When I placed my basket down on the conveyer belt at the check-out line, I could feel the cashier’s eyes on me. I had done my best in the dressing room to rearrange my hair, to straighten my clothes, but there was only so much that could be done. The one thing I could definitely not get rid of was the broad smile cut across my face.

I dumped the clothes onto the conveyer and tossed the basket into a pile of its fellows below the counter. Stone-faced, the cashier began to separate and scan them. I had been a little overzealous but, given the fact that I hadn’t bought clothes for myself for months, it was deserved. I ran my hands through my hair like a comb, trying to wrangle the unruly locks back into form. The movement recalled the feeling of Jason’s hands tightening with a fistful of hair, pulling at my scalp. I barely muffled a little whimper that I was sure the cashier heard. I don’t know why I was so self-conscious. Why did I care what anybody thought? After the hell I had been through, I was owed a few moments of bliss. Even if they came in a Target dressing room.

Once I paid, I walked quickly out to the parking lot where Jason sat in the driver’s seat of the Accord. I saw his eyebrow raise at the number of bags I was holding, but he soon thought better of it and hopped out to help me put them in the car.

“Get everything ok?” he asked.

“Fine, no problems.”

I tossed the bags into the backseat. Jason took the bag of extra food I had gotten and put it on top of the case of water in the backseat foot well. As I slid into the passenger seat, I felt my heart start to beat faster. We were on our way. Wait a second.

“Jason, where are we going?”

“Umm, I am not exactly certain. I want to get out of town for a while. Somewhere out in the desert, small town, or something.”

“What about my father?”

“I was thinking about that, actually. Do you know where he is? Cause I don’t want to go driving all over the place, not knowing when we are going to run into trouble again.”

I hesitated. There were a few places that he might go, some out of the way spots that I knew he liked to visit. But which one? Then it hit me. If he knew he was in serious trouble, he would only head one direction.

“He is in Joshua Tree.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, he’s there. I’m certain.”

Joshua Tree National Park was one of my father’s favorite spots. We had gone there often when I was little to hike and climb the boulders. When my mother was still alive, it had been a fun family vacation. After she died, it was a refuge, a place to hide out when the sadness and emptiness got too big. He loved the alien landscape, the giant granite boulders, and the twisted, spikey trees. I was sure he would be there.

“Ok, then,” Jason said, putting the car into drive and pulling out of the parking lot. “It is only a three-hour drive, I think.”

“There is a bit of a short-cut, actually. It goes right through the Mojave Preserve. Almost nobody on the road.”

Jason nodded, and we pulled onto the freeway.

Despite the build-up in the south part of Las Vegas, the new housing developments that still had dozens of empty houses, the South Point casino, the distance between the bright lights of the strip, and the empty desert was very short.

We drove in silence for miles. I was surprised that he had agreed to go find my father so quickly. Jason had been reluctant to help him before, and given what happened at his house, I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted nothing to do with my father again. But he had agreed without hesitation. He said he had been thinking about it on his own. Why? I couldn’t imagine he had suddenly had a change of heart about my dad. He seemed to have a pretty negative opinion about him and unwilling to risk much to save him. If he were doing anything, he must be doing it for me.

“Take the next exit, just before the top of the hill,” I said, breaking the silence. Off to the right, a field of mirrors focused sunlight up to a tower whose top blazed so bright it was almost painful to look at, even in the late afternoon sunlight. It was a solar thermal plant. I thought I remembered reading about how those towers were filled with molten salt. What was amazing to me was how the reflected sunlight looked almost solid, like it had been focused into a physical beam. Saint Brigid of Ireland, coming in from the rain, had hung her cloak on a shaft of sunlight. I doubted that I would want to attempt the same trick. The sunlight focused by those mirrors had a dangerous, violent feel. Too much of a good thing, I guess.

We turned off the freeway and into the two-lane highway that cut through the Mojave Preserve. Jason pulled the car to a stop on the soft shoulder just over a small hill. With the engine cut, the silence was ponderous. He stepped out of the car, I followed. A light wind was breathing across the broad valley between jagged lines of rocky hills. The valley was filled with Joshua trees. Their tortured, twisted forms looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, or like the flora of some alien planet. At the same time, though, it felt comforting. I had been in these deserts so often as a child, this strange looking environment felt like home.

I followed Jason down a little slope to where he stopped, just out of sight of the road. He sat on a wide, flat stone and pulled out an energy bar. I sat next to him, the cool, hard rock poking me through my new jeans.

“Why are we stopping here?” I asked.

“Just in case,” he replied. “I doubt we were followed once we changed cars. I trust Charlie, but you never know. We can wait here fifteen minutes or so and see if anyone suspicious comes past. They won’t see the car until they crest the hill, so they will give themselves away if they want to check us out.”

A dull, metallic clink drew my eyes, and I saw Jason set a pistol beside him on the rock. A chill went through me that had nothing to do with the breeze. I was happy to have left danger behind us and didn’t want to think about being around any more guns. Jason seemed entirely too comfortable with the situation, sitting there munching on some kind of amalgam of peanut butter and chocolate that passed itself off as healthy. It occurred to me, sitting here in the middle of the desert, that I knew virtually nothing about this man into whose hands I had put my life. Or rather whose hands had taken hold of my life.

“Jason?” I asked, more tentative than I would have hoped.

“Yea?”

“Tell me about yourself.”

He turned to look at me, a quizzical expression on his face.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, I don’t even know your last name! I don’t know anything about you. I know things have been crazy, but still. Don’t you think we should, you know, get more acquainted?”

Jason laughed. The sound was lost in the vast emptiness.

“I guess we haven’t exactly started out…conventionally,” he said through a wide smile. “What do you want to know?”

“Where did you grow up?”

“In Vegas, actually.”

“Really? Me, too. What high school did you go to?”

“Palo Verde”

“Oh, I went to Arbor View. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No, only child. My parents have both passed away, so it’s just me now.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was an only child, too.”

I was quiet for a few moments. Jason didn’t offer more information than he had to, and I was wary of delving too deep into subjects that I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear about. But after a few minutes of awkward silence, I continued.

“Umm, what did you do before? I mean, before you went to work for Kovalev.”

Jason let out a sigh. I was worried that he was going to clam up, that it was something he just didn’t want to talk about. But after a moment he dove in. He told me about joining the Navy, about SEAL training, about the men and the missions. It began to make sense, how he could move like he did, fight like he did. And how he didn’t seem to fit in as one of Kovalev’s goons. There was something different about him. It was like a heavy patina covering the pure silver underneath.

“Nobody wanted to listen to me when I told them what my CO was up to. I was too idealistic, too naïve. I didn’t understand that ‘doing the right thing’ was no protection. That nobody cared if you were right. So, I ended up back here. Dishonorable discharge, no money, no connections, no chance of a decent job. All I had were my skills which, outside of the SEALs, didn’t have much legitimate practicality.”

He sounded dejected, resigned. His broad, powerful shoulders were slumped forward. I reached out hesitantly and touched his back, running my hand down its curve and feeling the rounded muscles. He straightened up. I dropped my hand as he twisted around to face me.

“I’m tired of being a bad guy,” he said.