“Smart strategy,” said Patton, still pointing the gun at him. “Now who the hell are you? And what the hell are you.”

“You don’t want to know what I am,” said Nemo.

“Maybe not, but I need to know.”

“There are a lot of words for what I am,” said Nemo. “Hit man, hired gun. The point is I make my living by killing people.”

“But why . . .”

“Just let me tell you about Jasper. Let me tell you and then if you want to shoot me, fine.”

Patton nodded. She could feel a tear trickling down her cheek. Tears really pissed her off. Emotional weakness, her father called them, and she did not want to show weakness in front of Nemo, but she wasn’t about to move the gun to brush the tear away.

“Somebody hired me to kill Jasper. Seemed like a simple enough job, but when I got there, your friend was expecting me. At first I thought he wasn’t completely in his right mind because he seemed to think I was the angel of death. But he knew exactly what he was doing. He told me he didn’t want the guilt of his death to rest on me. And then he very calmly unwrapped a candy bar and started to eat it. I didn’t understand what he was doing, and I was getting a little impatient, when his face turned red and his lips swelled up and he started to gasp for breath.”

“Jasper was allergic to Brazil nuts,” said Patton, the tears coming more regularly now.

“I figured it was something like that. Anyway, that’s when he looked at me and said, ‘Find Patton. She has the key.’ And then he stopped breathing. So my job was done. I wasn’t hired to find a key; I was hired to eliminate Jasper Fleming and he was eliminated.”

“No thanks to you,” said Patton, sniffing.