I ran between two houses, cut right, then down between another two, but given their skeletal nature, they didn’t provide much cover. I didn’t dare look back to see whether Rick was gaining on me, or whether he was there at all. Given the condition of the ground, and the limited light, taking my eyes off the path ahead of me for even a fraction of a second ran the risk of sending me flying.

But I couldn’t hear him. The sound of my own panting, the hammering of my own heart in my chest, and my feet hitting the ground drowned out most other noises.

I’d cut back and forth between so many houses I’d lost my bearings. I wasn’t sure which direction my car was in. So I leapt up into another house, aiming to cut through it on the diagonal, and once my feet were firmly planted on the plywood I took a moment to look back and could just make out a shadowy figure running across the site, about two houses back. He was slowing down, his head darting from side to side. Rick had momentarily lost me.

“Greenway!” he shouted. “I need some help out here!”

The house I’d slipped into was further along. Three of the outside walls had been packed with insulation, with clear plastic sheeting affixed over that. I crept from one room to another on the first floor, spotted a ladder up to the second, and scaled it as noiselessly as possible. The upstairs was still a see-through affair, at least between the rooms, and there was an opening in the ceiling where a skylight was planned. There was a plaster- and paint-stained stepladder up there, and I quietly moved it close to the opening, mounted the steps high enough that my shoulders were above the roofline, and hauled myself up.

Even in the night, it was dizzying up there. I moved a couple of feet away from the skylight opening and took a seat near the peak. The slope on the skylight side was gradual, but at the peak, the other half of the roof dropped away sharply, the slope so steep you couldn’t walk on it. I looked out on the sea of roofs bathed in soft moonlight. When I was a kid and played hide-and-seek with my buddies, I always went up trees, scaling as far as I could. It was my experience that people weren’t inclined to look up. They’d stand right under you, looking left and right, forward and backward, but they’d never bother to crane their necks skyward. I was hoping things hadn’t changed that much since I was ten.