Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

ONCE THE BLUEPRINTS and notebooks plans were reduced to ashes, I doused the fire. Kira and I loaded everything we'd taken from the cave onto the dinghy. Probably about thirty pounds of stuff. A few pistols, some memorabilia, and, of course, my precious cutlass, which Kira wanted nothing more to do with.

We shoved off and paddled back to the Albatross . Kira was quiet the whole way. I didn't push her.

As soon as we got aboard, we carried our booty down the cabin stairs and stashed it in the hold under the cabin floor. Safe and secure.

Back on deck, I pulled anchor and helped Kira unfurl the sails. The wind was blowing from the north. The sheets filled right away. Kira took the wheel and maneuvered us out of the shallows.

As soon as we were underway, I went back down into the cabin and pulled the envelope from my pocket. I sat down on one of the berths and tore it open. There was a single page inside—thick bond paper with my ancestor's handwriting in black pen.

It was dated June 15, 1939.

To anyone who has inherited the Savage name—

If you are reading this, you've managed to get past all barriers to uncover my most secret plans. By now, you also know about John Sunlight, and how important it was to hide this work from him.

Sunlight and I were two sides of the same coin. I believe that any small turn of fate could have flipped either of us in the other direction. Good to bad. Bad to good. Or maybe we both possessed a measure of each.

For the sake of the world, I pray that the good is stronger in you—and that Sunlight and his evil are gone forever.

Clark Savage, Jr.

That was it. No secret codes. No magic formulas. I wondered what Doc Savage would think if he knew that John Sunlight's great-granddaughter had led me to his hidden cave—and that she was the woman I loved. I doubted that he would have seen that twist coming.

I folded the letter and tucked it into a corner of the hold. Then I went back up on deck. The Albatross was heeling with the wind. I could tell from the sun that we were headed farther south, the opposite direction from home. Was Kira tacking? Or maybe heading to port for supplies?

I walked back along the starboard rail to the cockpit. Kira had two hands on the wheel and her eyes on the horizon. We were moving past the western shore of Andros, pointed toward the Caribbean and the northern coast of South America.

"So when are we heading back north?" I asked.

I expected her to say "wrong question." But this time she actually gave me an answer.

It was one word.

"Never."

Not a joke or her usual sass. She was serious.

I let it sink in for a few seconds.

"Wait," I said. "We're running away? I thought we had more battles to fight together, you and me. Savage and Sunlight against the world, remember?"

Kira stared straight ahead as she gripped the wheel. "I've been fighting my whole life," she said, "since I was a little girl. You were my way out—my way of putting the past in the past. Today was the last of it."

Kira pulled me toward her with one arm and kissed me hard. Then she pulled back and looked me in the eye. "I'm done with fighting," she said. "And you're all the home I need."

Something had changed in her. I could see it. Until this moment, I'd been the reluctant hero, resisting every step of the way. I always saw Kira as hard-core, somebody who would never give up.

I actually felt a huge release inside. Maybe we were finally on the same page. Maybe we could both leave the bad stuff behind. Maybe, like my great-grandfather hoped, the good would finally win out.

I still wanted to know where we were going.

But that could wait until tomorrow.