He looked around the Big Room. The Fort seemed different with Lane gone, abandoned. The other time he had come in here without Lane, it had felt strange, but it had still been their Fort. Now he wasn’t sure whose it was. The structure was in the green belt by his house, but the materials had come from Lane’s father and they had done all the work in tandem. He walked slowly through the room like a stranger, touching objects which had once been familiar to him but from which he now felt impossibly distanced. Everything seemed weird, as though it had once been his but was his no longer.

He supposed this was what a house must feel like to people who got a divorce.

Every so often, he stopped in his tracks, unmoving, listening to hear if there were any sounds outside, but always there was nothing.

He walked into the HQ, looking down at the pile of magazines on the floor. Even the Playboys no longer seemed as though they belonged to him, although they did not seem as though they belonged to Lane either. They were caught in some timeless netherworld in-between, ownerless. He picked one up. The page opened to the spread of “Women in Uniform,” and he saw the naked body of the female postal carrier.

“Billy Albin.”

He stopped moving, holding his breath, trying not to make any sound. His heart was trip-hammering wildly.

“Billy Albin.”

The mailman was just outside The Fort. He had tracked him somehow and had found him. Billy was too terrified to move. He tried to exhale silently, unable to hold his breath any longer, but the noise sounded like a hurricane in the silence. Outside, the feet stopped moving.

“Billy.”

He did not move.

“Billy.”

Now the voice came from the other side, although he had heard no scuffling feet, no rustling leaves, no sound of any kind.

“Billy.”

The voice came again, a low insistent whispering. He wanted to scream, to cry out, but he dared not. The mailman obviously knew he was here, but Billy did not want to confirm his presence. Maybe if he pretended that he wasn’t here, if he just laid low and waited it out, the mailman would go away.

“Billy.”

No. He wasn’t going to go away.

Billy stood stock-still, only his mind moving, his brain trying desperately to think of something he could do. There was only one entrance to The Fort, no way to get out without the mailman seeing him. He and Lane had often talked about making an escape hatch, an emergency exit, building an escape tunnel under the dirt, but they never had. Now, he considered his choices. Or his choice. He had only one, really. If he could make it up to the roof, through the trapdoor, without the mailman seeing or hearing him—

“Billy.”

—he could jump and haul ass to safety.