“Listen, I appreciate the little reunion here,” said Nemo sharply, “but we have work to do, and from what Patton tells me it could take a while, so can we get going before those goons at the gate get bored of waiting for us?”

Ruthie was about to ask what he meant by “goons at the gate,” when Patton spoke up.

“OK, listen, Nemo. Up to this point I’ve let you run this operation because we required your particular expertise. But now it’s my show for a while, and we require Ruthie’s expertise. So stop being such a man and let me talk to my old friend for a minute. Because right now, she’s the only hope we’ve got of convincing those goons you’re talking about to back the hell off.”

Ruthie felt her breath go shallow once again. Patton wasn’t just standing up for her in front of this nattily dressed man, whoever he was. She wanted to talk to her. She was, apparently, in trouble and in a hurry, but still wanted to take a moment to . . .

“How the hell are you?” said Patton, pulling Ruthie into a tight embrace. Ruthie felt a warmth spreading through her body that she had almost forgotten existed. Patton didn’t just remember, she harbored, well, at least nostalgia if not something more.

“It’s really good to see you,” whispered Patton before giving Ruthie a light kiss on the cheek.

Nemo saw immediately what Patton was up to. He knew that different people needed to be handled in different ways and obviously Patton knew exactly how to handle this woman, this invaluable resource. Rather than lose his cool, he backed off, stayed quiet, and let Patton work her magic on Ruthie. For some reason he had expected a wrinkled old woman, but Ruthie Drinkwater looked about Patton’s age. Nemo had not asked that age, but he guessed it was around forty. Even in the dim light of the “Way Out” sign, he could see that Ruthie had tried to impress. Her shoulder-length auburn hair glistened in its perfection, she wore just a hint of eyeliner and lipstick, and her outfit was not the careless jumble Nemo expected from a math nerd who volunteered at a computer museum, but a crisp linen dress. A summer dress, thought Nemo. Not the sort of outfit one generally wore on a cool night in May.