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 bellowed like a stricken animal and came after Pitt again with a look of black malevolence heightened by pain and pure savagery. He threw a vicious punch at Pitt’s head.
Pitt ducked and jammed the base of the lamp downward. It connected somewhere below Dorsett’s knee on the shin, but the momentum of the flying leg knocked the lamp from Pitt’s hand. There was a clunk on the carpet. Now Dorsett was coming back at him almost as if he were completely uninjured. The veins were throbbing on the sides of his neck, the eye blazed and there were dribbles of saliva at the ends of his cracked, gasping mouth. He actually seemed to be laughing. He had to be mad. He mumbled something incoherent and leaped toward Pitt.
Dorsett never reached his victim. His right leg collapsed, and he crashed to the floor on his back. Pitt’s swing of the lamp base had broken his shinbone. This time Pitt reacted like a cat. With a lightning move, he sprang onto the desk, tensed and jumped.
Together, Pitt’s feet hurtled downward, ramming soles and heels into Dorsett’s exposed neck. The malignant face, single eye gleaming black, yellowed teeth bared, seemed to stretch in shock. A huge hand groped the empty air. Arms and legs lashed out blindly. An agonized animal sound burst from his throat, a horrible gurgling sound that came through his crushed windpipe. Then Dorsett’s body collapsed as all life faded away and the sadistic light in his eye blinked out.
Pitt somehow managed to remain standing, panting through clenched teeth. He stared at Boudicca, who strangely had made no move to help her father. She looked down at the dead body on the carpet with the uncaring but fascinated expression of a witness at a fatal traffic accident.
“You killed him,” she said finally in a normal tone of voice.
“Few men deserved to die more,” Pitt said, catching his breath while massaging a growing knot on his head.
Boudicca turned her attention away from her dead father as though he didn’t exist. “I should thank you, Mr. Pitt, for handing me Dorsett Consolidated Mining Limited on a silver platter.”
“I’m touched by your sorrow.”
She smiled boredly. “You did me a favor.”
“To the adoring daughter go the spoils. What about Maeve and Deirdre? They’re each entitled to a third of the business.”
“Deirdre will receive her share,” Boudicca said matter-of-factly. “Maeve, if she is still alive, will get nothing. Daddy had already cut her out of the business.”
“And the twins?”
She shrugged. “Little boys have accidents every day.”
“I guess it isn’t in you to be a loving aunt.”
Pitt went taut from the bleak prospects. In a few minutes the eruption would occur. He wondered whether he had the strength left to fight another Dorsett. He remembered his surprise when Boudicca had lifted and crushed his body against the wall on her yacht at Kunghit Island. His biceps still ached from the memory of her grip. According to Sandecker, the acoustic wave would strike the island in minutes, followed by the eruption of the volcanoes. If he had to die, he might as well go out fighting. Somehow being beaten to pulp by a woman didn’t seem as frightening as being cremated by molten lava. What of Maeve and her boys? He could not bring himself to believe harm had come to them, not with Giordino present. They had to be warned of the coming cataclysm if there was still any chance they could escape the island alive.
Deep inside him he knew he was no match for Boudicca, but he had to act while he had the slight advantage of surprise. The thought was still in his mind when he sprinted forward, head down, across the room, crashing shoulder first into Boudicca’s stomach. Boudicca was caught off guard, but it made little difference, almost no difference at all. She took the full force of the blow, grunted from the sudden shock, and although she reeled back a few steps, she remained standing. Before Pitt could recover his own balance, she clutched him with both arms under his chest, swung around in a half circle and threw him against a bookcase, his back shattering the glass doors. Incredibly, he managed somehow to remain erect on wobbly legs instead of crashing to the floor.