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CHAPTER 10

I FELT SICK and unsettled for a while. But I got over it. I had to save the boat. I had to protect Kira. I had no choice, right? That’s what I told myself.

Sometimes you have to fight evil with evil.

At the moment, I was feeling like a bit of a pirate myself, or at least a real sailor. A storm had opened up, and I was clinging to the top of the foremast. Kira had sent me up to untangle a fouled line on the rigging. Rain was pouring down, and a strong wind was rocking the boat back and forth. It was blowing so hard it took my breath away.

I was fifty feet above the deck. I felt like I was being whipped on the tip of an antenna.

Once I freed the line, I braced myself on a foothold and held on for dear life. Below me, the sea was churning with whitecaps. Something off the bow caught my eye. I squinted through a gap in the flapping sails and looked again.

There! In the distance. A dim line of green.

I was so excited that my foot slipped off the support. For a few seconds, I was dangling by my arms in midair. My heart was pounding. I wrapped my legs around the mast and half shimmied, half slid all the way down.

As soon as my feet hit the deck, I held on to the railing and worked my way back to the cockpit. Kira was at the wheel, trying to hold a steady course against the wind. Her red windbreaker was whipping around her shoulders like a cape. Her hair was matted and dripping.

“I saw an island!” I shouted. “Straight ahead!”

Kira didn’t look the least bit surprised. “Good!” she shouted back. “Right where it should be!”

“What is it? Where are we?”

Kira cranked the wheel hard as another swell hit. “We’re in the Bahamas,” she yelled. “You just sighted Andros Island!” She looked over at me. “Heard of it?”

I grabbed the cockpit console as the boat pitched and rolled. I couldn’t believe this is where we’d been headed the whole time.

Yes. I’d heard of Andros Island.

It’s where my ancestor Doc Savage was born.

In a small sailboat. In the middle of a storm.