The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers Book 2: A King's Ransom by Jude Watson Read Free Book Online

Look at Amy and Dan, scampering around like hamsters, just for him!
    The de Virga map was the piece needed for the next step. The thought of it made his palms itch. He could feel it dropping into his hands. Amy and Dan could do it. Given the right incentive, they could do just about anything.
    In an odd way, he believed in them. Certainly, he was rooting for them. They would collect the pieces and he would assemble them, and then …
    Eyes closed, he envisioned it all. What he would gain. Nothing less than everything.

    Cheyenne Wyoming shoved her phone back in her purse as she swung down the Trüllhofstrasse in Lucerne. Vesper One was making threats. In his usual style, of course, calling her
cara
, an endearment in Italian, even while he was threatening to kill her.
    It had taken her
years
to work herself up to Vesper Six. After Casper had totally botched the job in Zermatt, when he’d almost died trying to get the ring … well, she’d vaulted right ahead of him. Casper had been furious.
    And even
she
didn’t like to get on the bad side of her twin. The bad side was … extremely unpleasant. She rubbed her wrist absentmindedly. The fracture had required a small metal plate to repair the bone. Casper hadn’t liked discovering he was out and she was in.
    Just then a yellow BMW pulled over to the curb. “Hey, want a ride, fräulein?”
    She stopped and shook her head. “Are you crazy, Casper? What are you doing in that car? Surveillance is supposed to be
covert
. That means nobody is supposed to notice you.”
    Her brother smirked. “Spoken by the tuba player of the Wilmington Wowzabelles?”
    “Wasn’t I right? Didn’t the tuba totally draw them in?” She slid inside the car and had barely closed the door before Casper gunned the motor and took off. “Your timing couldn’t be worse. I lost the Cahills. The GPS is all wonky. Satellite problems — it keeps going in and out.”
    Savagely, Cheyenne ripped off her dark wig and took the pins out of her long blond hair. She shook it and it cascaded down past her shoulders. Then she tossed her glasses out the window and popped out the dark lenses. She tilted the mirror and drank in the sight of her own baby blue eyes. She was herself again. Immediately, she felt calmer.
    “I’m getting kind of sick of dancing to V-One’s tune,” she brooded. “And having V-Two breathing down our necks all the time, waiting for us to make a mistake.”
    “Word. And now you’ve played right into it. We might get dropped from the Council of Six.”
    Who’s
we,
bro?
Cheyenne wanted to say. I’m
the one in the Council. You don’t even have a number anymore.
    But she couldn’t say it. She still needed her brother.
    “Now it’s going to take us even more time to climb up the ladder,” Casper continued.
    She looked out the window as the picturesque streets of Lucerne slipped by. Streets with fancy stores with things in them that cost a lot. Things she wanted and deserved.
    A plan was forming in her mind. “It doesn’t have to take more time,” she said. “Not if we’re proactive.”
    A small smile began on Casper’s lips. “Oh, sister-friend. I know that tone. What are you thinking?”
    “If you want something, you take it,” Cheyenne said, repeating what the two siblings had told each other from the beginning of their lives in crime. Back when their parents robbed banks, pulled scams, dragged them all over the country. Cheyenne and Casper had added Internet scams to the family’s crimes, and they’d pulled in more than they’d ever dreamed. Soon they were known in the criminal underworld. And to the FBI and the police departments of various states. So when the Vespers came calling, Casper and Cheyenne were only too glad to ditch their parents (now serving twenty-five years to life) and join up with V-1. Now they weren’t just criminals — they were
master
criminals, linked into a global network.
    And she wasn’t going to give that up for anybody.
    “He thinks the