She waited a bit, put her socks back on, and turned to the domed prayer chamber. A few prostrated solitaries were there, but none paid her any attention. It was as if the place were deserted.

She went to an outer circle of the chamber and went to the mat herself before Allah, His name be praised, and she praised it aggressively. No watcher, if there were any, could doubt her ardency. She prayed hard, believing if her goals were not the goals of her coreligionists, they were still the goals that the true Allah would find virtuous. When she had been there for some minutes, she felt safe, under His protection.

She rose and made as if she was headed for the door but diverted to the women’s restroom instead, went in, washed, calmed herself, again absorbed the silence of the place, listening for signs of habitation but heard none. She exited the room, but instead of turning left, to the door, to escape, she turned right and came to a corridor. It was empty.

She turned down it and made her way tentatively as if lost. She peeked in each door, finding an office of some sort, nothing of any ramification. Finally, she came to a stairwell.

Don’t do this, Janet, she told herself. Don’t.

But she did it anyway.

Courageous or not, she learned nothing on the second floor. It was just another office corridor, with doors along each side, from where the imam ran his enterprise, made plans to visit the sick and the lame, gave comfort, supervised goods for the bake sale, coached his basketball team, and raised money, much as any other clergyman did in any other house of worship in America. She turned, started back down the hall, when a flash of movement jerked her out of serenity, and, in a second, she realized that she was confronting a man with a strange package in his hand.

It was a pizza.

“Mogdushani?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Nobody up here now. Maybe downstairs.”

“Thanks, lady,” he said.

He was young and black, and he turned and bounded down the steps. Someone working late wanted a pizza, the universal snack. Yet . . . it did seem odd. Why would someone in a mosque order a pizza, especially long after the hours of administration. Who but her would be here so late?

She followed her nose. Tomato, cheese. Terrorists? Juba the Sniper? To the main floor, then a quick look in the stairwell, darting down it just to make sure, then a quick turn, another corridor—nothing—another turn and—

“May I help you, sister?”

The man was Arabic, dressed casually.

“I just got confused,” she said. “I’m just trying to find the way out.”

“This way. I’ll show you.”

“Praise be His name.”

“Praise be.”

He led her back to the upstairs, where they ran into the pizza man.

“Hey, thanks,” he said again, and departed.