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CHAPTER 14

ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES later, we were sitting on the narrow beach below the cave entrance. We’d put the cutlass and a bunch of other items together in a musty tarp and brought them out to take back with us. Plenty of room in the hold of the Albatross .

But first things first.

I broke off some dry branches and dug a pit for a small fire. I lit the kindling and waited for the wood to catch. When the flames got high enough, I took my ancestor’s plans for mass destruction and tossed them into the blaze, starting with the blueprints.

Nobody would ever see them again.

As the paper crackled, black smoke wafted out of the pit. For some reason, it seemed to head in Kira’s direction. She didn’t say anything—she just stood up and headed down the beach. About twenty yards away, she stopped and stared out over the water.

I poked the fire and wondered what she was thinking. The plans in the flames belonged to my family, but they had just as much to do with hers. Doc Savage had been afraid that his deadly ideas might fall into John Sunlight’s hands. He was worried that Sunlight would use them to rule the world, or destroy it. I wondered if Kira felt guilt by association with her ancestor—like I sometimes did with mine.

Once the flames got high enough, I tossed the notebooks into the fire, one after the other. As I tossed the last one in, an envelope dropped out from between the pages. I caught a glimpse of lettering on the outside as it fell into the fire. I grabbed the envelope just as the edges started to scorch.

By now, I knew the original Doc’s handwriting when I saw it. Bold block letters. I glanced down the beach at Kira. She was still gazing out to sea.

I looked at the envelope.

“To my progeny,” it said, “if any survive.”

I stuck it in my pocket and watched everything else burn.