“Yes.” She chewed her lip while he thought. He might not have access to all the details, but he had information enough to draw the correct conclusions.

“Even if they free up the money, there’s no way we—you, NASA—can stop an asteroid that size . . .”

“It’s not so much the size, it’s how close it is.”

“All right. There’s no way you can stop an asteroid already that close in twenty-one months.”

“No.” Oh, they’d try—the entire international community of space scientists would try—but, realistically, no. Unrealistically, no. Actually, no. Deflection efforts required years of warning. They had less than two. NASA had compiled a list of options back in 2007, but time had passed and Congress had never approved the funds necessary to begin developing them.

“But you’re not going to give up.” It wasn’t a question.

She almost managed a smile at the certainty in his voice. “No.”

“Well, then, I guess we’d better make the next twenty-one months count . . .”

Charlie loved Red Dirt music. It had a raw power that sang under her skin and buzzed through blood and along bone. More than merely a distraction, it was a cleanse and she desperately needed a few things washed away. It wasn’t always pretty music, but she’d take power over pretty any day and she much preferred music meant for kitchens or cabins or smoky bars where her shoes stuck to the floor than music trapped by the engineered pattern of acoustic tiles.

If the family in Calgary wanted to believe she’d run from the occasionally cloying domesticity of Allie and her babies, well, Charlie was good with that. The actual reason was no one’s business. Cloaked in their useful belief that musician meant irresponsible, she’d stepped out the back door and into the Wood and followed the music to Norman, Oklahoma, where she spent Wednesday night listening to the Damn Quails at Libby’s, Thursday night at the Deli with Camilla Harp, and Friday in Oklahoma City at the Blue Door.

John Fullbright’s concert, his first back at the Blue Door for a while, had been sold out for weeks, but Charlie was a Gale girl and a ticket returned in time for her to make use of it. Fullbright was amazing. His voice was a soft burr, a rough prayer, or shared laugh as required, and his roots were sunk so deep in Southwest Oklahoma he had almost a Gale connection to the place.

He wasn’t so young that he reminded Charlie of why she was on the road, but he was young enough the words “old soul” were tossed about the room between songs. He wasn’t an old soul, at least not so old it was obvious in his voice—Charlie would have been able to hear an internal age beyond Human norm—but he was undeniably talented.

“If you’re Canadian . . .”