Ellie tried to still her excitement as she waited at the visitor’s entrance of Luke Air Force Base. She had worn pale green slacks, comfortable tennis shoes and a white blouse. Mac had told her to wear pants because of all the gear she’d have to don. She stood at the window that overlooked the main base area. Even at seven in the morning, it was busy with vehicles and personnel, and jets taking off. There was always the growl and vibration of jets in the background, and it thrilled Ellie, although she couldn’t have said why.
Her heart pounded a bit harder in her breast when she saw Mac drive up and park next to the building. She hadn’t seen him in nearly two weeks, and it seemed like forever. How handsome and self-assured he looked in his olive green flight suit, with the dark blue, silver-trimmed cap cocked on his head at a rakish angle. There was nothing not to like about Mac Stanford, Ellie decided. She realized with a start that her palms were damp. Damp, of all things! At her age, she’d thought such reactions to a man were things of the past. But not with Mac.
She tried to look composed as she watched him walk confidently toward the door. His hair was dark and gleaming, and his face was free of that dark beard that always seem to shadow his features in the late afternoon. As he drew closer, Ellie swore she could see gold sunlight dancing in his hazel eyes. More than anything, she liked his hands. They were long and strong looking, almost artistic in appearance, save for the large, rawboned knuckles. Mac possessed strong hands, and more than once, Ellie wondered almost foolishly what it would be like to have them caressing her shoulders.
She had tried to keep Mac at bay within her heart—but it was almost impossible. She thought of him constantly while she was working, and his face would appear every night when she was getting ready for bed. Mac made her heart pound and her pulse flutter; like a rare, beautiful perfume, he had scented her life in a way no man had ever done before.
As Mac entered the visitor’s office, he automatically took off his cap and turned in her direction. His smile was blinding, filled with undeniable welcome, and Ellie felt his warmth envelop her. She felt heat nettling her cheeks and groaned to herself. She was blushing! Without thinking, she touched her left cheek as Mac approached. How could she have denied him dinner these past weeks? It was crazy to keep turning him down, Ellie’s heart told her. But her head was always lurking in the background, whispering to her to be careful.
“Hi, stranger,” Mac said in greeting. He held out his hand toward her as he closed the distance between them. How beautiful and simple Ellie looked amidst all the hustle and bustle of the base. Her white blouse had long shirttails that swept across her hips and emphasized the rounded curves of her body. Her hair was pinned up and tamed in a bun at the nape of her neck. What a shame, Mac thought, as he saw her shy smile. Never had he been so intrigued with a woman’s hair. He longed to ease his fingers through it, feel its sleekness, bury his face in it.
“Hi…” Ellie said awkwardly as she slipped her hand into his. Mac’s hand was dry and warm. As his fingers folded gently around hers, Ellie felt a frisson of heat fly up her arm. Her heart beat dangerously fast as he halted only inches from her. Being around Mac was like being around Father Sun, Ellie decided, as she was gently snared by his dancing eyes. His mouth was curved with genuine pleasure, and she wondered abstractly what it would be like to kiss that mouth. There was such strength and power surrounding him. Did he realize it? Ellie didn’t think so.
“Well, are you ready to become an eagle today?” he teased. He was determined to keep things light. But his wild, almost insatiable urge to sweep Ellie into his arms and feel her ripely curved body against his was nearly his undoing. When he took a step back, he saw the relief in Ellie’s warm brown eyes. He saw fear there, too. He supposed it would take more time to gain her trust. But he intended to do it. In the two weeks they’d been apart, Mac had realized that he wanted to know Ellie better, no matter what their differences.
Ellie laughed a little and noticed that a number of the uniformed air police were discreetly watching them. She felt uncomfortable. “Yes, I guess I am.”
Mac reached out and touched her upper arm. “Come on, I’ll take you over to our fitting facility. My crew is finishing up a check on my bird. As soon as they’re done, we’ll be off.”
Mac’s touch sent a sizzling, almost painful sense of need throughout Ellie. She felt it deep within her. How long had she gone without a man in her life? Far too long. That ache, that unfulfilled feeling, had surfaced now and then, but never like this. Never had she felt this sharp, clamoring longing that Mac always set off within her.
When they reached the parking lot, Mac opened the door to the car and she got in. The sun had heated the vehicle considerably, but Ellie loved the sun and luxuriated in the warmth.
When Mac got in, he turned and smiled at her. “In two weeks, you’ve become prettier than ever.”
She lowered her lashes and avoided his burning gaze, the message in which was easily translated: he wanted her. The thought was as exciting as it was forbidden to Ellie. Clasping her hands in her lap, she murmured, “Thank you.”
Mac drove his car down one boulevard and turned onto another. Driving on base was always slow business. Though he kept his eyes on the road, he could sense Ellie’s discomfort and wondered if it was specifically him—or if it would be the same with any man who showed an interest in her. He wished he had the guts to ask her exactly that, but he felt such a tentative, almost fragile bond between them, and didn’t want to destroy what was already in place.
Maybe, if she got to know him better, she’d lose the wariness that stood like a wall between them. He gestured toward the flight line in the distance.
“My crew thinks you’re a public-relations ride. I’m letting them think that, because we usually don’t give civilians a ride in our jets.”
“I’m scared and excited, if you want the truth.”
“About being around me or taking a hop?” The words came out before Mac could stop them.
Ellie met his eyes, and again, her pulse bounded. She didn’t know how to answer him.
“I’m sorry,” Mac said. “I know you don’t trust me. I wish you did, that’s all.”
She felt his pain, but she also sensed that Mac understood why she held him off. “If I didn’t trust you, Major, I wouldn’t be flying in that jet of yours.”
His grin broadened a little. “Really?” His hopes rose.
“Really.”
After that, the tension seemed to lessen between them, and Mac filled Ellie in on his progress with Hangar 13. “It took me a while, but I finally managed to find out where Tim Olson’s parents live. I gave them a call.”
“Oh?”
“Tim never showed up at home,” Mac said. He turned down another street, which led toward the flight line. “I talked to his mother, who thinks that her son was murdered. She said Tim liked the military, that being in the air force had been his life’s dream.”
“It wouldn’t make sense that he’d go AWOL then, would it?”
With a shake of his head, Mac said, “No, it wouldn’t. Mrs. Olson was very nice to me. I asked her if Tim had any enemies and she said he had none.”
“What was he like?” Ellie asked.
“I asked her about that, too. Tim was a fairly aggressive man. He played sports in high school, was real competitive and didn’t like to lose.”
“That fits,” Ellie said. “The spirit was very aggressive. Did Mrs. Olson say anything about her son having a temper? That spirit was very angry.”
“I remember that,” Mac said. He pulled up to a single-story building and shut off the engine. “She told me that Tim had temper tantrums as a kid. And in high school, whenever he lost a game, he would throw things in the locker room.”
Ellie’s eyes widened. She saw how serious Mac had become. “This spirit is throwing things, too.”
“Yes.” He fought the desire to brush his hand through Ellie’s black, thick hair. “I’ve had two weeks to think about what you saw in your journey, and I’m still not convinced. But Tim Olson seems to match the temperament of the spirit you saw and spoke to.”
Ellie felt him wrestling with the situation. Without thinking, she reached out and placed her hand on his sleeve. “It’s very hard to make the leap of faith it takes to accept what I do, what I believe in and what I see when I’m in an altered state, Mac.” She removed her hand, although she wanted to continue exploring the steel-cable muscles of his arm. She saw Mac’s eyes suddenly become narrowed, filled with heat, with desire—for her. She quickly added, “Don’t try to force yourself to believe any of it. That’s not being true to yourself. You don’t have to believe on my account. Remember? I’m used to naysayers.” She lifted her arm and gestured outside the car. “The world is filled with them.”
A slight smile tugged at Mac’s mouth as he opened the car door. “I’m not trying to force myself to believe anything, Ellie.” He gave her a long, serious look. “But facts are facts. The description you gave me of the spirit’s personality seems to match Tim Olson’s almost exactly. You may think I have a fairly rigid outlook on life, but I’m not one to disagree with facts. Fair enough?”
She met his smile and felt surrounded with that wonderful heat once again. “Fair enough,” she murmured, nervous beneath his hooded look.
“Come on,” he said, excitement in his voice, “let’s get you a pair of g-chaps, a helmet and some flight boots, and we’ll be off.”
For the next hour, Ellie was the center of attention. Two sergeants in charge of flight gear fitted her with a form-hugging, lower-body g-suit that was designed to stop the blood from leaving her head in high-g turns. They fussed over her, helped tighten the g-chaps to fit her legs, and found a pair of heavy black leather flight boots in her size.
When they were finished, Ellie couldn’t help but laugh. Beneath her left arm was a helmet and oxygen mask. “I feel like a trussed-up goose that’s ready to be roasted!”
Everyone laughed. Mac grinned and gestured for her to follow him. “Believe me, when you get up in the jet, you’ll be glad for those g-chaps fitting so tightly. Let’s go. Our steed awaits.”
A thrill filled Ellie as she followed Mac back out to the car. It was eight a.m., and the light blue sky was filled with the blinding radiance of the sun. The slight chill of earlier was gone, replaced with that dry warmth she loved so much. Getting into the car, Ellie felt anticipation thrumming through her.
“I don’t know if I’m more scared or excited,” she confided to Mac.
“A healthy combination.”
“You aren’t going to make me airsick, are you?”
“No.” He turned and met her large, luminous eyes. A man could lose his soul in them, he decided, then pushed the thought aside. “I want you to understand what I do, why I enjoy it so much.”
Ellie nodded. “You’re much more subtle than I gave you credit for.”
“What do you mean?”
It was her turn to smile. “If I understand you, the man, you’re thinking maybe I won’t be as gun-shy around you.”
“Guilty,” Mac conceded. He pulled onto a road that would lead them directly to his jet waiting outside Hangar 13. “I know your ex-husband didn’t believe in you.” He gestured to the jet in the distance. “I can’t fight city hall. I need you to see for yourself that I’m different. Maybe if you set foot in my world for a while, you won’t be so scared of me.”
Ellie colored fiercely over his honesty. “I feel badly, but I can’t apologize, Mac.”
“No one’s asking you to.” He pulled the car up beside the hangar and put it in park. Taking out the key, he turned and held her sad eyes. “I know I was pretty skeptical of you, what you do, at first.”
“And now?”
Mac felt the tension in her and wished he could make it go away. “Now, it’s not so farfetched as it seemed before.” He shrugged and reached over and captured her hand. He squeezed her fingers and then released them. “Maybe,” he hedged, “with time and education both ways, we’ll be able to see each other, not what we do for a living.”
Ellie’s hand tingled. She sat there, feeling a tidal wave of joy combined with warning. “Mac, what you do for a living isn’t necessarily tied to your beliefs the way it is for me.”
“Yes, it is,” he murmured. “Ellie, I’m in the military because I believe in the defense of our country. I don’t like war, I don’t like the thought of killing another human being, but I do believe that our people should be free, and I’m willing to fight for that right. So what I do for a living is as much a part of my belief system as shamanism is of yours.”
A lot of different, difficult emotions played through Ellie as she digested his words. “I—I guess—” she stumbled, searching for the right words “—I’ve got a lot of prejudice, too, in a sense.”
Mac sat back. “How so?”
With a painful shrug, Ellie whispered, “I’m so used to people outside my world pooh-poohing what I do, what I believe in, that I’m tired of defending it. So many have called me crazy that I assume everyone in the so-called real world feels that way.” She searched his face and saw understanding burning in the depths of his eyes, and it gave her the courage to go on. Opening her hands, she said, “Mac, we live in a society that doesn’t believe in the unseen, the metaphysics of life. I spent many years trying to get people to consider another point of view. But even my husband, the man I was supposedly closest to, couldn’t accept it. Brian was always calling me crazy. It hurt a lot. After a while, it got so bad I never said anything to him about my world, my profession. It was okay for him to tell me about his work, his problems with certain people, the pressures on him, but he never wanted to hear them from me.”
“You had a one-way relationship,” Mac agreed quietly.
“It was more than that. I literally felt like a ghost in our household. As long as I fit the ‘normal’ mode of housewife—cooking, sewing, cleaning—then things were fine between us. But if I ever brought up the things that really mattered to me…” She grimaced. “Every time I did, it meant an argument, yelling. I hate fighting, Mac. I cringe just thinking about it.”
“You’re a gentle person.”
Shaken by his insight into her, Ellie raised her chin sharply and looked at him. Mac’s eyes were touched with pain—and she realized it was her pain. Never had she encountered a man who could feel so much for anyone outside of himself. “Y-yes, I’m gentle in the sense that, because of my abilities, I can’t tolerate the normal stresses this society puts on us.” With a sigh, she added, “That’s why I have a small house near the edge of the city. I need the earth nearby, not the noise, the hustle or the frantic energy that city life provides. I’ve always found peace in my garden.”
“But not in people?”
His insight stunned her. Ellie swallowed convulsively. “How can you see through me so easily?”
“I’m a pilot as a profession, a human being all the time, Ellie.”
She knew he didn’t mean that as a barb. Hanging her head, she whispered, “I’m afraid of you, Mac. Actually, I’m more afraid of myself. You scare me because you make me feel emotions I’ve never felt. You give me hope, but I’m too scared to reach out and take it.”
Gently, he picked up her hand and placed it between his own. The jet ride could wait. This was more important. “Look,” Mac began huskily, “let the time we spend together talk to you, Ellie. I know we all put up walls, we project on other people, on situations. When you look at me, your brain says ‘Brian.”’ He smiled a little, a catch in his voice. “What I keep hoping is that your heart sees me.”
Closing her eyes, Ellie felt tears begin to form. “You’re an eagle. I’m a dove.”
“Can a bird of war get along with a bird of peace?” Mac posed softly. He patted her hand and allowed her to reclaim it. As she opened her eyes, he saw the tears in them. Without a word, he pulled a white handkerchief from the side pocket of his flight suit and handed it to her. He hoped the tears symbolized something good between them, not something negative. After blotting her eyes, she refolded the handkerchief and gave it back to him. Without a word, he stuffed it away and zipped the pocket up again.
“Come on, let’s fly,” he whispered, and opened the door of the car.
Ellie perked up as Mac’s enthusiastic crew surrounded them at the base of the ladders to the huge, gleaming jet. She was in awe of the power that surrounded the aircraft, and now understood a little better why Mac had that same power around him. It were as if two giants with equal strength, intelligence and competitiveness had met. Who would be the eventual winner? It had to be Mac, she surmised as she climbed carefully up the aluminium ladder to the rear cockpit seat. His world was one of metal, instruments and cold, hard reality. What he saw on the instrument panel before him was everything—his life or his death.
After she was strapped into the harness system and the helmet had been settled on her head, Ellie watched with fascination as Mac climbed up the ladder and moved into the front cockpit. He was all-business, and so was his crew. She sat in the hot sun, sweat beginning to form on her brow. She couldn’t remember ever feeling more confined.
As the ladders were withdrawn from the sleek aircraft, Ellie saw the crew chief give a signal with her hands. Mac acknowledged the signal, and suddenly the entire jet began to tremble. The quivering reminded Ellie of a horse she had grown up with on the reservation, an old thoroughbred who had outlasted his usefulness on the race track, but had never forgotten how to run. Every time she’d thrown her bare leg across his narrow, ridged back, she’d felt the very same quiver—one of anticipation mingled with excitement.
The huge Plexiglas canopy slowly came down over them. A rasping sound came through the headset within the helmet, and then Ellie heard Mac’s voice.
“We’re on intercabin frequency as well as with my crew chief,” he told her briskly. “Right now I’m running through a final check of all my instruments and making sure both engines are in good shape. How you doing back there?”
She smiled nervously. “Okay, I guess. I was thinking this jet was like a thoroughbred gelding I used to ride when I was growing up. He always quivered when he wanted to run.”
Mac’s laugh was husky. “Yep, this girl of mine likes to run, too.”
“You call this plane a girl?”
Chuckling, Mac looked up and snapped a sharp salute to his crew chief. “Listen, when a plane has this much power, it’s gotta be a woman.”
“On that we agree.” Ellie laughed. Her excitement doubled as the engines began to whine higher and louder, although the sound was somewhat muted by the helmet she wore. Still, she could feel the power, the trembling, through every pore, bone and muscle in her body.
“Okay, let’s stroll on out to the takeoff point,” he told her.
Ellie felt the engines begin a deeper growl, felt the jet gently begin to move forward. It gave her a euphoric sense of power, with none of the foreboding she’d thought would accompany it. From the ground, the jet had looked predatory. Riding in it gave her an altogether different outlook. She felt as if she was master over a very powerful piece of machinery.
At the ramp, another vehicle came up and several men got out.
“Put your hands up on the edge of the cockpit. Those fellows are the armorers, and they’re going to check beneath the wings of the jet. They want to see our hands, because that means we won’t accidentally run over them.”
There was amusement in Mac’s voice, but she knew he was serious. She saw him place both hands at the top of aircraft frame, in plain sight. As soon as she did the same, the three crewmen disappeared beneath their plane for the inspection.
“You aren’t carrying any weapons, are you?”
“No, but we always go through this drill. How you doing back there?”
“Fine. Excited. Scared.”
“I feel the excitement every time I sit in this hot seat up here.”
“I can see why you love to fly. This plane is awesome.”
Chuckling, Mac nodded. “Welcome to my world, Ms. O’Gentry.”
“Your world is something else.” She saw the three air crewmen reappear and move back to their vehicle. One saluted, and she saw Mac snap a return salute.
“Okay, we’re ready to roll. Your harness good and tight?”
“So tight I feel like my blood supply is cut off,” Ellie complained.
“You won’t feel that way after we take off, believe me,” he replied dryly.
Ellie heard the engines growl again, and once more, he eased the huge jet forward. All around her was desert; cactus, chaparral and sandy soil surrounded the long, black runway. She looked up through the Plexiglas canopy and saw how light the sky was. Far above them were horsetail-cirrus clouds, long, fine and filmy. It was a beautiful morning.
“Ready for takeoff?” Mac asked her, settling both feet hard on the rudders to make the jet stop as he started to ease both throttles forward.
“Yes.”
He smiled to himself as he heard the excitement in her voice. “Okay, we’re going to make an afterburner’s takeoff. At the end of the runway, I’m going to stand this girl on her tail and we’re going to go straight up for thirty thousand feet. This is called grandstanding. It impresses everyone.” He chuckled. “You’re going to feel a lot of pressure on your body—that’s just gravity. So relax, let it push you into the seat and enjoy the ride.”
Ellie nodded tensely. Her heart was pumping hard. “Okay,” she whispered. Mac didn’t have to tell her what to expect, but he had, and she was grateful. In her right hand, she clutched the airsick bag.
“Your oxygen mask strapped on?” Mac asked as he began to inch the throttles toward the afterburner range.
“Yes.”
“Good. Okay, we’ve got clearance. Here we go—the eagle and the dove together.”
Ellie didn’t have time to respond to his words. The instant Mac released the rudders, she was slammed hard against the seat. Her breath was squeezed out of her as the engines roared, caught and moved into the afterburner range. The ground was moving so fast that it made her dizzy. The pressure on her body increased as the jet raced down the runway. Somewhere in her spinning thoughts, she knew Mac loved this. The jet was like an unleashed cougar running down the airstrip, howling and snarling.
Ellie gasped loudly as, at the end of the runway, Mac suddenly brought the jet into a ninety-degree turn, and they were heading straight up toward the sky. She could barely catch her breath, the pressure was so intense. The throbbing, pounding pulse of the jet engines converged in a rhythmic unison that seemed to permeate her soul. Shutting her eyes tightly, Ellie could feel the sensations, the pressure, the pain in her thighs as the g-chaps inflated tight and hard against her lower extremities. She opened her eyes slightly and saw the light blue sky was getting darker.
“Ten thousand,” Mac told her.
Ellie heard the strain in his voice. Yet he seemed alert. Her brain felt fuzzy, and her eyesight was graying.
“Fifteen.”
The pressure increased on her entire body and Ellie could barely move her fingers. She felt crushed against the seat, as if a huge, invisible hand was pressing down on her. Her eyes felt as if they were being pushed back through the rear of her skull. The oxygen mask bit sharply into the flesh across the bridge of her nose.
“Twenty.”
Gasping, she tried to breathe. She heard Mac grunting through the headset and remembered belatedly that she should be doing the same thing. The grunting brought oxygen back into the body.
“Twenty-five.”
Ellie felt like a puppet whose strings belonged to someone else. She could only lie flattened against the seat, gasping, trying to hold on to consciousness.
“Leveling out at thirty….”
Suddenly, the gravity, the crush, began to release her. Ellie’s vision cleared remarkably swiftly as Mac brought the jet into level flight. To her amazement, the sky up here was a dark, cobalt blue. They were flying within filmy cirrus clouds. The view was awe inspiring, and Ellie gasped again—this time not for oxygen, but for the overwhelming beauty surrounding them.
“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Mac asked.
Shaken, Ellie wondered if he’d read her thoughts. Breathing through the oxygen mask was demanding, but she managed to find her voice and said, “I never realized how beautiful it was up here.”
“Most don’t, or we’d all be pilots.” Mac chuckled indulgently. He lifted his gloved hand and pointed upward. “If you go to forty thousand, the sky becomes almost like night. It reminds me of a dark blue sapphire. It’s breathtaking.”
“Y-yes, it’s all breathtaking.”
“You doing okay?”
“I think so….”
“What did you think of the gravity?”
“Awful!”
Mac laughed. “Yeah, it’s a dog, all right. How did you like elevator flight? Pretty impressive, huh?”
Mac was like a little boy sharing his favorite marbles with her, Ellie thought. She could hear the joy in his voice. “It was something else,” she agreed. “It was uncomfortable.”
“After a while, it gets to be one hell of a joyride,” Mac told her enthusiastically as he banked the jet to the left. “It’s like riding an exploding cannon, only you’re strapped onto the front of it.”
Laughing a little, Ellie said, “I think you’re right, but I still feel like I’m not fully in my body yet.”
“A little like being in an altered state?”
“How could you know?”
“Flying’s a little like your journeying, I think. When the blood leaves my head on tight turns or afterburner stage, I don’t feel very much in my body, either. In fact, it’s a struggle to stay in it. With all the blood draining from my brain, I want to lose consciousness.”
“I’m impressed,” Ellie said simply, “with your insight. But when I journey, Mac, the blood doesn’t leave my head.”
“I know that. But I think the feeling may be the same.”
“It is.” She was humbled by his struggle to understand her and her world in the context of his own.
“You’re awful quiet back there,” he said after five minutes of silence.
“I was thinking,” Ellie admitted.
“Yes?”
“About you.” She looked around through the clear canopy, once again struck by the ephemeral beauty of the sky that embraced them. “You love flying because it gives you a sense of freedom.”
“Actually,” Mac drawled, “a release.”
“From what?”
“Life down on the ground. Up here there are no hassles, no managerial problems facing me—”
“No wrenches thrown through the air?”
He laughed deep and long. “Bingo. You got it.”
“How do you feel after you land?”
“Like I want to climb right back and take off again.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Mac admitted thoughtfully, glancing around, always on the lookout for other aircraft. He pointed the jet toward Flagstaff, a good one hundred miles away. “I can think better up here. I have clarity, I guess. I can have a headache at the office, but if I fly on that day, the headache goes away.”
“That’s a little what journeying is like for me,” Ellie told him. Below, she could see the desert and small, green shapes she assumed to be cactus. “When I’m in that altered state, I feel lighter, freer.”
“Do you like coming back?”
“I don’t mind it. But then, I don’t journey to escape, Mac. Do you fly to escape?”
He chuckled. “Sometimes I do—I have to admit it. Being up here makes me feel better. When you come back from a journey, do you feel better?”
“Every time. It’s a very energizing, vital thing to me, and I always feel better when I come back. There have been times I’ve had to journey when I wasn’t feeling very well. Afterward, I always feel wonderful.”
“So do I. See? We aren’t as different as you might think.”
Touched, Ellie said nothing. Ahead, she could see what looked like a nap over the curved surface of the earth, and she was sure it was forest. “Where are you taking us?”
“I thought we’d tour Flag and look at the red rocks of Sedona, then go home. I’ve got an hour of flight time, and I want to use all of it.”
Smiling, Ellie truly began to relax. The pressures were no longer on her body, and she was able to breathe without trouble. “I can see why you like your world. It’s a beautiful one.”
“Up here,” Mac agreed, “everything looks good. Up here I don’t see the violence, the pollution, or hear the bad news from around the world.”
“It’s a very safe place,” Ellie agreed.
“In one way. Right now you’re getting the nickel tour, with no jet acrobatics or the type of flying I usually do when I’m training for dogfights.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, it’s usually a lot more violent, a lot more physically demanding.”
“As brutal as that vertical climb?”
“The same, sometimes worse.”
Ellie shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Believe me, flying these jets is for young bodies only. I’m reaching the upper limits of my flying, age-wise. I don’t take the g’s as well as I used to, and I’m taking vitamin A to keep my night vision top-notch.”
“You mean you’ll have to stop flying?”
“Eventually, they’ll ground me to a complete desk job and I’ll be allowed only so many flight hours a month. I’ll fly a desk, not a plane.”
Ellie heard the sadness in his voice. “I don’t know how I’d feel if my ability to journey was taken away from me.”
“It’s not a day I’m looking forward to, believe me. I’ve thought about resigning and flying commercial planes. That way, I can continue to fly, at least until I’m sixty.”
“But no afterburners, no vertical climbs,” Ellie noted.
“No,” Mac said, “but I’m an eagle, remember? I don’t want my wings clipped. I don’t want to be grounded for the rest of my life. Flying’s in my blood, like journeying is in yours. Maybe it’s genetic. Who knows? If I don’t get at least fifteen hours of flying a month, I’m a bastard to be around.”
Ellie laughed. “Well, I don’t have that kind of mood turn if I don’t journey.”
“How many a month do you do?”
“I do up to four a day. That’s all I can tolerate without becoming completely ungrounded or feeling spacey all the time.”
“Four journeys for four different people?”
“Yes.”
“You usually do them in the morning?”
“Shamans vary,” Ellie told him as she watched the dark green carpet of forest beneath them. To the left, she could see the red sandstone formations surrounding Sedona. “I was taught to do my journeying when I was at my strongest point. For me, that’s the morning. That’s when my energy is at its peak.”
“I’ve been trying to understand what you do,” Mac said, banking the plane to the left to take in the red-rock view. “You have to have a tremendous amount of concentration and focus, just like I do when I fly a plane.”
“That’s right,” Ellie said. She smiled softly. “Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to find every possible parallel between flying and journeying you can?”
“Because,” Mac said dryly, “I’m trying to get you to see that we’re not so different, after all.”
“You do it physically. I do mine mentally.”
“So what?”
Ellie wrestled with his challenge. “It’s not that easy to make a comparison, Mac.”
“I think it is.”
“That’s because you want to find similarities.”
“Anything wrong with that?”
Ellie tried to concentrate on the beauty of the sandstone formations below them. At this altitude she could see the entire area. She knew from talking to local Navajo and Hopi medicine people that the Sedona area was considered highly sacred, a woman’s area; even to this day, ceremonies were performed there.
“Cat got your tongue?” Mac teased as he turned the jet back toward Phoenix.
“No….”
“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what you said earlier about mental telepathy.”
“Oh?”
“I guess I have my share of it,” Mac admitted. “Before meeting you, I just wasn’t tuned in to that portion of myself.”
“All humans have the capacity for mental telepathy.”
“I won’t disagree. One time my crew chief, Sergeant Susan Greer, had this hunch that something was wrong with one of the engines on this jet. It was just a feeling. I was supposed to fly that morning, but she asked me to scrub the mission in order to check out the engine. I was a little uptight about it, because with my schedule, flying time isn’t always easily arranged, but I trusted her.” Mac chuckled. “Wouldn’t you know, Susan found that one of the blades in the engine had a nice big fracture through it. If I’d disregarded her hunch and flown, that engine piece would have loosened and ended up tearing the hell out of the rest of it and probably exploding.”
A chill ran down Ellie’s back. “That’s terrible!”
“It could have been,” Mac told her blithely, “but my gut told me to listen to Susan and trust her judgment. I’m glad I did.” He began to ease the jet down from thirty thousand, only this time, he did it more gradually, so that it was comfortable for Ellie. “I’ve been remembering a lot of incidents like that over the last two weeks.”
“Humans sometimes work out of the right brain without ever knowing it.”
“I believe that now. I do. I have to admit I was skeptical at first, but the more we talked, and the more I thought about it, the more sense it all made.”
If only Brian could have gleaned such wisdom from his life and applied it to hers! Ellie shook her head. She saw the last of the forest carpet fade away and the gold-and-red sand begin. For some reason, she didn’t want this flight to end.
“When we get back, I’d like to take you to the O Club on base for breakfast. We’ll land at 0930. What do you say?”
Her stomach was growling. Ellie wondered if he could hear it through his headset and then laughed at herself. Of course he couldn’t! Mac had warned her not to eat any breakfast, to reduce the chance of air-sickness.
“I am hungry.”
“Okay. The Officers Club is a nice place. They serve up a mean chili omelet.”
“Chili? This time of morning?”
Laughing, Mac said, “I like hot food. When I got assigned to Luke last year, I was in seventh heaven with all the Mexican food. Salsa, hot sauce and red-hot peppers are my favorites.”
“You’re a lot braver than I am.” Ellie laughed. “Thanks, but I think I’ll settle for a very bland plate of scrambled eggs and bacon.”
“Anything the lady wants,” Mac drawled.
Ellie was a little shaky after climbing out of all the gear. Mac smiled understandingly, put his hand beneath her elbow and led her out into the bright, hot sunlight.
“I feel reborn,” Ellie said.
“How so?” He opened her car door.
“I just feel cleaner, as if somehow flying cleansed my aura. I get a similar sensation when I swim or take a shower.” Ellie climbed in and buckled the seat belt.
Mac was happier than he could ever recall. He climbed into the car and placed the key into the ignition. Glancing over at Ellie, whose cheeks were flaming red, he said, “Flying is like a hot shower to me, too.” But about now he could use a cold shower. Every little movement Ellie made entranced him. He simply couldn’t get enough of her. There was such a vibrant look to her golden eyes, to the soft curve of her lips. And her hair… He groaned to himself and forced his attention to the road. Ellie’s hair was in disarray, tendrils softening the natural angularity of her cheekbones. Mac found himself wanting to tame each errant strand back into place, the sensation electric and heated.
At the O Club, Mac asked for and got a booth in a quiet corner. Not many officers were in the club right now, since it was past breakfast and most of them were at work. He felt as if he was walking on clouds with Ellie at his side. After they were seated, he ordered them strong, black coffee. Folding his hands, he smiled across the table at her.
“You look a little like a fish out of water here,” he observed.
Ellie opened her purse and pulled out her brush. “Wearing civilian clothes around here does make me stand out,” she noted with a smile. She saw Mac’s eyes grow hooded as she unpinned her hair and allowed it to tumble loose across her back and shoulders.
Mac tried to tame his reaction to Ellie’s innocent action. Her hair, rich and abundant, flowed like a black river through her long, brown fingers, and he ached to reach out and touch those vibrant strands. Swallowing hard, he tried to focus on something else. He grabbed his coffee cup and took a quick gulp, nearly burning his mouth in the process.
Grasping for a safe topic, he decided to talk about his youth. “When I was a kid growing up in Oregon, I used to watch the bald eagles flying. I would sit on top of one of the sand dunes and watch those birds for hours. My mother used to accuse me of being a daydreamer. When I was seven I thought that if I wanted a pair of wings badly enough, they would replace my arms.” He smiled sheepishly. “Crazy, huh?”
Touched, Ellie shook her head. “I was taught a long time ago that anything we really desire out of life, we can make come into reality. You wanted to be a bird, so the next best thing was to become a pilot. You might not have known it at the time, but out of your heart, your desire, you created a situation that fit into this third-dimensional reality. Your plane has wings.”
Chuckling, he nodded. “When you were a little girl, did you want to grow up to be a shamaness?”
Ellie shook her head. “Not consciously.”
“Subconsciously?”
“I must have or I wouldn’t have created this reality I live in.”
“Interesting philosophy,” Mac said. “That whatever we desire can be ours.”
“Up to a point, it’s true,” Ellie told him seriously, sipping her coffee. “I believe we have many lives, and before we go into a life, we choose what we want to learn in that lifetime. We may have to pay back some people, or give to others, plus try to learn what we’ve set out to master in this lifetime.”
“That’s called karma, right?”
“There’s karma, which is what you owe others, and dharma, which is a gift you deserve. It’s a give-and-take system.”
“Give me an example.” Mac liked her intelligence, her very different way of seeing the world.
“Well,” Ellie said, “from a personal standpoint, I met Brian. He was highly prejudiced against me, against my beliefs. Unfortunately, I was young and naive, and I believed love could overcome such things. One time, I journeyed to find out why we had this standoff, and my spirit guide took me into a past life where Brian was a Puritan and I was a European landowner. I did not have any religious tolerance toward him, and I threw him off my land, along with his family of seven children. Four of them died of starvation, and eventually, he went to America.” She shrugged. “You see, I wasn’t very tolerant of his beliefs, so in this lifetime, I got paid back for being that way. I learned to be highly tolerant of whatever reality a person wants to have—whether spiritual, religious or otherwise. So Brian was a good teacher to me in that way.”
“Turnabout is fair play with karma?”
“You could say that.”
Mac frowned. “You said you went into a past life you’d had with Brian. Is that something else you do as a shamaness?”
“On occasion. I don’t make a practice of it. In Brian’s case, I was trying to retrieve any missing pieces of his soul so that he could be whole in this lifetime. I felt that if I was allowed to collect those missing parts of him, no matter where they were—in this life or some other—that our marriage could endure.”
“What happened?”
“I was able to recover the piece he’d lost in that past life and bring it back.”
“Was he more tolerant of you then?”
With a sad smile, Ellie shook her head. “No, less.”
The waitress came over and they gave their orders. Mac had a million questions to ask Ellie, but he tried not to appear too eager for fear of making her retreat once again.
“Is it common for a husband or wife to take pieces from each other?”
“Oh, yes,” Ellie said, leaning back, her hands around the warm cup. “Even in the most positive of marriages, partners usually take from one another. They can’t help themselves, sometimes, and it’s usually done unconsciously.”
“Can you give me an example?”
Ellie smiled at him. Mac was desperately trying to understand her world. The discovery touched her deeply, and yet she wasn’t sure why he was so interested. Was he hoping she would drop her guard, so he could take advantage of her? No, her heart told her, he’s sincere. Ellie would have been less scared if Mac had been like a couple of other men she’d known who had simply wanted her body. But he wasn’t talking with her at length just for that—although she knew he was drawn to her. She could see the thoughtfulness in his dark, questioning eyes, and could hear it in the tenor of his deep voice. And she could see him struggling to put all this varied information together.
“I can cite my own marriage. I was so head over heels in love with Brian that I ignored his lack of tolerance. I thought I’d be excluded from that, but I was wrong. When I went on the first journey in his behalf, I found out I’d taken a piece of him, too. I was horrified that I’d done that, knowing what I do about the process. But, as my spirit guide explained to me, when we’re needy, we take—whether it’s right or wrong. We do it because we’re human beings. Because we’re imperfect.”
“I must have a whole bunch of pieces of my ex-wife, Johanna,” Mac said grimly.
“What makes you think so?” Ellie desperately wanted to know about him as a man, and how he was in relationships.
“I loved her and I didn’t want the divorce,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. “She accused me of loving flying more than her.”
“Did you?”
“I…don’t know.” Mac shrugged almost painfully. “I was angry and upset with her when she accused me of that. I denied it. Later, when I got some distance on it, I could see her side of it. Anyway, I didn’t want to lose Johanna, and I made it tough on her during the divorce hearing. I kept wanting us to try again, to try to patch it up. Eventually, she wore me down and I gave up. I got the message.”
“That you loved your job more than her?”
“Yes. At least, that’s the way she saw it.”
“You probably have a couple of pieces of her,” Ellie murmured.
Mac studied her for a long moment. “Could you give them back to her?”
She sat very still. “Are you asking me to do this out of your own curiosity about what I do, or are you asking because you care about Johanna?”
With a sigh, Mac said, “Both, to be honest.”
“So, if I journey on your ex-wife’s behalf, you want to test out what I do?”
“Yes, but only if it will help Johanna. She hasn’t been well since the divorce, and I feel like I have something to do with that. Maybe I don’t.” He smiled sourly. “Maybe I’m crazy.”
“No,” Ellie said softly, “you aren’t. Very frequently, when major pieces are taken from a person, they become ill. The more that’s taken, the more chronic the condition.”
“She contracted allergies after our divorce,” he said unhappily, “and she’s gone to a string of allergists. All they do is give her shots, and she’s more miserable.”
“Stress from a divorce is enough to make any immune system become depressed, and allergies could certainly develop as a result,” Ellie said. “I’ll journey for her, Mac, but understand I’ll only help if I’m given permission to help her.”
“Isn’t my asking you to help enough?”
“No, because on that shamanistic level, I’m dealing with the lifelong karma of an individual. If I go in and ‘fix’ something that shouldn’t be fixed—because the soul is supposed to learn from that situation in this lifetime—I’m in trouble. I can wind up with the karma that person was trying to work through, and I have no desire to handle any more than my own.” Her mouth tugged into a grimace. “I have plenty.”
The waitress came and delivered their breakfast orders. Mac thanked her and dug into his Mexican omelet. He saw Ellie roll her eyes.
“You must have a cast-iron stomach,” she muttered as she cut into her own breakfast.
“I just like hot things.”
“Yes,” Ellie said, “hot cars, hot jets and probably hot women, not necessarily in that order.”
Grinning, Mac said, “You cut me to the quick. It’s true, I have a fast car—”
“And you fly a fast jet.”
“My taste in women,” he informed her, raising one eyebrow, “is different.”
“Really?” Ellie wanted to ask him bluntly what kind of women he liked. She found it difficult to believe Mac was interested in her. He could probably have his pick of women—why would he single out someone so different from himself.
Mac knew what Ellie was implying, and he could see that her curiosity was getting the better of her. “What?” he asked. “You think I only date carbon copies of myself?”
“Not necessarily,” Ellie hedged defensively.
“Actually, Johanna was a bit like you,” he said dryly. “She liked gardening and was on the quiet side.” But that was where the similarities ended. Johanna constantly worried about her weight; Ellie did not. Johanna was tall and modellike; Ellie was shorter and wonderfully rounded in all the right places. Johanna had always been extremely dependent; Ellie had a full, happy life of her own. “But,” he teased, taking another bite of omelet, “Johanna had short hair and I like long hair. Very long, dark hair…”
Blushing, Ellie avoided his dancing, amused look. “Well,” she whispered, spearing at her eggs, “let’s just stick to the business at hand, Major. I’ll do a journey for your wife today, when I get home. I’ll call you tomorrow morning with the results. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough,” Mac murmured, wanting to reach out and touch her flaming cheek. There was no pretense with Ellie, and he found that admirable. She made no apologies for who she was and what she felt.
Mac was at his office at 0730 the next morning. Most of the air force would be starting work at 0800. His office door was shut and he was catching up on some paperwork when his phone rang.
“Major Stanford,” he answered.
“Mac? It’s Ellie.”
He smiled and sat back in his chair. “Good morning.” Yesterday, after they’d shared breakfast at the O Club, Mac had wanted to kiss her goodbye, but his head and his heart had warned him not to overstep his bounds with her. At least, not yet. But she’d been in his thoughts ever since.
“You sound chipper this morning,” Ellie said, a smile in her voice.
“I am, as a matter of fact.”
“Is that a normal condition for you at this hour?”
“Not exactly.” He gripped his mug of coffee and took a sip. “Usually, for the first hour I’m a bear, and no one dares talk to me. I need three cups of coffee to wake up. This morning, I bounded out of bed at 0600 and was at the office working an hour later.”
“Sounds as if my journey worked. I received permission to get pieces for you as well as Johanna.”
“Oh?” He sat up, suddenly at full attention. “What exactly happened?”
“When I went into the journey, my guide told me you both had pieces of each other, which is normal. He gave me permission to help both of you. I’ll tell you what I saw, if you’d like.”
“Sure, go ahead.” Curiosity was eating Mac up. He had attributed his atypical burst of energy this morning to the time he’d spent with Ellie. Could there possibly be a more mystical explanation?
“The first place I went was the real world. You see, in the journeying mode, there are three places I can go—the light world, the real world and the dark world. These are just names for various dimensions, so don’t get hung up on the wording. It’s just how I perceive them when I’m in an altered state.”
“So far, so good.”
“My guide took me to a house. I saw you and Johanna in the kitchen, and you were arguing with each other. I want to describe her to you because it will help me double-check my own work.”
“Okay…”
“The woman was about five feet ten inches tall and was built like a stick.”
Mac chuckled. “Johanna is six feet tall and weighs exactly one hundred and thirty pounds. I guess you might call that a stick.”
“She had short red hair and a lot of freckles across her nose and cheeks.”
Dumbfounded, Mac nodded. “Yes, that’s right.” He was amazed at her accuracy. Could something have really happened? How else could she know so much? “What else?” he urged.
“She has blue eyes, and at the time of your argument, she was wearing long, beaded earrings. They were gold.”
“Johanna had a favorite pair of gold beaded earrings,” Mac confirmed. “This is amazing.”
“Let’s just see if I’m correct about the rest,” she warned him seriously. “I don’t know what the fight was about, but I saw you coming at her—not attacking her, exactly, but you did grip her by the shoulders. She didn’t like your manhandling her that way, and she pulled away and slapped you in the face.”
Mac shook his head, the memory of that particular fight coming back to him.
“Mac? Are you still there?”
“Uh, yes. Go on, Ellie.”
“Did it happen as I described it?”
“Yes,” he said heavily. “It was the first—and only—time in our marriage that I ever laid a hand on her. The divorce hearing was the next day, and I was desperate. I had just come back from Desert Storm, and the divorce papers had been sent to me over in Saudi Arabia. I was going out of my mind. Johanna wouldn’t talk to me on the phone the few times I could get to one, and she wouldn’t answer my letters. So this was my only chance. I was trying to talk her into waiting for at least a couple of months before she went through with the divorce. I wanted her to give us—me—one more chance. I know I shouldn’t have grabbed her. I guess I just lost it.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellie whispered. “I saw a piece of you split off when she slapped you, and that was the one I retrieved from her to give back to you.”
Rubbing his brow, Mac said, “This is incredible. I never told anyone about that fight. Not anyone.”
“And I’ll never tell another living soul,” Ellie promised. “Your privacy is safe with me, Mac. I keep all my clients’ business confidential—just as a doctor or lawyer would.”
He smiled slightly through the haze of pain he was experiencing. “That’s funny.”
“What’s funny?” she asked.
“I had a dream about Johanna. That’s why I woke up at 0600.”
“What was the dream about? Can you tell me?”
“I dreamed I went to her and told her she could live her life in peace, that I forgave her and myself for the way I’d screwed up the marriage. I wished her well, and I meant it.”
“How beautiful. Sometimes, when people get pieces back, they have dreams the night they’re brought back, or a week or so later. That kind of confirms that I did my job.”
“What did I have of Johanna?”
“I was taken to the real world again for you, and I saw Johanna in this beautiful, Victorian-decorated room.”
“That was our bedroom,” he said. “She decorated it herself.”
“It was beautiful….” Ellie sighed. “I saw Johanna take off her wedding ring and a fairly large diamond solitaire, and put them in a jewelry box. When I came in and told Johanna who I was and why I was there, I asked her if she had anything that belonged to you. She gave me a very sad smile, opened the jewelry box and handed me the set of rings. She said they had always belonged to you. I brought the rings back and blew them into your heart and the top of your head.”
“I’ll be damned.” Mac sat there in stunned silence. He wiped his mouth with his hand. “No one knew this, but Johanna sent back the rings after the divorce became final. Usually, the woman keeps them, but she didn’t want any part of me, not even the rings.”
Ellie hurt for Mac. “At least now you are both free of each other. The feeling you had when you woke up will continue, Mac.”
“This happiness?”
“Yes.”
“I thought that was just because of you.”
She laughed shyly. “Don’t be surprised if you hear from Johanna very soon. Often when a person gets a missing piece back, she’ll get the urge to contact the other party, without realizing why. Subconsciously, she knows something is different.”
“This is fascinating,” Mac said. “And I can’t thank you enough for doing it—for both of us.”
“You mean you believe me?”
“How could I not? You gave me two pieces of information no one else in the world knew.”
“You sound a little amazed.”
“I’m amazed at you, at your talent.”
She smiled a little. “Now you see why I do it, Mac. Recovering soul pieces is a miracle. It’s real, and it works. But I never try to make someone believe me. I let my work speak for me. In your case, you’ll continue to get validation. If Johanna calls, let me know.”
Mac shook his head. “If she calls, that will be a miracle in itself.”
“Why?”
“Because when she moved out of Phoenix a year ago and went back East, she refused to give me her forwarding address. I guess she thought I was going to pursue her or something.”
“Were you going to?”
“No. The day she slapped me in the kitchen, I knew it was over. Really over. We went to divorce court and I didn’t fight it or her.”
“I’m sure you’ve had a lot of time since to think about what you did wrong or could have done better?”
“Years.” He laughed, suddenly lighter and happier than he could ever recall. He glanced up and saw his master sergeant, Gus Calhoon, heading for his door. “Listen, I’ve got to go, but I want to thank you. Can I pay you for this journey?”
“Of course not.”
“Are you sure?”
“Remember, I work for small donations only. In your case, I’m treating you as I would a friend. I would never accept anything, Mac. It’s just my way of helping out, that’s all.”
Frowning, Mac said, “You deserve something.”
“Just say thank you,” she told him with a laugh.
“Thank you, and you haven’t heard the last of this—or me.”
And as Mac turned his attention to the papers Gus presented for his signature, he couldn’t decide which was more amazing—the story Ellie had just related, or the fact that he could accept her story as the absolute truth.