One False Note - 39 Clues 02 Read Online Free PDF Page B

did two young kids have?
    Her uneasy thoughts popped like a soap bubble when an unfriendly voice over her shoulder announced, "You do not work for us, Fraulein.
    What are you doing in this suite?"
    Heart sinking, Nellie turned around. Next to the Grand Duke's man was a uniformed guard.
    She tried to bluff it through. "Of course I work here. Do you think I sneak into hotels
    for the pleasure of scrubbing strangers' toilets?"
    "You do not work here," the man repeated humorlessly.
    "You know every single employee?" she challenged.
    "No," he admitted. "You have the earring in the nose. It is against hotel policy. You will come with me."
    Nellie thought hard. She wasn't sure how much trouble she was in. She was a foreigner in this country. If she ended up deported, what would happen to Amy and Dan?
    "All right, you caught me. I'm here by mistake. I was trying to get into Jonah Wizard's suite. I'm his biggest fan. I just have to meet him! But I picked the wrong room."
    The man's eyes probed hers. "And you are doing this crime alone? No one is with you?" "I'm totally alone," she said, perhaps too quickly. "And it's not a crime to love Jonah Wizard. He's just the coolest -- "
    From directly below, an enormous crash shook the building. The security man looked daggers at Nellie. "The Wizard suite! - Fraulein, you had better hope that this disturbance has nothing to do with you, or you will be enjoying a great deal more of our Austrian hospitality."
    "Dan, are you all right?"
    Dan lay on the floor of the suite, in the wreckage of the chair, in the wreckage of the table.
    He groaned and sat up, the diary clutched in his arms like a football. "What happened?" "I'm not sure," Amy replied, none too steady herself. She hauled him to his feet and scanned him for cuts. "Either the chair broke and dropped us through the table, or the table broke first, and that's what broke the chair. It doesn't matter. We've got to get out of here -- half the hotel must have heard that crash!"
    They ran out of suite 1600 just as a uniformed security officer burst from the stairwell, pulling none other than Nellie with him.
    There was no chance of feigning cluelessness. The door was still open behind them, the wreckage clearly visible from the hall.
    The Cahills fled, sprinting around the nearest corner and out of view. The guard moved to give chase, but Nellie grabbed his arm and pulled him back with a heave that almost dislocated his shoulder.
    "You can't leave! What if Jonah is lying in there, bleeding?" The security man was in a towering rage. "Stupid girl! Your hero is not even in the building!" He took a walkie-talkie from his belt and began speaking in rapid-fire German.
    Nellie swallowed the lump in her throat. He was placing a guard at the elevators and at the bottom of all building stairwel ls. Amy and Dan were trapped.
    CHAPTER 6
    When the elevator door rolled open, both Cahills were running so hard that they almost blasted straight past it. Amy put the brakes on first, grabbed her brother, and hauled him aboard. She pressed L. They stood, chests heaving, as the car descended. Their anxious eyes followed the readout as the numbers counted down from sixteen. Suddenly, Dan's hand snaked out and pressed 2. "They could be waiting for us in the lobby," he explained tensely.
    "But that's where the exit is!" Amy shrilled. "You can't leave from the second floor!" "Sure you can." The doors opened, and Dan pulled her out onto 2, amid ballrooms and meeting facilities. She was nearly hysterical. "How?" "By jumping."
    Amy stared at him. "Have you lost your -- "
    They snaked around a bend in the corridor, and the hotel's front drive appeared before
    them through floor-to-ceiling glass.
    Dan pushed open the French doors, and the two stepped out onto a narrow stone balcony.
    "No way, Dan! I'm not jumping! We'll break our legs!" "Look down!" he commanded.
    Six feet below stretched a canvas awning that ran across the front entrance.
    He swung a leg over the stone