It took another hour to reach it. They took shelter in what once were stables and found the water left for them. Mary opened the cardboard box. She gave Will an apple from it and took the peach. She opened the bag of nuts and the container of cherries. She placed these between them. After he finished the fruit, he left to piss, and she found a private fortress under what had been a watchtower. As she squatted, she held her weapon with both hands. When she returned, Will’s head was on his ruck, his legs long. She took a handful of cashews and leaned against the half wall overlooking the courtyard.

The silence between them made certain they’d not miss any sound. Problems could come infinitesimally for them. In the time it took to say your sentence, your ear got compromised, because it was hearing your own voice more than any other noise. Like the deaf, they had shapes to trace in one another’s palms. You couldn’t do conventional sign language, because in the dark it was too easy to miss a motion made in the air.

She wondered if his eyes were open. She could tell he wasn’t out yet. She already knew, from when they mocked this up at Bragg, and later near Nellis, the sounds he made when sleeping. They’d done twenty days straight outside at night, just them, in steam-room Carolina weather, then repeated it again in stropping desert. Now, here, she wanted to pull out one of the letters from Frank she’d brought. She didn’t want Holmes to see her do it.

As close proximity as they had been in during training, all she knew of him came from direct observation alone. He told no stories about his past. He didn’t mention a wife, though she’d heard from her Amazon rival that there’d been one. Mary did as Will did, but, given she believed he knew everything about her, she tried to best him at withholding even the most trivial comment. On occasion, that made him smile.

She thought about walking in the courtyard for more direct light from the moon. She could get out of his eyesight that way. He might think she needed a shit and leave her be. The letters were in her vest, which was on the ground. She stooped and felt in the pocket. She took out two of them. She had a total of six. She’d wished she could have stowed more. She’d chucked the envelopes to make everything more compact. Before she stood up, she pushed the pages inside her shirt.

She went to the caravan entryway for camels, now disintegrating. The brickwork was bad, crumbly lattice. But it provided enough cover and enough of the moon. She slid down so her back was against the inner wall.