Risked (The Missing ) by Margaret Peterson Haddix Read Free Book Online

“The food delivery was hours ago, and ofcourse nobody new was involved. The commander will be interrogating you soon.”
    Jonah and Katherine exchanged terrified glances.
    “And it has been determined that you deserve no light,” the guard added. He must have flipped a switch, because the naked lightbulb overhead suddenly blinked out. Then the guard slammed the door, plunging them into darkness.
    For a moment Jonah and Katherine could do nothing but stand in shocked silence. Then Jonah heard Katherine taking ragged, gasping breaths, as if she was crying.
    Jonah reached out to pat her shoulder in the dark.
    “Hey,” he said. “We’ll figure something out. Or—maybe JB will rescue us.”
    “How would he even know we’re missing?” Katherine challenged. “How could anyone find us? Even Gary and Hodge—even if they’re the ones who gave Gavin the Elucidator—they wouldn’t have expected him to bring us all here. ”
    Somehow Jonah could hear more of the fear in her voice in the darkness.
    “Yeah, but don’t you think Gary and Hodge could track the Elucidator?” he asked.
    “Maybe, but what if they can’t?” Katherine countered. “Or they just don’t bother? Or what if they’re still in time prison and so they can’t do anything, but they won’t tellanyone else where we are because they don’t want to get into more trouble?”
    She was right. That did sound like something Gary and Hodge would do.
    “It’s all my fault we ended up in 1918,” Jonah muttered, slumping over.
    This was worse than the mess-up they’d had trying to return their friend Andrea to her past. Their enemy Second had sabotaged that trip and sent them to the wrong year. But at least JB had known it when they went missing. And he’d known to search for them.
    Are Gary and Hodge out of time prison and searching for us right now? They’d want to look for us, too, wouldn’t they? If only to make money, not because they’d actually care . . .
    It was horrible that Jonah was now pinning his hopes on the possibility that Gary and Hodge had escaped from time prison. That he was now counting on two of his three worst enemies to save him.
    You’ve got to think of something else, he told himself.
    “Katherine, let’s at least try feeling along the wall and the floor,” he told his sister. “Maybe we’ll find a key to these padlocked doors, or, I don’t know, a release for a secret passageway out of here. . . .”
    Jonah was grateful that Katherine didn’t say, That’s ridiculous or You think this is a fairy tale or something? You think we’re all going to end up happily ever after?
    Instead she muttered, “Okay.”
    In the absolute darkness Jonah couldn’t see where Katherine went. But he heard her pained, awkward footsteps moving toward the wall, and her fingers trailing against the despised wallpaper. Then the brushing sound stopped.
    “Jonah, I’ll feel around on the floor, but I can’t touch that wall,” Katherine said. “I keep seeing it in my mind the way it looked in the pictures on the computer. There are going to be huge chunks of this wall missing, where the bullets hit. . . .”
    Thanks a lot for putting that image in my head, Jonah thought. He lifted his own hand from the wall, then resolutely put it back, moving methodically side to side.
    “Katherine, it doesn’t have to happen that way,” Jonah said. “It hasn’t happened yet, so there’s still time—”
    “Jonah, you didn’t read what I read. The whole family’s going to be herded into this room, and then a bunch of guards are just going to start shooting them—nobody could survive that,” Katherine said. “It’s, like, hopeless.”
    Jonah hated the way just that one word made him feel like giving up. Especially with all this unrelenting darkness around him.
    “You had, what, five or ten minutes more than I did looking at that stuff on the computer?” he challenged Katherine. “That doesn’t make you an expert! Maybe there’s