Blink of an Eye (14 page)

Seth took advantage of the stop to change out of his suit and into a pair of black corduroys and a faded orange T-shirt, which seemed to loosen him up considerably. She had no such option. The white dress was holding up well enough, but the disparity in their dress made her an inappropriate companion for this bold man.

Miriam finally decided that Seth should know the whole truth of her predicament. It took another hour to tell him of the events that led up to her leaving Saudi Arabia—all of them, including Sita's drowning.

“So you were forced to watch?” Seth asked, horrified. “Omar was making a point? How can anyone . . .” His voice faded and he closed his eyes for a moment, furious.

“Now you see why I fled?”

He faced her, and for a second she thought he was going to challenge her. But then his face softened. “I'm sorry. That's a terrible thing to have to see.” He shook his head. “I can't imagine what the girl's mother must be going through.”

“They must be part of the Nizari sect. But she is still a mother who lost a fifteen-year-old daughter at her husband's own hand. Her devotion is beyond me.”

Seth stared at the road and swallowed. Her savior had his soft side. Or were such displays patently American?

“Americans have easy lives,” she said, looking away.

“You think so? Not all Americans. Have you ever been slapped around by your father?”

“I've received my share of beatings.”

“Not a week went by that I wasn't beaten by my father when I was a child.”

“You?” She felt surprisingly appalled by his admission. She'd never imagined mistreatment in America.

“I didn't mean to fish for pity. Never mind.”

“I tell you about Sita and you tell me never mind?” she asked.

He considered that for a moment. “My father was an alcoholic, and despite his frequent repentance, he habitually abused my mother and me. My childhood was pretty ugly.”

“I'm sorry. Please forgive me.”

“It's okay. I can't complain.” He forced a grin. “I may not be the most well-adjusted human being you'll meet, but I know how to count my blessings. Not being born in Saudi Arabia, for starters.”

“Ha! I don't think you understand. You would do well in my country.”

“That's right, I forgot. I'm a man, right?”

“You forgot your gender? Perhaps you're really a woman in disguise.”

He smiled, breaking the tension for the moment. Silence filled the car, and they traveled south for a while without feeling the need to break it.

It occurred to Miriam that for the first time, she was traveling America the American way, with an American. Despite the danger in their wake, the adventure of racing down the highway with a true-blooded American was thrilling. At the same time, the fact that the American was indeed a man triggered conflicting emotions. She had never been
alone
with a male stranger, much less stuck in a car with him for many hours.

The dash lights highlighted Seth's profile—a smooth jaw and blond hair that was decidedly messier now than when she first met him. His ragged features appealed to her on some fundamental, earthy level. He possessed the kind of air she'd expect of a free-willed spirit: handsome, yet purposefully detached from his own charm, an intelligent enigma. Despite his graceless moves back in the restroom, this man had a quick mind.

Miriam removed her stare and smiled, thinking of their narrow escape from the university.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

“That's not a
nothing
smile. That's a
boy, isn't he a strange one
smile.”

“You think you know women so well that you understand their thoughts with a glance?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe I should slip a veil on. I feel naked here with you reading my mind.”

That gave him pause. How many men had seen her face well enough to judge her thoughts? Very few.

“A princess with an exceptional wit,” Seth said.

“When you look at my face, do you like what you see?” Miriam asked.

He cleared his throat. “What do you mean?”

“Not so many men have seen my face. It seems to have made enough of an impact on you to influence your assessment of my thoughts. I'm just asking if you see anything else in it.” She took no small pleasure in throwing a man of such intellect off guard.

“Yes.” He avoided her eyes and glanced in the side mirror although there were no cars behind them at the moment. “You're a woman. A princess. Remember?”

“I've seen more than one princess who would only look appealing next to a toad. On a good day.” She looked at the road. “You'll forgive me, but in my country an unmarried woman doesn't hear that she is beautiful. I think a woman is born with a desire to hear that she is beautiful, don't you?”

“Yes. Well . . . yes. I think so. Sure. Makes sense. Innate desire for the sake of the perpetuation of the species.”

She glanced at him. “I never thought of it in such . . . scientific terms,” she said.

“No. Sorry, that's not what I meant. It seems reasonable.”

“Perhaps it's more a matter of love than reason,” she said. “Have you ever been in love?”

“Love? Love as in what kind of love?”

“Evidently not.
Love
, as in I would give anything to be in Samir's arms right now, hearing him whisper my name and telling me how beautiful I am. Love.”

“Samir?”

“Yes. Samir. The driver I told you about.”

“You're in love with him?” He grinned a little. “So while people in high places are plotting your marriage, you're secretly in love with another man. A forbidden man.”

“Yes. Desperately,” she said.

“
Desperately
in love with a forbidden man. A princess with enough backbone to defy tradition.”

She laughed, delighted at his assessment. He possessed an uncanny sense of her country, as if he'd lived there himself, even though he insisted his understanding came only from books.

Seth cleared his throat again. “Where I come from, a man in love with a woman in danger would rescue her. So where is Samir?”

Miriam's joy disintegrated. “What do you mean? He can't come after me! They'd kill him!”

“That wouldn't stop a man in love.”

“And
you
know this?” she mocked. “He doesn't even know where I've gone. When it's safe, he will come out for me; I can promise you that. In the end, nothing will separate us.”

She faced her side window and thought about the way Samir had looked at her when he made his promise. What if he
had
left Saudi Arabia in search of her? What if at this moment he was in San Francisco, wanting to protect her? What was she doing running with this wild man? Six hours earlier he smashed into the lavatory and kidnapped her because of some strange vision that he refused to explain. And now she was trapped in a roaring car with him. What if Seth was actually an American agent working with Omar?

“Sorry. I was just asking.”

She closed her eyes.
Slow down, Miriam. Seth is your protector. He's
as innocent as you. Without him, you would be at their mercy.

Her mind filled with a flurry of images. Omar, Salman, the sheik, Samir, Sultana. Dear Sultana. Where are you, Samir? What had she started? It had taken her enemies exactly two days to catch up to her in Berkeley.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

He didn't answer.

“Please, Seth, perhaps we should go back to San Francisco. What if Samir is there? I've never been anywhere outside of San Francisco. What are you going to do, just drop me off at a bus stop in Los Angeles and expect that I will find my way back?”

“Don't worry, I'm not going to drop you off at a bus stop.”

“Then what?”

“I'm not sure.”

She spread her hands, palms up, then let them fall to her lap. “You're driving me to nowhere without a plan? Maybe you should let me out of the car.”

“At the next bus stop?”

He had a point.

“Look, I didn't exactly plan on rescuing a princess today. Forgive me if I don't have my handy-dandy
Ten Most Efficient Strategies to
Deliver a Distressed Princess to Safety
handbook in my back pocket. Maybe if you'd given me some notice.”

She stared at him, her mind sorting through his jargon. She understood the higher meaning if not the literal one: He was as lost as she and covered his insecurity with this wit of his.

“That doesn't mean I don't have any ideas,” he said. “I'm sure there are people who handle this sort of thing for a living at the State Department. I'm assuming their offices are closed at the moment. I'll call them as soon as the sun breaks the horizon. In the meantime, going back toward San Francisco would not be smart; there are people back there who don't like you, remember? And before you forget, I'm as much a hostage to this situation as you are. These people are after you, not me.”

She couldn't disagree with his thinking. In some ways his ironclad logic reminded her of Sultana. Sultana should consider leaving the kingdom to marry this man. They would make a deserving pair.

“You're right. I'm sorry. I've been through more than I'd planned in the last few days.”

“No, really, it's okay.”

“You're really here because of the vision you had?” she said. “If not for the vision, you would be home?”

“I didn't say it was a vision.”

“You refuse to call it anything. So I'm calling it a vision. You saw a man coming for me in the bathroom. Where I come from, we would call that a vision from God.”

“Of course. Muhammad was famous for his visions.”

“You're insulting the Prophet? This is the broad American mind?”

He paused. “I'm sorry. Really, I'm not trying to be disrespectful.”

She humphed. “You should examine something more closely before speaking so flippantly.”

“I've read the Koran.”

“When?”

“Most recently? Two, two and a half years ago. I even memorized most of it, sura for sura, by age twenty-one. Certain things tend to lock themselves in my mind, poetic abstractions being chief among them. As you know, the Koran is very poetic. So is the Bible.”

He'd memorized the Koran? “You can't possibly understand Islam, living here in America.”

“Actually, I know this may sound arrogant, and I apologize in advance, but I think I understand both Christianity and Islam quite well. They have a surprising amount in common.”

“They are like black and white!”

“Both claim that there is one God, an all-knowing Creator, which is where I part company. Both believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and was sinless. Both believe that the writings of Moses, David, the prophets, and the Gospels were divinely inspired. The primary differences between Islam and Christianity are found in contradictions between the Koran and these other writings. Muslims explain away the discrepancies by saying the Gospels and the Christian Bible have been altered.”

He had his facts right, but his dismissal of the Koran infuriated her. “And perhaps you've read a bad translation of the Koran. A twisted English version.”

“Actually, I read and understand Arabic. Language is like mathematics—both come easy to me. I admit that the translation I memorized was in English, but I understand it was quite accurate.”

He understood Arabic? She spoke a sentence in Arabic.

He answered in English. “Yes, most Westerners do have difficulty with Arabic. And really, forgive me for taking Islam to task, but to question is the nature of man, right? Every religion has its place. Christianity has its place; Islam has its place. They hold societies together and answer man's unanswered questions and such. But I reject both on philosophical grounds. I'm not ready to attribute my so-called ‘visions' to religion.”

“So then. Why are you here, Seth Border?”

He hesitated. “I'm here because I saw the future.”

“But you won't call it a vision. What is the difference?”

“I'm not sure. I just wanted to make the distinction. Just because we don't understand how something works doesn't mean we have to credit some deity. The world was once flat because religious people said it was flat, remember? Have you ever considered the possibility that time is the same way? It's a dimension that we don't understand, so when someone sees now what happens later, he's stepping beyond that dimension. It may be as simple as that.”

“Simple? Oh, I see. How silly of me. Then at least tell me what stepping beyond a dimension feels like. Indulge me.”

Seth's tone turned self-conscious, she thought. “I'm not saying that's necessarily what happened. I'm just telling you that it might have been what happened. It's possible.”

“Then tell me.”

He ran his fingers through his curly blond locks. “You ever been in a dream that feels real?”

“Yes.”

“It felt like that. But so fast that it didn't interrupt anything I was seeing in the present.” He paused. “Make sense?”

“Sounds like a vision,” she said.

“But different,” he said.

They drove in silence for a long time after that. Miriam lost herself in comforting thoughts of Saudi Arabia—the best of her beloved homeland. The beaches of Jidda, the sands of the desert, the palaces shimmering with wealth. In some ways it wasn't so bad to be a woman with the run of a palace, was it, veil or no veil? Sultana would slap her for even thinking it.

For the first time since her whirlwind escape, Miriam felt lonely. For Haya and for Sita and for Sultana. For Samir.

Dear God, what had she done?

Seth exited the interstate and pulled into an empty parking lot at two a.m., suggesting they get some rest. Sleep came almost before she closed her eyes.