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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 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.
