seth called them the “eyes from the sky.” Helicopters. They were unquestionably the most annoying and most threatening factors in the route through Death Valley. Given the Cadillac’s white paint, finding cover in the endless brown landscape was like trying to hide a mosque in the middle of the Rub‘ al-Khali desert. If not for Seth’s three-hour sight into the future, they would have been apprehended long ago. He’d pulled the car into hiding no fewer than six times since their departure from the church yesterday morning.
The other annoying element was the heat. Particularly after the Cadillac’s ancient air-conditioning unit quit functioning.
They decided Sunday afternoon that traveling at night might be a better idea. The darkness would provide cooler temperatures and hamper the helicopter’s search. They freshened themselves up at a gas station manned by an old codger, purchased enough junk to fill the backseat, and went looking for a place to wait out the afternoon.
Seth’s “old codger” was really just an older man who didn’t care what was happening beyond his driveway, and the “junk,” as he called it, consisted of necessities like toiletries, food, water, and clothes. The food was arguably unhealthy, and the clothes didn’t fit Miriam as she would have liked. But after washing and changing into a fresh shirt in the station’s restroom, Miriam felt nearly giddy.
They found an outcropping of bleached rock off the road, parked the car under it, and did their best to sleep in the stifling heat. Seth certainly needed the sleep. Despite his insistence that all was “peachy,” she knew differently.
“You may say you’re crisp as a fruit, but you can’t hide your tired eyes,” she’d said. “You’re taking the Advil as if it were candy, and your eyes are puffy.”
“Don’t be silly.” He looked in the mirror and then sat back without comment.
“It’s wearing you down.”
He looked past her with glazed eyes. “I’m sure that’s what Clive is thinking. He’s trying to push us to exhaustion and then close in. But as long as I don’t sleep longer than three hours, we’re okay.”
He picked up a battery-operated alarm clock they’d purchased with their other supplies. What if it didn’t work? Or worse, didn’t wake him? She decided not to worry aloud. He needed sleep, not her concerns.
The issue turned out to be moot. Seth couldn’t sleep. They resumed their journey after dark, and Seth seemed his energized self again. They talked about fashion in terms Miriam didn’t know were part of the fashion world’s lexicon. His was a unique view of the world, to be sure. And then they talked about surfing.
She’d been to the beach in Jidda, of course. But always draped from head to foot in the black abaaya and veil. The notion of diving into the ocean wearing nothing but shorts and a T-shirt had never struck her as such an intoxicating idea until now, hearing Seth talk. For that matter, what would it be like to swim in the waves naked? What a lovely idea!
Constant detours forced on them by the pursuit made their progress slow. They must have avoided a dozen police cars in one four-hour stretch. By eleven o’clock that night, Seth could barely keep his eyes open. He gave up in defeat and rolled the car into a ravine well off the road. Clive and his group would not likely discover them before daybreak. They both fell asleep within the hour.
The alarm chirped three hours later. Miriam pulled herself out of sleep’s haze long enough to turn it off. She was fast asleep within seconds.
Miriam was the first to awaken Monday morning. She pushed herself up in the rear seat. Seth was gone. She peered over the front seat. Nothing.
“Seth?”
The car moved under her and she realized that she was sitting on him. Alarmed, she clambered for the door, planting her elbows in his back and on his head in the process. That woke him. He rose groggy and grumbling, but none the wiser.
“We’re safe?” she asked.
He looked around, waking. “Safe. What happened to the alarm clock?”
Only then did she remember. “I . . . I think I might have turned it off.”
He rolled his eyes. “That was smart.”
“Forgive me. I was depending on your infallible rising with the sun.”
He smiled and winked. “Touché.”
“Touché.”
They devoured three large bags of Doritos, pulled back onto Highway 178, and headed east. Today they would reach Las Vegas.
Seth had explained his plan the night before, and it sounded like something actors might try in a movie rather than a reasonable course for two international fugitives. Nonetheless, she couldn’t deny that this city of sin had a certain appeal. Riding here next to Seth in the desert, she felt perfectly scandalous.
A voice within kept telling her she was throwing herself to the winds of iniquity even thinking such thoughts. She should have her head buried in the Koran, begging God for his grace. And yet she’d been to Madrid with Samir and seen the way the men from her country indulged themselves. She was not nearly so liberal. She was only doing what had to be done to survive for Samir.
Seth had said nothing more to suggest his affection for her. She thought he was only being courteous, because his eyes spoke clearly enough. Although she appreciated his discretion, she was surprised to discover that a part of her regretted his silence. She was indeed a beautiful woman, and he was a compassionate, strong, and handsome man.
Was she actually falling for Seth? She looked out the side window and forced her thoughts in a new direction.
The Mojave Desert was not like the great deserts of Saudi Arabia. Sand dunes rose in the distance, but mostly the land comprised rocky ground shifting in hues of red and white. Seth drove past a sight called Artists’ Point, where the rock was green in parts. The Americans called Death Valley—over three million acres of this rugged ground—a “park.”
In a strange way, driving through the desert toward the mysterious city of Las Vegas with Seth at her side felt like a metaphysical passing from death to freedom. There he was again. Seth.
They’d driven for some time without encountering a single vehicle when a sly grin split Seth’s face.
“I have an idea,” he said.
She looked at him. “This is new?”
He slowed and veered off the road. Gravel crunched under their tires. The desert was flat on either side of the highway here. Rough outcroppings of rock rose from the ground two hundred meters to their right.
“What are you doing?”
“We have some time. I’ve decided you need to really experience freedom.”
“Oh? I thought I was free already. Here with you.”
He put the car into park and looked at her. “You haven’t even begun to experience true freedom until you have wheels, princess. In America, wheels are synonymous with freedom. Everyone knows this. Come on.”
He opened his door and climbed out.
“What do you mean?”
“Trust me. Get out.”
Miriam climbed out. She stood by her door and looked at him over the Cadillac’s shredded vinyl roof. “What?”
“Over here.”
She walked around the hood, grinning with him, clueless to his intentions. “What are we doing?”
He held the door and invited her to the driver’s seat. He wanted her to drive?
“I can’t drive!”
“Exactly. That’s why I need to teach you.”
“Why?” The idea terrified her.
“We may need you to drive. We don’t know what waits beyond three hours. It just makes sense.”
“Now? Out here? We don’t have time for this!”
“But we do have time, princess. I should know. And I also know that you will give this a try. I’ve seen that as well, so you might as well hop behind the wheel and give it a go.” He grinned deliberately.
Miriam looked around. “Have you seen me running into anything?”
“What’s there to run into?”
“You’re not answering my question.”
“Okay. Actually there are a few scenarios in which you have a few mishaps, but we’ll do our best to avoid those. Come on, don’t tell me a princess who risked her life by crossing oceans is afraid of a little joyride in the desert.”
“What kind of mishaps?”
He shrugged. “Nothing noteworthy really. Driving off a cliff. Hitting a truck head-on. Please, I insist.”
She looked at the steering wheel. Women were not permitted to drive in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps that was reason enough to try it. She felt a grin pull at her lips.
“You promise me it will be safe?”
“There’s always risk in life’s most rewarding pursuits, isn’t there?”
She slid in behind the wheel.
Seth bounded over the hood and climbed in, ecstatic.
It took him three minutes to explain the basics, not that she didn’t know them, but because she felt comforted by his repeated explanations. This is the brake, used to stop the car; this is the accelerator, used to speed the car up; this is the steering wheel, used to keep the car on the road; this is the radio, used to keep you awake so you don’t drive off a cliff.
She turned off the radio and demanded he stay serious. She also insisted he show her how all the turn signals and lights worked. If she was going to learn to drive, she might as well do it right.
He told her to drive out toward the rock outcroppings. The ground was hard enough here to resist tire tracks, and he’d seen what would happen if they took to the road. It wasn’t pretty. Miriam put the gearshift into drive and gripped the wheel with both hands, knuckles white.
“Let’s roll,” he said. He was already trying hard not to laugh, and she wondered what he was seeing.
“Let’s roll,” she said and pushed the pedal on the floor. The Cadillac jerked forward. She immediately shoved her foot down to stop. Instead of stopping, the car shot out into the desert like a bullet from a gun.
Miriam screamed. Beside her, Seth was laughing. Cackling uncontrollably, in fact.
“Seth! Stop . . .”
Her limbs froze, fixed by terror. The car raced forward, headed directly for the rocks.
“Seth!”
He swallowed his laughing. “Turn!” he shouted.
He grabbed the wheel and yanked it down. He tried to turn the car, and she resisted his attempts with this rigor mortis that had seized her arms.
She glanced down at the steering column and for some inexplicable reason thought she should hit the lever beside the wheel. She slapped at it. Water sprayed up on the windshield, blinding her to the onrushing rocks.
“The brakes!” Seth yelled. “Stop the car!” He swung his leg toward the pedals and stabbed at the floor, shoving her against her door in the process. “Push the brakes!”
One thought rose above the panic that had immobilized her. Seth was scared. He hadn’t seen this as a real possibility. He needed her to stop this car because he was powerless to do it without her.
Her limbs came free. She swung her elbow into his rib cage with enough force to take the wind from him. He grunted and released his grip. She spun the wheel to her right, just as the windshield wiper made its first pass on the glass, clearing her view. The rocks loomed twenty meters ahead.
The car slid sideways. It occurred to her that her foot was on the accelerator rather than the brake. But she decided that it should stay there. She should use the power of the car to take them out of harm’s way. Ride it out, as Seth had said once.
The back of the car swept around in a great half-circle, wheels spewing debris back toward the rocks. They came to a near stop, engine still roaring, and then shot back out into the desert, away from the outcropping.
Miriam blinked. Exhilaration flooded her veins like a rush of cold water. She eased off the accelerator. “Whooohaaa!” she shouted. “Let it ride, baby!”
Seth laughed tentatively.
Miriam steered the car right and then left. She pressed the accelerator and sped up again.
“Easy . . .”
“I have it under control, dear. You just sit back and relax.”
Listen to her. She was sounding like him. She grinned, pulled the car through another wide turn, and sped back out into the desert.
“Now you’re talking,” Seth said. His confidence was back. “Take it behind the rocks and out into the desert a bit. We need to get out of sight. Someone’s coming down the highway.”
His revelation alarmed her only because he seemed comfortable in depending on her to take them from danger. She guided the car around the boulders, weaving more than she would have liked. Perhaps her confidence was a little premature. But she did manage, and she had saved them from crashing into the boulders.
She drove for twenty minutes while he continued to give her pointers. They headed farther out into the desert, weaving around boulders and sandy patches. By the time she parked the car behind a large rock formation, they were a good distance from the road. But that was good. The traffic on the highway was hopeless for the next hour anyway, Seth said. In fact, he had yet to figure out how they were going to make it across the California-Nevada border. At the moment, law enforcement officers seemed to have the upper hand in all possible futures there.
Miriam stepped from the car fairly floating.
“You are absolutely right,” she said. “This feels like freedom!” She threw her arms around his neck impulsively. “Thank you.”
He staggered backward, chuckling. “Whoa!” She caught herself and released him, self-conscious.
They sat on a rounded rock next to each other and shared another bag of chips with a bottle of water, and Miriam wasn’t sure she had ever been so thrilled in all her life.
She looked at Seth as he tilted the bottled water to his lips and drank. His neck was strong and bronzed by the sun, rising to a perfectly sculpted jaw. His hair was loose, not unlike the Greek sculptures that graced her uncle’s villa in Riyadh. Allah had sent her a Greek god to take her through the desert in a Cadillac.
She looked away from him. Listen to you, Miriam. You’re being taken by him. She reached into the bag of chips and ate one.
Yes, of course, because the Greek god called Seth was a master at the art of love, equipped as he was with this foreknowledge of his. He had an unfair advantage.
“Are you manipulating me, Seth?”
He turned his head, eyebrows arched. “Manip—please. What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you taking advantage of me?”
He looked shocked. “Do I act like I’m taking advantage of you?”
“Of my mind.”
“What are you talking about? I can’t take advantage of your mind.”
She looked at the tall western peaks. He seemed genuinely surprised by her questions. How, if he had already seen the possibility of her asking it? Maybe he was losing his touch. He had missed the possibility of her driving into the rock earlier. Unless he was pretending to be shocked! The thought dampened her happiness.
She stood and dropped the bag of chips in his lap. “Please don’t play with me. I know very well that you know what I’m going to say before I say it. I know you can simply choose the right words to evoke the right response from me. And now that you’re pretending to be shocked by my question, I can’t help but think that you are manipulating me.”
“Your question is shocking. Okay, I might have seen the possibility that you would pursue this line of questioning, but you have to understand, it’s only one possibility out of thousands wandering around in my mind. I never took it seriously.”
“Don’t try to turn the tables on me! You still possess this crazy ability to make people do things. I can’t believe that you don’t do that with me all the time. You’re manipulating my feelings.”
He hesitated. “Nonsense. I would never do such a thing. And just so we’re clear, this crazy ability, as you so affectionately refer to it, is saving your life.”
“Do you deny that you could make me feel things?”
“Of course I can’t!”
“How do you expect me to handle this show of affection you’ve thrown at me?” You’re saying too much, Miriam. “First you tell me that you have feelings for me, and then I begin to think that I may have feelings that—” She caught herself.
His eyes widened. What was she saying?
“What feelings?” he asked.
Miriam pushed past the embarrassment that flushed her face. “Do you deny that you can at least make me do things?”
“Yes, I do deny it,” he said. “I can’t make you do things.”
“But out of all the things that I might do, you can make me do those things you want me to do.”
He hesitated. “No, not necessarily.”
“Ha! I don’t believe you.”
“I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Is that right? Please, let’s not mind the technicalities. I think you can see an almost unlimited number of my responses to what you say or do, and then you can do whichever results in the one you want.”
He spoke quietly. “It’s not exactly like that.”
“Then show me what it is like. The least you can do is be forthright with me. Let me test you. See if you can make me do something.”
“Please, Miriam. We shouldn’t do this,” he said. He was afraid, wasn’t he? She felt a twinge of empathy for him. And then she wondered if he hadn’t expected that by the phrasing of his words. Please, Miriam. We shouldn’t do this. He knew that if he said that she would respond with sympathy! She decided then that she had to know.
“I insist.” She paused. “Make me do something. Make me kiss you.”
His pallor reddened. How could he fake that? His lips twitched to an embarrassed grin. “You’re presuming that’s something I want you to do?”
“Okay then, let’s pretend that you want me to kiss you. Deep inside, you probably wouldn’t mind. That’s close enough, isn’t it? So then make me kiss you, Mr. California.”
He chuckled nervously.
“I’m waiting.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t make you kiss me.”
“Do you want me to kiss you?”
“Right now?”
The way he said it betrayed him. Surprisingly, she was pleased by the fact. And then conflicted. Be careful, Miriam.
“Sure, why not,” she said. “The desire has obviously crossed your mind. Just pretend it resurfaced this morning here, in this hot desert so far from the nearest living soul.” She couldn’t suppress a small grin.
For his part, Seth was now thoroughly embarrassed. He looked off in the direction of the road and shook his head.
“You’re saying that at this moment, you see no possible futures in which I kiss you in the next few minutes?” she asked.
“That’s not fair,” he said.
“You don’t want to be forthcoming with me? You want to hide the truth from me? You have a gift, but I am a lowly woman and so—”
“Stop it!” His tone caught her off guard. She had pushed him, as much to see him squirm as to know the truth. What did he really feel for her? And what if he actually made her kiss him? She would never do it! This was the power of a woman.
“Then tell me,” she said.
“There is one future in which you kiss me in the next—”
“That’s impossible!” she said. How could he say that—she would never kiss him willingly!
“So now I tell you the truth and really you don’t want to hear the truth after all,” he said. “I’m sorry, princess, but it is indeed true.”
Miriam stared at him, shocked by his claim. He was avoiding her eyes.
“Then make me do it,” she challenged, angry.
“I can’t.”
“Do it! Don’t you dare tell me that I will kiss you without giving me the opportunity to prove you wrong.”
“Okay. Roses are red, violets are blue; I’ll kiss a toad, but I won’t kiss you.”
She blinked at him. “What is that supposed to mean? This is your way of enticing a woman?”
“You’re right.” A sly smile spread across his mouth. “Roses are red, violets are blue; you are without doubt the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
She paused. “That’s better but it doesn’t rhyme. And as you see, my lips are still not on yours. I don’t feel the slightest impulse to walk over there and kiss you. You can do better. Don’t toy with me.”
Perhaps a very small part of her did want to kiss him. Stop it! Stop it, Miriam!
He cleared his throat, thinking. He jumped to his feet on top of the rock. He ripped open his shirt, pulled it off his shoulders, and put one hand behind his head and the other on his waist, cocking his hips in a pose, so that his stomach muscles rippled. “Hey, baby, you like what you see?” he said, winking.
She stared at him, astounded at his gall. A giggle rose from her belly. He grinned and relaxed his pose. “No?”
She swallowed her laughter but could do nothing about the grin on her face. “I still haven’t run into your arms.”
He jumped down from the rock. “That’s because I can’t make you do anything. And I never would, even if the thought of kissing you did cross my mind in a mad moment of brutal honesty, as you put it. And for the record, the future in which I saw you kissing me involved a kiss on the forehead. Just so you know.”
In another life, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have kissed you, Seth Border. She walked up to him, put her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him on the forehead.
“There you go. Now I’ve fulfilled your prophecy,” she said, satisfied by his blush. She picked up the bag of chips and walked away.
“Would you like to test the truth in your heart?” Seth said behind her.
She turned. “I thought we just did.”
“I was thinking about you being a Muslim. God and all that,” he said. “We don’t see eye-to-eye on the issue, and it’s occurred to me that I may have a way to test which one of us is right. A tangible test, no arguments.”
“Isn’t it okay that we disagree?”
“Actually, there is a problem. According to your faith, I’m an infidel. Your godsend—that would be me—is headed for eternal torment. How can you be okay with that? We need to . . . reconcile, so to speak. Get on the same page.”
Miriam tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Fine, reconcile us.”
“Okay. Christian Nazis killed the Jews. The Crusaders killed Muslims. Islamic extremists killed Christians in the World Trade Center. Right? All guilty of breaking the greatest commandment.”
“Very few Arabs are extremists who kill—”
“And Hitler was as much a true Christian as I am a toad. Point is, they all broke the Prophet of love’s cardinal rule.”
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” Miriam said.
“Correct.”
“And what does this have to do with the existence of God?”
“It has more to do with proving that I am not an infidel. Since you Muslims revere Jesus, and we agree he is the greatest prophet, let me offer a prayer to the God of Jesus and prove he doesn’t exist.”
“You can’t test God.”
“Maybe I can.”
Seth bounded over to a group of small boulders and scooped up an armful of medium-sized rocks. He ran to a bare patch of ground and set them in a circle. Miriam watched him curiously, afraid to ask.
He returned to the pile and grabbed up more stones. “Ever hear of Elijah and Mount Carmel?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“God descended in fire.”
He seemed enthusiastic about his idea, but Miriam was still unclear about his intentions. “You want God to descend in fire?” she said. “This won’t prove a thing.”
“No, not fire. But if I ask God to do something—anything in the immediate future—I will be able to see if even the possibilities of the immediate future change.”
“And if he doesn’t want to do it, you will say he doesn’t exist?” It was unorthodox to be sure, perhaps foolish even, but she didn’t see the harm. This was her eccentric Seth at work. At least there were no mutawa around to see his mockery.
“Don’t you get it?” he said. “Even his refusal will affect what I see. It’s like having a giant stethoscope up to the heavens. If there’s a God, and if that God responds in any way, I’ll know it! For all we know, this is the first time in history such a thing has even been possible.”
“But I won’t know that anything has changed,” she said.
“True. You’ll have to take my word for it.” He looked at the altar. “It’s been a while since I said a prayer. Maybe you should do the honors.”
“I’ll have no part in this.”
“Fair enough.”
He fidgeted with his hands for a moment, considering how to proceed. Then he lifted his face and arms to the sky. His lips moved in silent prayer.
Miriam shook her head, embarrassed for him. Her Greek god, who was at this moment standing ten meters off with his arms lifted like an idiot, was determined to prove something she didn’t care about in the first place. Her confidence was a matter of faith, not proof. Whatever he did or didn’t see wouldn’t change that.
Seth lowered his hands and turned around, eyes still closed. After a moment they flickered open and he smiled.
“Well?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He stepped toward her. “Absolutely nothing, nada, zip.
I rest my case. We’ll have to depend on good old—”
Seth froze midstride, eyes wide.
“What?”
His mouth parted. For a fleeting moment she thought he was having a heart attack or seizure.
“Seth!”
He blanched.
“What is it?”
Seth composed himself. “Nothing. Let’s roll.” He walked past her.
She hurried for her door, evidently on the passenger’s side, considering he had his hand on the driver’s door already.
“Don’t say nothing. I know you saw something. What did you see?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I saw that we have to roll.”