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"A gunman in my room?" Pat uttered in a shocked whisper. "While I was taking a bath?"
"No," Pitt said patiently. "He entered only after you left for the Marquez house with me."
"But he could have walked right in and murdered me."
"Not hardly" Pitt squeezed her hand. "Trust me when I say there was little danger. Didn't you notice the place was a little crowded? The sheriff arranged for a small throng of locals to roam the halls and dining rooms of the bed-and-breakfast, acting like conventioneers. It would have been awkward for a stalking killer to take his victim in a crowd. When it was advertised that you and I both were coming to the Marquezes' for dinner, the killers split the operation. One volunteered to send us all to the cemetery during dinner, while the other tossed your room for your notebook and camera."
"He doesn't look like anyone I know with the sheriff's department," said Marquez, pointing to the muscular intruder.
Pitt turned and placed his arm around the shoulders of the stranger who had just subdued the assassin.
"May I present my oldest and dearest friend, Albert Giordino. Al is my assistant projects director with NUMA."
Marquez and Pat stood silently, uncertain of how to act. They studied Al with the intent of a bacterial researcher peering through a microscope at a specimen. Giordino simply released his grip on the intruder's foot, stepped forward, and shook their hands. "A pleasure to meet you both. I'm happy to have been of service."
"Who got shot?" Pitt queried.
"This guy had reactions you can't believe," said Giordino.
"Oh, yes, I can."
"He must have been psychic. He snapped off a shot in my direction the same instant I squeezed my own trigger." Giordino pointed to a slight tear along the hip of his jumpsuit. "His bullet barely bruised my skin. Mine took him in the right lung."
"You were lucky."
"Oh, I don't know," Giordino said loftily. "I aimed, he didn't."
"Is he still alive?"
"I should think so. But he won't be entering a marathon anytime soon."
Pitt leaned down and pulled the ski mask from the killer's head.
Pat gasped in horror-- understandable, considering the circumstance, Pitt thought wryly. She still found it impossible to accept everything that had happened to her since stepping off the plane at the Telluride airport.
"Oh, dear God!" Her voice held a mixture of shock and distress. "It's Dr. Ambrose!"
"No, dear lady" Pitt said softly. "That is not Dr. Thomas Ambrose. As I told you before, the real Ambrose is probably dead. This lowlife probably took on the job of murdering you and me and Luis because only he could identify us with any certainty."
The truth of Pitt's words struck her with numbing cruelty. She knelt down and looked into the open eyes of the killer and
demanded, "Why did you have to murder Dr. Ambrose?"
There was no flicker of emotion in the killer's eyes. The only indication of injury was the blood trickling from his mouth, a sure sign of a lung wound. "Not murdered, executed," he whispered. "He was a threat and had to die, just as you must all die."
"You have the guts to justify your actions," Pitt said, with an icy edge to his voice.
"I justify nothing. Duty to the New Destiny demands no justification."
"Who and what is the New Destiny?"
"The Fourth Empire, but you'll be dead before you see it" There was no hate, no arrogance in the killer's tone, just a simple statement of supposed fact. The killer spoke with a trace of a European accent.
"The chamber, the black skull, what is their significance?"
"A message from the past." For the first time, there was a hint of a smile. "The world's greatest secret.
Which is all you'll ever know."
