Page 14 of Murder Island

I reached into the bottom of the last chest and felt something hard and flat inside a piece of burlap. I pulled it out and unwrapped it.

My pulse rate shot up.

Inside the fabric was a cutlass with a curved steel blade, about two feet long. It looked hundreds of years old, maybe a thousand.

I turned it back and forth in my hand. “Look at this thing!”

The blade was polished like a mirror. But that wasn’t the most impressive part. The pommel and hand guard were encrusted with jewels. Sapphires. Emeralds. Rubies. Diamonds. Even in the dim light, the stones glowed and glittered.

“This is worth a fortune!” I said.

“Maybe that’s why he stashed it here,” said Kira. “Like cash under the mattress.” She reached over just as I flicked the blade up. It caught the soft pad just below her thumb.

“Jesus! Sorry!” I dropped the cutlass and reached for Kira’s hand. A small trickle of blood oozed out. She jerked away and pressed her other palm against the cut. “Not your fault,” she said. “I got careless.”

“I can’t believe it held an edge this long.”

“Better than a Ginsu knife.”

I suddenly felt very tired. It had been a long day. I craved fresh air. I looked toward the entrance. “I think it’s time to get out of here.”

“Good idea,” said Kira.

I grabbed the cutlass.

“Wrap that thing up,” she said. “It’s dangerous.”

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 theAlbatross.

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.

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 theAlbatross. 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.