“You okay?” he asks again once we’re in, reaching for my hand.

“No,” I say, and the floodgates open. All the tension, and frustration, and fear from the last twenty-four hours, everything I refused to let Blake see, comes pouring out of me in tears that I can’t stop.

Jonathan pulls me to his shoulder. “I got you.” He strokes my hair and holds me tight until the tears slow.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” I snivel between hiccups.

“I never would have brought you there if I saw this coming.”

I pull away from his shoulder and wipe my eyes. “What is Ben into, Jonathan?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t really know. I thought it was just minor drug stuff.”

“They want me to testify against him . . . say I saw a guy in his office that they think he killed.”

He groans a little and hangs his head. “This is so fucked up.”

I pull my foot up and hug my knee. “I was so stupid. I can’t believe I didn’t know Blake was a cop.”

He runs a strand of my hair between his fingers. “You really liked him?”

With his question, I realize I’m crying again. I tip my head and rest my forehead on my knee. “I would have slept with him right there at Benny’s. I wanted to. I just never thought . . .” I trail off, too ashamed to finish.

“It’s not your fault he turned out to be a narc, Red. He played you. The guy’s a dick. You can’t beat yourself up over it.”

Sure I can.

I click my seat belt, then crank the stereo, a Hell’s Gate demo reel, and listen to Jonathan singing about pizza toppings through the speakers as he pulls out his phone. “Ginger’s dying to see you. She was getting her legal panties all in a bunch,” he says, his thumbs flying across the screen.

He tucks his phone into his pocket and we glide away from the curb. When we hit the Bay Bridge, I lean into the window and close my eyes as the adrenaline drains from my system, trying to forget about Blake, Benny’s, and everything else.

Minutes later I realize I’m dozing when there’s a loud crunch and I’m jostled in my seat.

“What the fuck!”

The freaked pitch of Jonathan’s voice chases away any remnants of sleep and sends my heart shooting into my throat. I brace my arms against the dashboard when a car darts in front of us and Jonathan slams on the brakes. I’m thrown against the door of the van as he jerks the wheel to the left, and the screech of tires tells me we’re skidding. When we roll, it sounds like the whole world is shattering all around me. My seat belt locks me in my seat, but as we slam onto my side of the van, a rock or something smashes through the window and I hit my head hard.

It feels like we’re spinning and flipping forever before the van finally settles, creaking and groaning, in the ditch on the side of the highway. The sputtering hiss of the radiator in the sudden silence sounds like the rattle of a snake.

We’ve come to rest on Jonathan’s side of the van, so I’m dangling over him from my seat belt. My head throbs, and when I look around, it’s dark and my vision is blurry.

“Jonathan?” I croak.

I squint at his shape below me and see a dark splotch growing on his shirt. It takes me a second to realize that it’s blood. Mine. It drips in a steady stream off the tip of my nose.

“Jonathan!”

He just lays there, unmoving.

“Damn,” I say, my shaking hands trying and failing to work the buckle and free me from the seat belt. The throbbing in my right temple becomes a splitting pain with the effort. “Jonathan! Wake up!”

Adrenaline surges my bloodstream as I get my bearings. I finally manage to get the belt loose and fall out of my seat on top of him. I cry out at the stabbing pain that shoots from my right shoulder through the whole rest of me at the impact. He grunts and opens his eyes.

“We’ve got to get out of here, Jonathan!” I say, shaking him.

He blinks a few times, then seems to realize where we are. “Shit!” he groans, feeling around in the dark for his seat belt latch. “What the fuck happened?”

I snap open his buckle and untangle his seat belt from his body, then stand and reach for the passenger door above us and let out another shriek at the pain in my right shoulder. I yank the handle with my left hand and try to push it open, but it’s too heavy, or stuck, or something.

I scramble between the seats into the back, and when I reach the cargo door and tug the lever, it falls open with a groan and a thud. “Come on!”

He topples over the seat and staggers back to where I am. I get down on my belly and slither out. When I stand, I see the silhouette of a man looking down at us in the streetlights up on the road.

“Help!” I call.

My head pounds and through my double vision I see the streetlights glint off something in the guy’s hand. There’s a pop, then a chink on the door of the van at my feet. For an instant I stare up at the guy, my brain unable to register what’s happening. Jonathan drags himself through the door and is still on his stomach in the dirt when two more pops sound from up on the road. A patch of dirt near Jonathan’s face explodes.

He grunts and then sucks in a hissing breath. “Fuck! Get down, Red!” He grabs my legs and rolls me in the dirt so we’re behind the van. “He’s shooting at us!”

HE THROWS ME onto the ground behind the van, covering me with his body, and I’m sure my head just exploded with the impact. Shouts sound from up on the road, and my mind struggles to put together the pieces of what’s happened in the last ten minutes in a way that makes any shred of sense. I wait, disoriented and facedown in the ditch, my heart pounding and Jonathan on top of me. My eyes dart through the dark, assessing our surroundings and looking for a way out. There’s really nowhere to run. We’re in a ditch maybe ten or twelve feet below the road, with a cement sound wall behind us. It’s too high to get over. And if we run to either side, we’ll be in plain sight of the guy up the embankment.

On the road above, there’s the squeal of tires.

“Sam!”

Blake’s voice cuts through the night and my racing heart races faster with the renewed adrenaline.

“Sam!” There’s a rustling in the dead grass at the side of the road. “Sam! Are you down there?”

“Jonathan,” I say, bucking against him, but he doesn’t move. “Jonathan, let me up.”

I slither out from under him, rolling him onto his back, and that’s when I see the crimson bloom on his T-shirt below where my blood stains his shoulder.

“Oh, God!” I stagger to the end of the van and see Blake skidding down the embankment toward us. “Blake! Help! Jonathan’s shot!”

He looks up and sees me. “Stay there!” He half runs, half slides down the rest of the embankment and skids to a stop in front of me. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine,” I say, pushing him back. “But Jonathan is shot. He needs help!”

My voice shakes so bad it doesn’t even sound like words, but Blake seems to get it. He lurches around the side of the van, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Direct pressure,” he tells me, kneeling next to Jonathan and bunching his T-shirt in his fist over the wound.

I kneel at Jonathan’s side as Blake calls for an ambulance. “You’re going to be okay,” I tell Jonathan, lifting his T-shirt to find the wound. He’s bleeding from a spot low on his right side, and I press my hand into it and lean my face near his, saying what he’s said to me so many times. “I’ve got you.” A tear leaks over my lashes as I slip a hand around his neck and rest his head on my knee. “I’ve got you, Jonathan. You’re going to be okay.”

Despite the fact that I’m starting to feel dizzy, I keep talking to him, and it seems like forever later when I hear the sirens. As they get closer, I bend down to be sure he’s still breathing, leaning my cheek near his nose and mouth. I feel his breath on my face and drop my forehead onto his, relieved.