He came back to bed. He patted her on the knee, lay on his back. She waited for his breathing to calm. She waited a long time after that, too, until a person wouldn’t even know he was lying there, he was sleeping so still.

She slid off the bed, inches at a time, rechecking that he was asleep. Once up, she went over to the bathroom, turned on the light, and pulled the door shut so that a line of light showed under the door so he might think, if he woke at all, that she was only in the bathroom. She went back to the middle of the room. He still hadn’t moved.

She tiptoed out of the room.

His office was two doors down the hallway. Luckily an outdoor perimeter light reached into the room, just enough to lighten the edges and shapes and show her around. A teletype machine stood on a side table, the trash can below it empty. His desk had no photos of family and certainly not of a girl. She picked up papers in the inbox and under a paperweight of the Eiffel Tower and peered at them, finding only boring regular reports and ledgers, all befitting a glorified head clerk. She slid open drawers but only found pens and unused notebooks and lighters and more packs of Camels. The desk had a leather pad topping it. She lifted it, a paper slid out. She raised it to her eyes.

It was a map. Tiptoeing, she walked it over near the window for light. It was a type of surveyor’s map of the island, probably one used to build this camp. It bore no official military source such as Corps of Engineers and yet it read TOP SECRET in one corner and OFFICIAL USE ONLY in another. She located the up mountain forest where they were, and southeast of there where the volcano rose, and east where the landscape was just fields of lava rock for miles and miles, so barren that the US military had used some of that land for target practice during the war. The only route traversing the island’s desolate interior, Saddle Road, was mostly gravel.

The map was marked with little triangles. These appeared just inland from their camp, but close. Each triangle had a few numbers and letters, drawn precisely. But these markings had the same dark purple color as the lines of the map—meaning this was a copy, a mimeograph.

She studied the map as long as she dared, concentrating only on the triangles closest to camp, and then she slid the thing back under the blotter.

***

She stepped back into the bedroom. A jolt traveled through her. The sliver of light was gone from the bathroom door. She looked to the bed. Empty.

“You’re not going to find a thing,” Selfer said. “Not in my office, you won’t.”