From the roof I had a chance to get my bearings. I could see the three cars to the north, which meant that my own car was over to the west, not that far from where I was now. And now that I wasn’t on the run, I could listen more carefully for my hunters. Not that Rick was that hard to hear.

“That fucker! We’re gonna find you, you fucker!”

Greenway and Carpington were navigating their way across the terrain with a lot more care. They were, after all, wearing expensive suits and didn’t want to stumble. “Rick! Where are you?”

“Over here!” he shouted. He was in front of the house next to the one I was perched atop.

Greenway and Carpington caught up to him. The councilman said, “We should just get out of here. Even if you could find him, what are you gonna do? You can’t deal with everyone the way you did with Spender.”

Neither Rick nor Greenway answered. But after a moment, I did hear Rick say, “I lost him right around here. Let’s check in here.”

As they approached the house under me, they slipped from my range of vision. They were down on the first floor, shuffling about. They’d become very quiet, as though one of them had put his index finger to his lips. I peered into the skylight hole, but there wasn’t enough light down there to make anything out. But I thought I could hear someone scaling the ladder to the second floor. If it was anyone, it would be Rick.

I moved away from the opening, trying to will myself to become weightless. The roof hadn’t been shingled yet, so my knees and feet didn’t make scuffing noises against the surface. Inside, it sounded as though Rick had made it to the second floor.

He would see the stepladder under the opening. Would he think it had been left that way by the workers? I didn’t think he would.

I slipped one leg over the peak, down the steep side. I was straddled across it now, like I was riding a horse. Carefully, I pulled the other leg over, gripping the peak with my hands. Slowly I let my body slide down the steep slope, an inch at a time.

Inside, I heard Rick mount the stepladder. Once he was to the second step from the top, his head would be above the surface of the roofline. I hoped the moonlight wasn’t bright enough for him to see my eight fingers that gripped the peak and kept me from plummeting down the other side, past the edge of the roof, and then two stories to the dirt below.