Nemo was forty-seven, though the few people with whom he came face-to-face might easily be forgiven for thinking him in his sixties. They had not been easy years. While he had a ragged scar on his left forearm, a reminder of a job that had almost gone wrong, he wore his worst scarring on the inside, where it ached more than the freshest wound. If asked to describe him, even a careful observer would be unsure about his race—was he a white man who had lived his life outdoors? Italian or Middle Eastern? Perhaps mixed race? People tended to see what they expected. For this job he sported unkempt hair, a ragged growth of beard, worn jeans, rugged work boots, and a black T-shirt covered with an unbuttoned plaid flannel. In Alta Vista, he may as well have been invisible, and that was the point. Wherever he went, Nemo always remained one thing to those he passed in the streets—forgettable. Certainly no one who glanced at him as he walked by, hands in his pockets and eyes on the sidewalk, would guess that his net worth was just over $5 million, most of it in a Swiss bank account.

Nemo had settled on early Sunday morning for what he expected to be the easiest job of his career. He had long ago mastered the art of sleeping when the situation required it, so he went to bed in the midafternoon and woke up deep in the night. He made instant coffee with water warmed on the engine block of the car and ate some Cheerios from the box. He sat in the car for two hours, listening to gospel music on a radio station from Boone through a cloud of static, eyes closed, rehearsing each move of the job. At 6:00 a.m. he threw the car into gear and headed toward Lone Pine Road. If there were no surprises, he thought, he would be out of Alta Vista in less than an hour. But there had been surprises and now he was going to end up leaving flour footprints all over this damn house.

“You come one step closer and I’ll fucking waste you!” yelled Patton.

“If you’re talking to the guy who just put three rounds in your house I don’t blame you,” said Nemo. “But that’s not me.”

Patton did not recognize this voice, that was the first piece of good news. She knew three people who might want to ruin her morning baking with a little gunfire and this gravelly baritone didn’t belong to any of them. The sound of the mixer stopped, and the house fell silent for a second.

“Then who the hell are you?” said Patton.

“I’m the guy who neutralized your friend out there,” said Nemo. “I’m coming back.”