The 39 Clues: Unstoppable: Nowhere to Run by Jude Watson

you
slipping.
I had you, and then I couldn’t hold on. I couldn’t hold on! I thought you were dead!”
    “You
caught
me!” Amy cried. “You saved my life! And I’m here, Dan. I’m right here because of
you
.”
    “I’m the reason we had to run away,” he said. “I was so stupid! I got us into this mess. I’m the reason Pierce has the serum. Now he’s trying to kill us, and we probably have the FBI looking for us, too. I just messed up everywhere, big-time. I never get it right.”
    “You get it right plenty of the time,” Amy said. “Maybe not
all
the time. But nobody does. Especially not me.”
    “I’ll follow this through,” Dan said. “I have to — I started it. We’ll stop J. Rutherford Pierce together. But after that, I’m out.”
    “What do you mean, out?” Amy asked, startled.
    Dan took a breath. “I don’t want you to think this is one of my crazy impulsive decisions. I mean it. I don’t want to be a Cahill anymore.”
    “You can’t just . . . resign!”
    “Fiske did. He left. He renounced the family. He disappeared, traveled all over the world. . . .”
    “Fiske was an
adult
when he did that! You’re only thirteen!” Amy shook her head. “Look, Dan. We’ve both felt like quitting plenty of times — we’ve scraped the very bottom. And we’ve always found a way to go on.”
    Dan’s mouth was twisted with the effort not to cry. “This is
different
!”
    “It’s always different,” Amy said soothingly. “But then we —”
    “NO!” Dan shouted the word, and Amy’s mouth snapped shut.
    “No,” he said, more quietly, and that stillness frightened her more than his outburst. “I haven’t figured it all out yet. But I’ve been through enough. I’ve
done
enough to know this: I don’t want to be a Cahill anymore. I don’t want to live in Attleboro. I don’t want any of it.”
    Amy felt his words like a knife in her heart. “You want to . . . leave me?”
    “Of course not!” Dan slammed his hand against his leg in frustration. “I just . . . can’t . . . live like this anymore. Maybe I can live with Nellie somewhere . . . for a while. Maybe Fiske will take off again and I can go with him. Not forever. You can keep training, and keep the Cahill network going, and keep staying alert for the next bad guy to come along. Because there’ll always
be
another one. But I don’t want to. I . . .
can’t
!” The word was torn out of his throat. She saw his shoulders shaking. He held his head in both hands. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he whispered. “To have the serum
in your head
.”
    Amy opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Of course she didn’t know. Couldn’t know. What was she supposed to do? Yell at Dan? Plead with him? Tell him that he was abandoning her? When obviously this was the hardest decision he’d ever made?
    Wasn’t this what she wanted for him? Safety? A little bit of normal? No matter how much it cost her. No matter how much it hurt.
    “Okay,” she said. “We’ll work it out. I won’t stand in your way.”
    “You’ll still be my sister. That won’t change.”
    “I know.”
    They were silent for a while, listening to the wind in the grass. Amy felt turned inside out by Dan’s pain. Her brother looked so young at that moment, standing in the grass barefoot, with his messy bed head. But his eyes looked older. Older than a thirteen-year-old’s should look.
    If he had to let go of her to have a normal life, the right thing, the brave thing, would be to let him go. But could she?
    Clouds had covered the sun, and the inlet was now iron gray with flecks of white. Amy shivered.
    If she let Dan go, she’d be alone.

    After a hasty breakfast, they wheeled the bicycles out of the garage and headed for the lane.
    “Left, or right?” Amy asked.
    “I think I remember seeing the headlights turn right last night,” Dan said.
    “And it’s downhill,” Amy said. “Let’s try it.”
    They pedaled for some minutes in silence. Soon they