on Mount Scaggs. They looked deceptively peaceful. Seeing the lush growth of trees in the ravines scoring the slopes, he found it hard to imagine the two mounts as menacing volcanoes, sleeping giants on the verge of spewing death and disaster in a burst of gaseous steam and molten rock.
Briskly, but not in a hurried panic, he rose out of Dorsett’s leather executive chair and came around the desk. At that instant, he halted abruptly, frozen in the exact center of the room as the double doors to the main interior of the house swung open, and Arthur Dorsett walked in.
He was carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a file of papers under an arm. He wore wrinkled slacks and what had once been white but was now a yellowed dress shirt with a bow tie. His mind seemed elsewhere. Perceiving another body in his study, he looked up, more curious than surprised. Seeing the intruder was in uniform, his first thought was that Pitt was a security guard. He opened his mouth to demand the reason for Pitt’s presence, then stiffened in petrified astonishment. His face became a pale mask molded by shock and bewilderment. The file fell to the floor, its papers sliding out like a fanned deck of cards. His hand dropped to his side, spilling the coffee on his slacks and the carpet.
“You’re dead!” he gasped.
“You don’t know how happy I am to prove you wrong,” Pitt commented, pleased to see that Dorsett wore a patch over one eye. “Come to think of it, you do look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“The storm ... there is no way you could have survived a raging sea.” A flicker of emotional repossession showed in the one black eye and slowly but surely grew. “How was it possible?”
“A lot of positive thinking and my Swiss army knife.” My God, this guy is big, Pitt thought, very glad he was the one pointing a gun.
“And Maeve ... is she dead?” He spoke haltingly as he studied the assault rifle in Pitt’s hands, the muzzle aimed at his heart.
“Just knowing that it causes you great annoyance and displeasure makes me happy to report she is alive and well and at this very moment about to make off with your grandsons.” Pitt stared back, green eyes locked with black. “Tell me, Dorsett. How do you justify murdering—your own daughter? Did one single woman who was simply trying to find herself as a person pose a threat to your assets? Or was it her sons you wanted, all to yourself?”
“It was essential the empire be carried on after my death by my direct descendants. Maeve refused to see it that way.”
“I have news for you. Your empire is about to come crashing down around your head.”
Dorsett failed to grasp Pitt’s meaning. “You intend to kill me?”
Pitt shook his head. “I’m not your executioner. The island volcanoes are going to erupt. A fitting end for you, Arthur, consumed by fiery lava.”
Dorsett smiled faintly as he regained control. “What sort of nonsense is that?”
“Too complicated to explain. I don’t know all the technicalities myself, but I have it on the best authority. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“You’re bloody insane.”
“0 ye of little faith.”
“If you’re going to shoot,” said Dorsett, cold anger glaring from his coal-black eye, “do it now, clean and quick.”
Pitt grinned impassively. Maeve and Giordino had yet to make an appearance. For the moment he needed Arthur Dorsett alive in case they had been captured by security guards. “Sorry, I haven’t the time. Now please turn around and go up the stairs to the bedrooms.”
“My grandchildren, you can’t have my grandchildren,” he muttered as if it was a divine statement.
“Correction, Maeve’s children.”
“You’ll never get past my security guards.”
“The two at the front gate are— what’s the word?— incapacitated.”
“Then you’ll have to murder me in cold blood, and I’ll wager everything I’ve got that you don’t have the guts for it.”
“Why is it people keep thinking I can’t stand the sight of blood?” Pitt touched his finger against the trigger of the assault rifle. “Get moving, Arthur, or I’ll shoot off your ears.”
“Go ahead, you yellow bastard,” Dorsett lashed out, pronouncing it as bahstud. “You already took one of my eyes.”
“You don’t get the picture, do you?” White-hot anger consumed Pitt at seeing Dorsett’s arrogant belligerence. He raised the rifle slightly and gently squeezed the trigger. The gun spat with a loud pop through the suppressor and a slice of Dorsett’s left ear sprayed the carpet. “Now, head for the stairs. Make a move I don’t like and you’ll get a bullet in the spine.”
There was no hint of pain in the bestial black eye. Dorsett smiled a menacing smile that sent an involuntary shiver through Pitt. Then slowly, he put a hand to his shattered ear and turned toward the door.
At that instant Boudicca walked into the study, majestically straight and handsomely proportioned in a form, fitting silk robe that stopped several centimeters above her knees, not recognizing Pitt in the guard’s uniform, and not realizing her father was in immediate danger. “What is it, Daddy? I thought I heard a gunshot—” Then she noticed the blood seeping through fingers pressed against his head. “You’re hurt!”
“We have unwelcome visitors, Daughter,” said Dorsett. Almost as if he had eyes in the back of his head, he knew that Pitt’s attention was focused briefly on Boudicca. Unwittingly, she didn’t fail him. As she rushed toward him to assess the damage, she caught sight of Pitt’s face out of the corner of one eye. For an instant her face reflected confusion, then abruptly her eyes widened in recognition.
“No ... no, it’s not possible.”
It was the distraction Dorsett had prepared for. In a violent twisting motion, he whirled around, one arm striking the gun barrel and knocking it aside.
Pitt instinctively pulled the trigger. A spray of bullets blasted into a painting of Charles Dorsett over a fireplace mantel. Physically weakened and dead on his feet from lack of sleep, Pitt’s reaction time was a fraction longer than it should have been. The strain and exhaustion of the past three weeks had taken their toll. He watched in what seemed slow motion as the assault rifle was torn from his hands and sent flying across the room before smashing through a window.
Dorsett was on Pitt like a maddened rhino. Pitt clutched him, struggling to stay on his feet. But the heavier man was swinging his huge fists like pile drivers, his thumbs gouging at Pitt’s eyes. Pitt twisted his head and kept his eyes in their sockets, but a fist caught him on the side of the head above one ear. Fireworks burst inside his brain, and he was swept by a wave of dizziness. Desperately, Pitt crouched and rolled to his side to escape the rain of blows.
He jumped in the opposite direction as Dorsett lunged at him. The old diamond miner had sent many a man to the hospital with only his bare hands, backed by arms and shoulders thick with muscle. During his rough-and tumble youth in the mines, he had prided himself on never having to resort to knives and guns. His bulk and power were all he required to put away anyone with the nerve to stand up to him. Even at an age when most men turned to flab, Dorsett retained a body as hard as granite.
Pitt shook his head to clear his sight. He felt like a battered prizefighter, desperately holding on to the ropes until the bell for the end of the round, struggling to bring his mind back on track. Few were the martial-arts experts who could put down Dorsett’s irresistible mass of sheer muscle. Pitt was beginning to think the only thing that would slow the diamond merchant was an elephant gun. If only Giordino would charge over the hill. At least he had a nine-millimeter automatic. Pitt’s mind raced on, adding up viable moves, dismissing the ones certain to end with broken bones. He dodged around the desk, stalling for time, facing Dorsett and forcing a smile that made his face ache.
Pitt had learned long ago after numerous barroom fights and riots that hands and feet were no match against chairs, beer mugs and whatever else was handy to crack skulls. He glanced around for the nearest weapon.
“What now, old man? Are you going to bite me with your rotting teeth?”
The insult had the desired effect. Dorsett roared insanely and lashed out with a foot at Pitt’s groin. His timing was off by a fractional instant, and his heel only grazed Pitt’s hip. Then he leaped across the desk. Pitt calmly took one step back, snatched up a metal desklamp and swung it with strength renewed by wrath and hatred.
Dorsett tried to lift an arm to ward off the blow, but he was a fraction slow. The lamp caught him on the wrist, snapping it before hurtling on against the shoulder and breaking the collarbone with a sharp crack. He
