“Don’t you come near me,” said Patton in a calm but loud voice. “I’ve got a Beretta M9 with a full magazine and the safety is off. I know what I’m doing.”

“I’m sure you do,” said Nemo, taking a step into the hallway toward the open door the woman’s voice was coming from. “I don’t want to get into a shoot-out; I just want to talk to you.”

Patton waited another beat. “Are you armed?”

“Yes,” said Nemo, “but I have my safety on.” He didn’t.

“Judging from your sniper fire, I’d say you’re ex-military.”

“It wasn’t my fire,” said Nemo. “And I’m not ex-military. But I’m pretty sure your friend out there was.”

“Stop calling him my friend,” said Patton. “Whether it was you or someone else, it wasn’t any fucking friend of mine.”

“Just an expression,” said Nemo. Flattened against the wall of the corridor, he peered through the open door into a small bedroom. Above the bed was a large framed photograph of rhododendron on the Blue Ridge Parkway. In the glass, Nemo could just make out the reflection of a woman sitting in a closet across the room, pointing a gun at the door he had been about to enter.

“That’s a nice firing position you’ve got there,” said Nemo. “Maybe I should ask if you are ex-military.”

Patton looked at the picture above her bed and saw the man’s reflection. “If you can see me, I can see you.” The scruffy face Patton saw reflected in the glass did not belong to any of the three trained killers most likely to send shots into her kitchen on a Sunday morning. But if this guy wasn’t the shooter from outside, one of those three men might be out there right now.

“So this sniper out there,” said Patton. “This sniper who is not my friend. You just happened along and neutralized him?”

“Something like that. You want to put the gun down?”

“I don’t see you putting yours down.”

“Fine,” said Nemo. “We’ll talk like this. Do you know a man named Jasper Fleming?”

“You claim you just killed a man who was trying to kill me, and you want to know about Jasper Fleming?”

“I never said I killed him. You think I want Tommy Linton coming across an unidentified body and asking a bunch of questions?”

“How do you know Tommy Linton?” asked Patton.

“It’s a small town, and he’s the sheriff,” said Nemo.

“But you don’t live here,” said Patton.

“Nevertheless.”

“If you didn’t kill the sniper, what did you . . .”

“Tranquilizer dart,” said Nemo. “And then I locked him in your shed. Now about Jasper Fleming.”

“Why the hell do you just happen to be wandering my property with a tranquilizer gun on a Sunday morning? And how do I know you’re not the shooter?”