‘Very well.’ Pulling his phone from his pocket, he made a call, punching in the code of the wall safe to retrieve the keys to both the front door and his SUV as he waited for the reply. He opened a wall cupboard, taking out a coat and passing it to Anna without meeting her eye.
She was right. This was what he had told her he wanted: her gone, out of his life. The fact that it was tearing him apart only proved his point. Proved what a lethally dangerous combination they were. ‘I will drive you to the airport myself.’
Anna listened as he ordered the jet to be put on standby, silently taking the coat from him before he unlocked the door and ushered her out into the cold night air. So it was really happening. She was to be banished. Cast aside like the worthless acquisition that he obviously thought she was.
Once inside the powerful SUV, she was grateful for the feeling of paralysis that had come over her, as if her body was protecting her the best it could by rendering her almost comatose. She couldn’t look at Zahir, in the same way that he couldn’t look at her. Instead he focussed with leaden concentration on manoeuvring the vehicle out of the electric gates that swung open for them.
They drove in total silence, Anna fighting to hold on to the merciful state of the numbness, frightened it could so easily thaw into a tidal wave of grief if she let it. She felt weighted down by the sense of him all around her, the invisible pressure bearing down on her shoulders, ringing in her ears. She stared through the windscreen, at the world that was still there, seemingly impervious to her heartbreak. Dawn was starting to break, a thread of orange lining the horizon in front of them.
The car sped silently towards it, the orange glow spreading rapidly as the peep of the sun appeared, tingeing the wispy clouds pink against the baby-blue of the sky, blackening the desert below it.
The headlights picked up the sign for the airport as they flashed past. Soon they would be there. Soon she would be leaving this country, presumably never to return. For some reason, that realisation felt like another body blow, as if someone had kicked her in the guts when she was already writhing on the ground.
She bit down on her lip, twisted her hands in her lap and fought madly to stop the tears from falling as she stared fixedly ahead at the unfolding drama of the dawn. Sunrise over the desert—one of nature’s most spectacular displays.
Suddenly Anna wanted to experience it, to be a part of it. Not from here, from the agonising confines of the car, but out in the open with the cold air against her skin and the freedom to breathe it in, to be able look all around her, lean back and let the majesty unfold above her head. She needed to prove to herself that there was wonder and beauty to be had in this world, no matter how it might feel right now. If she was leaving this remarkable land for ever, she wanted one lasting memory that wasn’t all about sorrow and heartbreak.
She turned her head, steeling herself to break the brittle silence, the sight of Zahir’s harsh profile spawning a fresh onslaught of pain. His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed, the only visible sign that he was aware of her gaze.
‘Stop the car.’
Zahir’s hands tightened on the steering wheel as he shot her a wild-eyed glance.
‘What?’
‘I want you to stop the car. Please.’
‘Why?’ Alarm sounded in his voice as his eyes flashed from the road to her face and back again. ‘Are you ill?’
‘No, not ill.’ Anna shifted in her seat. ‘I want to watch the sunrise.’ She tipped her chin, fighting to hold it steady, swallowing down the catch in her voice. ‘Before I leave Nabatean for good, I would like to see the sunrise over the desert.’
She saw Zahir’s flicker of surprise before the brows drew together, lowering to a scowl. There was a second’s silence as the car continued to speed onward.
‘Very well.’ His jaw tightened. ‘But not here. I will find a more advantageous view.’
Anna sat back, releasing a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding in. She had no doubt that Zahir would know exactly where to take them. It seemed to her that he knew every grain of sand of this desert, that it was a part of him, of who he was, wild and bleak.
Sure enough, a short while later he swung the vehicle off the main road, bumping it over the rough terrain, and almost immediately they appeared to have left civilisation completely and become part of the barren wilderness of the desert. Zahir pushed the SUV hard, bouncing it over the hard ridges of compacted sand at great speed, navigating along a dried-up riverbed before swinging off to the right and powering up the side of a dune the size of a small mountain.
Beside him Anna clung to her seat, grateful for the mad recklessness of the journey that temporarily obliterated all other thoughts. Finally they skidded to a halt with a spray of sand and she peered through the speckled windscreen, seeing nothing but the grey shadowed desert. Abruptly getting out of the car, Zahir came round and opened her door for her.
‘We will need to do the last bit on foot.’ He held out his hand but Anna ignored it, jumping down unaided and focussing on nothing but this one goal as she followed Zahir up the towering peak of the dune, her thighs aching as she tried to keep up with him, her boots sinking into the shifting sand. Ahead of her Zahir had stopped to hold out his hand again and this time Anna took it, feeling herself being pulled up onto the very top of the dune. And into another world.
If it was wondrous beauty that she wanted, here it was, spread out before her. The sky was on fire with oranges, reds and yellows, the horizon a vivid slash of violet, the colours so amazingly vibrant that they looked to have been splashed from a children’s paint box. Before them the dunes rolled like waves of the sea, washed pink by the fast-rising sun that highlighted the thousands of rippled ridges with finely detailed shadows.
Anna dropped to her knees and just stared and stared, intent on blocking everything else out, storing this image so that it would be there for ever. She didn’t even notice the tears that were starting to fall.
Zahir cast his eyes down to where Annalina knelt beside him, her profile glowing amber in the light of the sun. The sight of the tears rolling unchecked down her cheeks threatened to undo him so completely that he had to look away. Whatever had he been thinking, bringing her here? What madness had made him want to prolong the torture? He scowled, channelling his agony into determination. He had to be cruel to be kind.
Minutes passed with no sound except the occasional cry of a bird, the rustle of the wind as it danced across the sand, the beat of his pulse in his ears. He had never known Annalina to be so silent, so still. The soft breeze that lifted her hair went unnoticed. It almost felt as if she had left him already. He pushed the sharp pain of that thought away and, staring out at the barren landscape, sought to find some words to end this agony.
‘This is for your own good, Annalina.’ He forced the words past the jagged blades in his throat. ‘After what happened with Rashid, it is clear that you can no longer stay here.’
He saw her twitch inside the coat that she had pulled tight around her body. But she remained infuriatingly silent.
‘And besides.’ Her refusal to agree with him only made him more coldly determined, crueller. ‘This is no place for you. You don’t belong here and you never will.’
‘Is that so?’ She spoke quietly into the cold, new day, still refusing to look at him.
‘Yes. It is.’
‘And now I will never be given the chance to prove otherwise.’ She hunched her shoulders, still staring straight ahead. ‘By banishing me, you’re simply confirming your assumptions. You’re shoring up your own prejudices.’
‘I am doing no such thing.’ He heard himself roar his reply. Raising a hand, he covered his eyes, squeezing his temples to take away the anger and the pain. Why did she persist in arguing like this, goading him? Or had he provoked the reaction—in which case, why? He was certainly regretting it now. ‘That is not true.’