“It’s a meteor shower tonight. Possibly a meteor storm.” Blake steps around behind me and sits next to me on my blanket. “It really started to pick up about half an hour ago. They’re predicting a ZHR of at least four hundred per hour.”

I sit up, propping myself on my hands behind me. Between his country music, cowboy boots, and infuriating tendencies, I forget he’s a genius. “Great, Mr. Rocket Scientist. Now can you repeat that in English?”

He stifles a smile and stares up into the sky. “NASA has been predicting this shower since 2009, when they discovered Earth would pass through the debris trail of comet 209P. The ZHR is the zenithal hourly rate, or the rate at which debris from the trail will fall through our atmosphere. They say it could peak around one A.M. at up to a thousand, which would bump it from a meteor shower to a meteor storm.”

“So, that’s a lot?”

His eyes turn from the sky to mine and he nods slowly. “Yeah. It’s a lot. And with the crescent moon, we should get a pretty good show.”

“Do you ever regret it?”

His eyebrows rise as he lowers himself onto an elbow. “There are myriad things I regret. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Leaving Astronaut Candidate training. Giving up your dream.”

He stiffens momentarily. “Cooper told you that?”

I nod.

He blows out a breath and rolls onto his back, lacing his fingers behind his head and gazing at the stars. “Sometimes.”

“Do you think you would have made it? I mean, aren’t there a lot of people shooting for just a few spots?”

“There are. Whether I would have made it or not is irrelevant now. I chose to do something different with my life.”

“Because of your dad.”

He shoots me a glance and his jaw tenses. “Remind me to put a muzzle on Cooper.”

“Thank you for finding Jonathan.”

“I didn’t. Arroyo’s people just let him go.” There’s suspicion in his eyes as he says it, and I hate that he still doesn’t trust Jonathan.

“Listen, Blake. Jonathan is a good guy. Really. He’s just sometimes . . . a little misguided. He would never do anything that he knows would put me in danger. And he swears Ben isn’t after me.”

His expression hardens. “He’s lucky he didn’t get himself killed.”

“Just cut him a little slack, okay? I mean, even if it was Ben’s guys, he’s the one who got shot because of all this.”

His lips press into a line, but he nods. “I invited him on your field trip, didn’t I?”

“Thanks for that. And, thanks for all this,” I add with a wave of my hand at our surroundings. “This is pretty amazing.”

His gaze travels back up to the stars. “It is. I’ve always loved it up here.”

“Did you come up here with your father?” I don’t even know why I asked, but I have the sudden need to know.

He bends a knee and props his other ankle on it. “No. It was my mom’s parents’ place.”

“Oh,” I say. “Were they divorced? Your parents?”

He gives his head a shake. “My mom died when I was born.”

My hand goes to my mouth as I gasp.

“My sister and I came to spend a week every summer at my dad’s in San Francisco, and then we’d come up here with our grandparents for a few weeks before heading back to Texas.”

I prop up an elbow on my side, facing him. “Why didn’t you live with your dad?”

“He was busy,” he says, like it’s no big deal, but there’s something sad in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” I say softly, feeling a tug at my heart. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve never even met my real dad. At least, not when I was old enough to remember it.”

He rolls to face me. “Not to sound harsh, but maybe that’s better.”

I can see why it might seem like that from his perspective, so I don’t give him shit.

Neither of us moves for a really long time. We just lay here staring at each other, and I feel my pulse gradually quicken at the need I see growing in his gaze.

“Sam,” he says, his jaw tight and a warning in his voice, and I realize I’ve moved closer.

I break our gaze and roll onto my back, staring up into the night sky and trying to shake the desire pulsing through me.

But then he groans and in one fluid motion rolls us so I’m pinned beneath him. He crushes his mouth to mine and I claw at him, needing him closer even though there’s no space between us. His kiss is deep and desperate, and it’s everything I’ve been waiting for. Our tongues tangle, and there’s nothing gentle about any of it. Our desperation for each other only feeds on itself the deeper we go, becoming unbearable. My whole body buzzes at the current surging between us, forcing a frantic moan up my throat as I arch into him.

Chapter Twenty-Six

AT THE S OUND of my desire, he comes undone, an agonized groan ripping out of him. We tear at each other’s clothes, getting nowhere in our frenzy. I claw at his back, and that’s when I feel the straps under his flannel shirt. My hand slips around his ribs and I feel the bulge of the holster under his left arm.

My hand closing around his gun seems to shake him back to reality. He pulls away and looks down at me, a little stunned.

The night is dead silent as we lay here, staring at each other, deciding what comes next—how far we’re willing to take this.

But in the silence I hear a pop, and it makes all the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Because I know that sound.

I flash back to the night on the side of the highway, the van in a ditch and the pop of the gun as someone shot at Jonathan and me. I try to convince myself what I heard was just a twig snapping, but in the next heartbeat Blake has me off the ground and pinned behind the closest tree.

“Don’t move,” he hisses.

“What—” I start, but his hand is over my mouth, stopping my words. And that’s when I see the dark splotch growing on the left sleeve of his shirt.

He takes his hand off my mouth and presses a finger to his lips, urging me to be quiet. Slowly, he draws his gun out from under his shirt. “Federal agent! Drop your weapon!” he yells, spinning out from behind the tree.

The quick burst of pops that follow tell me that Blake didn’t get his wish. Tree bark explodes in splinters around us as Blake ducks back behind it.

Adrenaline floods my veins and it’s everything I can do not to scream. In the faint starlight I see his eyes flash to me. “You’re going to be okay,” he reassures me, his voice smooth and soothing. “Just stay here. No matter what happens, don’t move.”

He springs from behind the tree and returns fire. His shots aren’t muzzled, and they sound like fireworks ripping through the dead calm.

There’s a crash as something big lumbers through the brush in front of the cabin, and Blake disappears into the night in that direction.

I do as I’m told. Except for the shake I can’t control, I don’t move.

Izzy appears at the top of the stairs. “Sam!”

“Get inside!” I tell her, as I hear Blake shout, “Freeze!” from up front.

There’s more rustling in the brush and a barrage of fire. She ducks in the door.

“Drop your weapon!” Blake yells again, farther away, his voice strangely muffled in the cool night air. The response is another volley of gunfire. In the distance, an engine revs and tires spin on gravel. Then everything goes still again.

I wait another minute, my shaking breath loud in the silence.

“Sam,” Izzy hisses, and when I look up at the door, she, Jonathan, and Ginger are huddled there, wide-eyed.

As I dart toward them, my eyes sweep the darkness near the road. Out of the shadows, Blake strides toward me, holding his left arm.

“Oh my God!” I say, changing direction.

He grunts as I slam into him. I try to pull away, afraid I’ve hurt him, but he doesn’t let me, holding me tight to him with his right arm. “Please tell me you’re not hurt,” he says into my hair.

“I’m fine, but—”

“Get in the car,” he barks over my head to my friends. “Now!”

“What about our stuff?” Jonathan asks.

“Leave it.” Blake lets me go and prods me toward the Escalade, putting me in the passenger seat. Everyone else scrambles into the back.

“Blake! You’re going to bleed to death,” I say, looking at his darkening sleeve.

He rips off his flannel shirt, revealing the gun in his chest holster over his black T-shirt. He tears the sleeves off the shirt and hands me the bloody one. “Tie that tight over this,” he says, wadding up the dry sleeve and laying it over his upper arm.

I can’t really see anything through all the blood in the dark, but I take the sleeve he handed me and wrap it around his arm, then tie it in a tight knot over the makeshift bandage. As soon as I’m done, he jogs to the driver’s seat and peals out.

We’re winding down the mountain, all of us shocked silent, when I look down and see the bloody handprint on my shirtsleeve. In the glow of the dash lights all I can see is blood. On my clothes and hands, and on Blake’s, where he’s gripping the steering wheel.

“You need a hospital,” I tell him.

He shakes his head. “It just nicked me.”

“This is fucked up,” Jonathan says from the back. When I look at him, his face is drawn and he’s shaking his head. “Fuck.”

Blake’s jaw tightens and he flicks a glance in the rearview. “What did you tell them?” he demands.

Jonathan’s eyes widen and his hands go up. “Nothing, man! Just to leave Red alone . . . that she didn’t know anything. Marcus said it wasn’t them.”

Blake’s eyes narrow and he breathes deep and blows it out, rubbing the back of his neck with a bloody hand. “How was I so stupid?” he mutters to himself.