Chapter 1

IN TOO DEEP JUDE WATSON READ THE BOOKS

CHAPTER 1 The sound of rushing water filled Amy Cahill's ears. If she kept her eyes closed, she could imagine she was standing under a beautiful tropical waterfall. Unfortunately, she was hiding in an airport bathroom. Inside a stall, she tucked up her legs and balanced her backpack on her knees. Toilets flushed, faucets ran, and suitcases on wheels trailed feet in a big hurry. The airport in Sydney, Australia, was a busy place. Busy was good. Busy was cover. If you wanted to ditch surveillance, a bathroom could offer you a perfect opportunity. If you didn't mind crouching on a toilet for fifteen minutes. Ditch surveillance. Only weeks ago, that would have meant not letting her little brother, Dan, read her diary. Now it was all too real. Too real for a fourteen-year-old.

Amy peeked over the stall. A tour group of teenagers had entered the bathroom a few moments ago, and now they chattered in French as they washed their hands and primped at the mirror. The guide cried, "Allons-y!" Still talking and laughing, they began to wheel their suitcases toward the exit. It was a perfect opportunity. Amy slipped out of the stall. Smiling at a pretty French girl, she melted into the group. Women streamed in and out of the doors, and the tour group got entangled with an Australian woman with four daughters. Amy slid into the middle of the crowd as they exited. She kept the tour group between her and the gate opposite. As soon as they headed off toward baggage claim, she ducked into a coffee bar. She scanned the corridor, searching out anyone familiar… or a suspicious stranger. Everything looked normal. The only problem was that normal wasn't necessarily good. Because the new normal meant anyone at all could be a threat.

How about that Japanese family in super-cool footwear? The backpacking American boy and girl in matching SMELL U T-shirts? The middle-aged woman munching a muffin, the mother with a stroller, the man stopping to dial his cell phone. Any one of them could be after her and her brother, Dan. Any one of them could be Cahills. Amy had never dreamed that her own last name would send such a chill down her spine. Ever since her grandmother's will had been read, she'd been chased from one continent to another… by her own relatives. Her grandmother Grace Cahill had laid down a challenge to every branch of the Cahill family—either join the race for the 39 Clues and become the most powerful person in the world… or walk away with a million dollars. Amy and Dan had chosen the chase. Not that a million dollars wouldn't be pretty sweet. But they knew their grandmother wanted them to win. They had no idea what they were getting into. Sometimes Amy wondered what the scariest thing about being involved with the hunt for the

Clues was. Maybe it wasn't being buried alive or almost creamed by a train or locked in a mummy's tomb. All those things had actually happened to her… and she'd survived. Maybe it was this— having to be suspicious of every single person on the planet. Amy and Dan had learned the hard way that any one of them could be an informer. Would the rest of her life be like this? Looking over her shoulder all the time? Don't wig out on me now, Dan would say. He was three years younger, but sometimes she needed him for a reality check. Amy hurried on. They were supposed to meet at ground transportation. As soon as their plane from Moscow had touched down, Amy, Dan, and their au pair, Nellie Gomez, split up. Instead of rushing for a taxi, they would wander the airport and give any possible pursuers the slip. They had come to Sydney on a hunch. Back in Russia, they'd discovered that their parents had traveled under false names on Australian passports. As Amy walked down the busy corridor, she thought of the photo of her parents the Lucian Nataliya had sent them. She and Dan

traded it back and forth because they both wanted to sneak looks at it. Since their parents had died in a fire at their family home, all the photographs of them had been destroyed. All except one, and Dan had lost that back in Paris. Ever since she'd seen that photo, little pieces of memory kept drifting back to her. Suddenly, she remembered silly things, like how they'd had "breakfast for dinner" on Thursday nights, or how her mother had always carried different colored markers in her purse so they could draw on place mats if they went somewhere to eat. How one day they'd made jewels out of aluminum foil… and wore their crowns to the grocery store. She'd almost forgotten what a goofball her mother had been. Her parents had been in this airport more than eight years ago. They'd walked these corridors. Mom, Dad… what were you doing here? She and Dan could be off on a tangent. This trip might not lead to a Clue. They had no evidence that it would. But they had both known the moment they saw those passports where they were headed next. They didn't even have to