Torn-missing 4 Read Online Free PDF Page A

and ankles apart, making room to slip the ropes off if he had to.
    Footsteps sounded on the other side of the barrels, and Jonah shut his eyes and let his head loll back, just in case.
    “Okay, they went on past,” Katherine whispered.“There’s a group of them, going up to that door where the tracer was afraid to knock …”
    She fell silent.
    “What’s happening now?”
    “They’re trying to decide who’s going to knock—wait, I think one of them just volunteered. …” She drew in a sharp breath. “No, they’re going to fight about it.”
    It was maddening, lying there waiting for Katherine’s descriptions. Jonah sat up—his head woozy and throbbing—and peeked around the side of the barrel.
    The fight seemed to be happening in slow motion. One man shoved another; a third man drew back his fist to punch the first. But the potential puncher seemed to have balance problems—just the action of moving his fist was enough to topple him over backward. He landed with a
thunk
on the deck and lay there blinking up at the sky, as if wondering what hit him.
    Jonah choked back laughter.
    “Jonah, shh, they’ll hear you,” Katherine hissed. “And get down, before someone sees you! The door’s opening.”
    Jonah crouched down but kept his head up, watching.
    The handful of sailors who hadn’t ended up flat on the ground were standing back from the door. They twisted their hands; they glanced nervously at one another.
    The man closest to the door pulled out a gun.
    “Um, JB?” Katherine whispered. “I know you said Jonah’s safe because his costume is bulletproof, but what about me? If that man shoots his gun over in this direction—”
    “He’s not going to,” JB whispered back.
    “Maybe you should crouch down behind the barrel a little more,” Jonah whispered.
    Katherine hunkered down, almost on top of Jonah. Both of them peered around the barrel.
    The door had swung all the way open now. A man stood in the doorway, calmly regarding the gun.
    “So it’s come to this,” he said.
    Jonah could see the gun shaking in the other man’s hand.
    “M-master, you leave us no choice,” he said. “To avoid an icy grave we must sail for home now, whilst we can, whilst it still be summer.”
    Summer?
Jonah thought.
This is summer?
    “JB, are you sure we aren’t at the North Pole?” he muttered.
    JB didn’t answer.
    Neither did the “master” in the doorway.
    “Bind his hands!” the man with the gun cried.
    Two of the other sailors stepped forward with ropes.
    The man standing in the doorway held his wrists out, as if he didn’t care what the others did.
    “So the glory of discovery will be mine alone,” he said. “Long after you are dead and forgotten, people will praise my name as they sail the Hudson Passage!”
    Katherine drove her elbow into Jonah’s back.
    “That must be Henry Hudson!” she whispered.
    “I’m not an idiot!” Jonah whispered back. He really wanted to ask,
Is there a Hudson Passage somewhere? Is he right?
But, well, he didn’t want to look like an idiot.
    “Won’t be no ‘Hudson Passage,’” the man with the gun said. “We’re sailing for home.”
    “’C-cause, you just want to drive us all to our deaths, looking for something that isn’t there,” one of the other men said.
    He looked around at his buddies for agreement.
    They nodded, and shuffled forward menacingly.
    Hudson didn’t step back.
    “You’ve lost your faith,” he said. “Now? Just when I’ve found out—” He broke off, and stared coldly out at the assembled men. “No, no, it’s not worth discussing with the faithless.”
    Jonah couldn’t help being impressed that Hudson seemed so calm. Either he was crazy or really, really brave.
    Or maybe he’s blind?
Jonah thought.
Doesn’t he see that gun?
    The man with the gun lowered it.
    “How could you have found out anything?” he asked. “We’ve been trapped in the ice since Monday. Trapped in ice in
June
!”
    “I am a brilliant sea