I flipped onto my stomach, but this didn’t make me any more sleepy. I began counting sheep, but that made me think about wool, which made me wonder if I should learn how to knit, which reminded me of a particularly unpleasant elementary school crafts project involving yarn and sticks. Soon I caught myself mentally giving my former art teacher a piece of my mind, which left me more revved up than I had been before I started with the sheep.

I flipped back onto my back. Maybe it would help if I could get Peter to stop snoring.

I tapped him gently on the shoulder. “Stop snoring,” I said politely.

He grunted and continued to snore.

I tapped him again, harder, and repeated my request, albeit less politely.

This time he didn’t even grunt, but the snoring continued.

I had resorted to a childhood game-picking shapes out of the shadows the light cast on the opposite wall-when I realized that not only were the shadows moving, the light was changing color. Red and blue alternated with the yellow.

I heard footsteps, and then the lights were temporarily blocked out by moving figures on the front walk.

I sat up in bed.

It looked like we had company.

And it was the sort that came accompanied by flashing red-and-blue lights.

I probably should have panicked, but I was getting a bit jaded. The entire fugitive-from-justice thing was losing what limited novelty value it had once had.

I sighed, pulled my sweater on over Frankie’s pajamas, and stuffed my bare feet into my shoes. It took a few concerted shoves to rouse Peter from his Iron City-induced coma, but once up he moved quickly. In our haste, he forgot about his cap. I didn’t, however. Under the cover of darkness, I slipped it discreetly into the folds of the sofa bed as we trundled it back up.

There was a glint of light on metal on the stairway, and I gasped. Perhaps I was more scared than I realized.

But it was only Frankie. “Follow me,” she whispered, seemingly unaware of the way in which the red and blue of the police flashers bounced off the jewelry studding her face. At least I had one question answered: apparently she did not remove the various rings and studs when she went to sleep.

There were heavy footsteps above us and the sound of Frank’s booming voice. “What car?” he was asking. “Oh, the one parked on the street? It’s not mine, but I sure wish it was.” Even from a distance his tone sounded forced; I might have finally found someone who lied even less well than I did.

I hoped that the car had attracted interest simply because of the make, model, and location and not because they’d somehow connected its plates to Luisa and then to me. But then I heard another voice and the phrase “murder suspect.” It looked like we were going to have to abandon Luisa’s car for the time being.

Frankie guided us quickly through an adjacent utility room where a clothesline caught Peter square in the throat.

“Ooof,” he wheezed, belatedly ducking his head.

The bolt on the cellar door groaned as Frankie undid it, and the squeal of the hinges sounded like an airhorn in the still night. A dog barked in the yard next door.

“Come on,” Frankie urged under her breath as we climbed a set of concrete stairs. And then she took off across the grass.

Frank hadn’t mentioned anything about Frankie being the star of her school track team, but maybe he had been too busy talking up her computer skills. I ran after her at a sprint, and Peter brought up the rear. We reached a chain-link fence, which Frankie scaled with practiced ease. Peter hoisted me up before clambering over it himself.

We were now in the yard of the home directly behind Frank’s. “This way,” whispered Frankie, hanging a sharp left.

Her pace didn’t slow as we scrambled after her, across one yard and then another, skirting the occasional above-ground pool and tarpaulin-covered grill and leaving a trail of barking and yipping dogs in our wake. I caught a brief glimpse of a white poodle throwing itself against a picture window in an agitated frenzy, frustrated by its inability to give chase as we ran past.

Each backyard gave way to a new one in a seemingly endless chain, and my breath was ragged by the time we vaulted a final hedge and hit sidewalk. Frankie drew up short, and I nearly collided with her.

“Where are we going?” Peter asked, skidding to a stop behind me. I was breathing too hard to talk. I’d forgotten just how much I hated suburbia.

“Get down!” said Frankie, yanking my arm. We dived back behind the hedge we’d just vaulted. A second later a police cruiser glided slowly by. Through the leaves, I could make out the faces of the men inside, carefully surveying the quiet street. I willed the car to pass.

Instead, the car drew to a full stop. The night was so quiet that I could hear the sound of a window being lowered. Suddenly, a bright spear of light pierced the ground in front of me.

I held my breath, and I could sense Peter and Frankie holding theirs, too, as the officer panned the flashlight beam over the hedge and assorted other flora lining the sidewalk.

Only a few seconds must have passed, but it felt like hours before the beam was shut off. I could hear the window being raised again, and the car’s tires rolling down the street.

We breathed a collective sigh of relief and picked ourselves up from the ground, brushing at the leaves and twigs clinging to our clothing.

Then there was a sudden click, and a blinding light.

“Where do you think you’re going?” a strange voice asked.

I was at a loss for words.

So I screamed instead.

I t was an impressive scream-I’d been getting a lot of practice, after all-but it was met with a cackle of laughter.

Frankie put her hands on her hips.

“Not funny,” she said emphatically.

“It’s sort of funny,” replied the strange voice.

“Put that flashlight out,” Frankie said. “Now, Aunt Wanda. Before the cops come back.”

“I’m not the one waking up the neighborhood. Does your friend think she’s auditioning for one of those horror movies?” But she switched off the light. “So, you folks going to come inside, or are you planning on hanging out in the bushes and yelping all night?”

It was convenient that Frank’s sister, Wanda, lived within sprinting distance, and it was fortunate that she was an insomniac. She welcomed the wee-hour excitement of our arrival even if she was disappointed when nobody wanted to while away what remained of the night in a game of canasta.

“What’s canasta?” Peter asked in a low voice as we trailed Wanda and Frankie up the stairs.

We were ushered into a room that belonged to Wanda’s daughter, Diana, now away at college. “Just make yourselves right at home,” she told us. “Frankie here can bunk down on the couch in the den. You kids sleep well.” She shut the door behind her, but we could still hear her trying to entice Frankie into a game of cards as they moved down the hallway.

I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all, let alone well, with so many posters of Justin Timberlake staring down at me, but it turned out that our mini-marathon proved to be an excellent cure both for my own insomnia and for Peter’s snoring. We awakened to sunlight streaming in through the lace-curtained windows and the delicious smell of frying bacon wafting up from the kitchen.

Wanda provided us with fresh disguises (a Steelers baseball cap for Peter and sunglasses and a headscarf printed with an image of Princess Diana for me) and a breakfast that included not only bacon, but pancakes, eggs, sausage, fried potatoes, and sticky buns, all elegantly presented on Princess Diana memorial dishes. After breakfast, we climbed into Wanda’s minivan for the ride to Thunderbolt headquarters. Peter and I hunched down in the back while she waved a stock certificate at the guard manning the security booth. The lot was so filled with cars and people that we felt safe once we passed through the gates, blending in easily with the crowd.