and protect.
    The uniform marching came closer and closer, until Rupert was sure they were going to come to the stairs and march right down to the basement. But they passed, and Rupert could breathe again. And he could peek out again, too.
    “We’ll go right out of here,” Rupert said. “There’s a doorway you can hide in. I’ll trot ahead to the corner and take a peek around.” He didn’t know what he was looking for — an abundance of guards? A dungeon with cells and shackles? Signs that read PRISONER’S SCIENCE LAB ? — but he thought he would know it when he saw it.
    “But if they see you!” said Marie.
    “You can’t risk that,” said the major.
    “Cousins,” said Rupert. “What are Lucians best at? No one will catch me. I’m sure of it.” Lucians were also, it should be said, best at lying. And Rupert’s confidence was almost entirely a lie. But he firmly believed that thinking a thing made it so.
    They left the stairwell and scurried like mice caught in the light toward the next doorway. There, Rupert caught his breath. And stepped back out into the hall.
    His heart was beating terribly fast in his chest. Thrills ran all over him, like a spider’s footprints, beginning behind his sternum and swelling out through his body.
    He edged out toward the corner, keeping as much of himself as possible pressed against the wall. Around that corner, a cluster of guards stood outside a door. They looked bored and miserable. Of course, it was Christmas Eve. And they stood there, away from their own families, in a dank factory, guarding something that probably had very little value to them individually, but that they had to kill to protect.
    Guarding something. Someone? Rupert edged back along the wall toward the others.
    “I think we’ve found him,” said Rupert. His heart jumped and then squeezed in upon itself. Step one was done. They were on their way to success. “There are at least a dozen guards around the corner. We need to look in that room. But how do we get past the guards?”
    “Ich weiß,”
said Marie in her deep German soldier’s voice. If he weren’t so scared and on edge,