"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 coalblack 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.