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  Anywhere You Are

  Constance O’Day-Flannery

  Dear Reader,

  I truly never expected to make a career out of writing, especially about the magical possibilities of time. Yet, I have always been fascinated by the connection between past, present, and future, and I can vividly recall the words with which my father inspired me. "Connie," he said, "don't ever be afraid of dying. It's only falling asleep in one world and waking up in the next." Twenty years later, that wisdom became the basis for my first time travel romance.

  After writing ten books, I decided to take a break, to step aside and write contemporary fiction, but time continued to haunt me…..Then one extraordinary day when my daughter challenged me to skydive with her, it slammed into my consciousness with such a force that I knew I'd return to my first love. Time Travel. That experience of skydiving begins this book and has led me on an incredible adventure… to discover that time is an illusion we are only just beginning to glimpse.

  I've often been asked to define time travel fiction. To me, it enables one to experience the past or the future without sacrificing the present. It is unpredictable, mysterious, adventurous, hopeful—just like love, its natural complement.

  I hope you enjoy this new journey where anything is possible. It could happen… Anywhere You Are.

  Kindest regards,

  Constance O’Day-Flannery

  To Christine Laidlaw, Ann O'Day, Patricia Woollett, Colleen Bosler, Patricia Trowbridge, Helen Breitwieser… for their friendship, support and their loyalty to purpose. I will treasure each one, each memory, each unique view that broadened my own. All are "memory makers," gifted women, and I am honored to call each of them friend. Thank you, ladies.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Postgraph

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  She was doing it for love… and sometimes love got you into trouble. Deep trouble. What else could explain her being suited up like a spaceman and seated on this narrow bench, ready to hurl herself from a perfectly good plane out into the universe? It simply had to be love. Or… she was crazy.

  Mairie Callahan preferred to think it was love, for she had fought for her sanity in the last few years since her divorce. She was sticking to her story. Love… that was it. Only this time it wasn't for a man who promised to honor and cherish her in sickness and in health, and then turn around six years later and find a younger version to replace her. She was through with unfulfilled bogus dreams. This time it was for a deeper love, a love that resonated within her DNA.

  Breathing hard in a futile attempt to release anxiety, Mairie glanced at her brother, who was grinning like a fool as he looked out the small window down to the earth. Despite the mounting fear that seemed to crawl over her body like a monstrous snake and squeeze her breath, she knew she would do anything for him. Anything. Whatever he wanted, she was a willing participant. Every day, every experience, was now a miracle and she was going to file each one away in her heart.

  Bryan looked away from the window and laughed. "We're really gonna do this, kiddo! Thanks…"

  She tried forcing her lips into a smile, yet her stomach was screaming out to her that she was the fool. What kind of people did this? Skydiving was no sport. It was for those who needed a thrill beyond what life offered. Maybe that's why Bryan wanted to do it so much. He was determined to experience everything he ever wanted in whatever time was left to him.

  He brought his arm around her shoulders and hugged her. "C'mon, you're going to be fine. I'll go first and you follow me," he yelled, over the roar of the engine.

  She merely nodded. Right… just as she had followed him to Peru to climb Machu Picchu. To Australia, to scuba dive at the Great Barrier Reef. To Alaska, to kayak with the whales. She would follow him anywhere. Do anything he wanted. As long as he drew breath, she would be there cheering for him. As much as she tried to repress the memory, in a matter of moments her mind ran through scenarios of Bryan telling her that he was terminal. Her shock, anger, grief. She saw herself quitting her job, withdrawing all her money, and taking off with her older brother like two middle-aged hippies determined to find the meaning of life and experience it. With both their parents killed in a fire when she and Bryan were in college, he was her only family now, and she loved him unconditionally.

  Glancing at him as he checked his harness, Mairie again wondered how someone so handsome, so loving, so vital could be dying. It didn't make sense. And it was so unfair. That was it. It was the unfairness of it all that ate away at her gut. She felt helpless to stop this unseen, silent invader, but as long as there was life she would stick by Bryan's side and tell it to screw off. Together, they would live to see another day.

  When the instructor slid open the door and yelled at them to get ready, all Mairie's bravado against death seemed to disappear as her own loomed as a distinct possibility. What if the chute didn't open? No matter that she had packed and repacked the damn thing fifteen times. What if something happened? She could have a heart attack or a stroke. It wasn't unheard of at thirty-seven. It could happen … she could really die doing this! She almost lost her nerve as the small cabin filled with a tremendous force of wind and her body felt paralyzed with fear. Love, or craziness? Both, she finally decided.

  "You can do it, Mar," Bryan yelled at her.

  He could always read her, she thought, hearing him call her by her nickname. It was just like when he was teaching her to ride a two-wheeler. Holding the back of the seat to help her maintain balance, he had kept pace with her all around the block. You can do it, Mar, he had shouted, when he'd let go and she had been on her own, fighting gravity. And he'd been right. She had done it.

  How she loved him. He was intelligent, kind, funny, compassionate—a human being of worth. And he was dying.

  "Look out the door and see your marker," the instructor yelled.

  Mairie tried to rise, yet all the gear she was wearing made it feel as if she'd gained thirty pounds. Bryan helped her and she grabbed hold of the door handle to stand upright.

  Her brain seemed like a crashed hard drive, spinning crazily, as she looked down to the earth so very far away. A mountain range, partially obscured by haze. A desert spread out below her. The gaudy glitter of Las Vegas a mere outline of buildings in the far distance. It was surreal. Thirteen thousand feet… how the hell was she supposed to do this? As the wind robbed her of breath, every instinct was urging her to sit back down, to call this off, for somehow she knew that if she went through that door her life was going to be altered. It was like a primal warning.

  "I love you, kiddo."

  While the instructor checked their gear, Bryan pulled back the Plexiglas shield of his helmet and smiled at her with such joy that Mairie's heart constricted. She pulled back her own so he could see her eyes and together they gazed at each other for a timeless moment. It had to be true that the eyes were the windows of the soul, for what she was feeling went beyond earthly love. They were family, but it was even m
ore profound than sharing genes. It was a knowing. They were eternally connected.

  "We're both crazy, you realize that," she yelled back.

  Laughing, Bryan nodded. "Yup… crazy. But we're alive, right? We've left the rest of the tribe to their own devices and struck out on our own adventure. This is it, kid. Right here, right now. Nothing matters but this moment. Remember it. You're about to experience terminal velocity firsthand." Still grinning like a ten-year-old on Christmas morning, he closed his shield and said, "I love it! I love you. And, Mar—you can do this."

  No one, nothing, could have prepared her for it. It didn't matter how many hours of ground instruction she had endured. Her brain refused to function as she heard the instructor yell at Bryan to go, and watched her brother disappear into thin air. She hadn't even told him she loved him.

  The man motioned for Mairie to come closer to the door, yet her feet refused to move. No matter how hard she tried to command them, they seemed rooted to the floor. She saw his hand reach out for her and he pulled her to the open door at the same time he slammed the Plexiglas shield over her eyes. Standing at the doorway into the unknown, she swore she knew what death was like. Never in her life had she experienced such fear. She couldn't do this! She couldn't!

  Then, from someplace inside her mind that was struggling to break through, she thought of her brother out there in space and knew it was love that would make her leave this plane. If she faced death, she would do it for him. And in that moment, in a startling flash of clarity, she knew that the love in her heart was far stronger than the fear.

  "Go!"

  The slap on her back was more than a little push. It was like a Mack truck had slammed her from behind. Unprepared, she was shot out into space, vulnerable, terrorized, and her body instinctively curled into a fetal position.

  And then it happened… she had a brain freeze, a moment out of time where one knows one has left everything considered normal and entered another sphere of existence.

  Earth. Sky. Earth. Sky.

  On and on it went as she tumbled and became more disoriented. She closed her eyes against the dizzying sight as the wind stripped her of breath, and then something even stranger happened, something she had never experienced. A bright light flashed behind her closed lids and she thought for a moment that she truly had died, for she felt a frisson of heat saturate every cell of her body and infuse it with an odd energy. Then she seemed to enter a most peaceful state, a place where she heard herself saying to arch her back.

  Immediately, she straightened out and opened her eyes. Spread-eagled and falling at two hundred miles an hour through space, Mairie Callahan knew what it was like to be alive. Every sense was acutely activated. Every nerve ending was picking up vibrations and sending them back to her brain. Her jumpsuit was flapping furiously against her body as the law of gravity reminded her of its power, and the earth lay spread out below her like a crazy quilt.

  She looked at the altimeter on her wrist and saw that she had still two thousand feet to travel before she pulled the chord. Her instructions came back to her. From that place of peace she gathered her courage and lowered her right arm. Immediately she turned right and soared in that direction like an eagle. It worked! She pulled down her left arm, and suddenly she was a human bullet shooting out into space. Incredible… hormones raced through her body and she wanted to giggle at a sensation that boarded on sexual. Fighting the force of the wind, she managed to raise her arms back into the spread-eagled position and check her altimeter. Six thousand feet.

  It was time.

  Her fingers clutched the handle at her chest and her heart constricted in a flutter of fear for just a moment… right before she pulled it out.

  It was like she was shot out of a cannon, straight up. A human rocket. Again her brain seemed to freeze and she was held in a place without time or space, a place she couldn't comprehend. Just as suddenly as it happened, she was dropped like a two-ton anvil. The heavy straps around her upper thighs and under her arms dug into her muscles. Every organ in her body felt as though it had been rearranged. Realizing she wasn't breathing, Mairie grabbed hold of the straps in front of her, took a deep breath, and looked up to the canopy of green and white above her.

  It was magical.

  The silence that followed was so breathtakingly beautiful that Mairie was stunned. Never had she experienced such perfection. Her breath left her body in deep appreciation and she grabbed hold of the two handles dangling before her eyes. Pulling the left one, she was turned toward the distant mountain range. Cool, she thought, loving every second of this and knowing it was worth it. She should have just jumped and immediately pulled the chord and forgot about the terminal velocity insanity. The panorama of nature was spectacular. She experienced a moment of true perspective, of realizing how tiny and insignificant she really was compared to Mother Nature, that she was merely a visitor here in this time and place.

  Bryan… she wanted to connect with her brother and searched the sky for his parachute. She looked below her, yet he wasn't in sight. Unable to see over her shoulder, Mairie pulled on the left strap, her only guidance system, and found that it took all her strength to turn the chute.

  Nothing.

  Where was he? And where the hell was the marker, that huge white cross in the desert? Frantically she tried to find it. It had disappeared, or she had wandered far off course. She fought the panic, the bile rising in her throat, and looked out to find the outline of the city.

  It was gone. All of it… gone.

  Nothing looked the same. Nothing. Not even the landscape.

  Over and over, around and around, she kept twirling, desperate to find something familiar. Anything! There was nothing except the desert floor rushing up to meet her. Dear God, what had happened? Where was Bryan? The city. Anything.

  She had known it from the moment she'd agreed to this adventure, and here she was… in trouble, deep, deep trouble.

  A man sat cross-legged on the narrow precipice that reached out over the desert. He was still, silent, barely breathing, alone unto himself… at the pinnacle of his world. He had been sent on this vision quest by his adopted brothers three days before. Hunger had left him more finely tuned to the movements of the earth. Thirst had forced him to go inward and battle his mind for control. Finally, after days of purification, he had stopped at the sacred rock and lightly touched the strange images etched into the red stone by the ancients… leaving some message not revealed to him. Yet his brothers knew.

  There he had surrendered. Finally, irretrievably surrendered. Only then did he place the ritual peyote button on his tongue and chew. He'd felt at one with nature, ready to receive her wisdom, and had proceeded to this narrow ledge. He had come to this place, climbing without stopping to reach the highest ground, and had dared to look out over the valley so far below. Here he would wait for his answer. Here he would get his sign. He came without fear, without shame. Stripped of all human desires except one. He wanted hope.

  As yet… there was nothing.

  He refused to give up. He had come back to the place of his youth to seek refuge with the Indians who had taken him into their hearts when he was an abandoned twelve-year-old. He felt abandoned again, this time by his soul.

  They called it the War Between the States… brother fighting brother. He had been wooed by the call to honor, filled with bravado, and joined the North to protect the Union. Three years later he knew he had lost a far more personal battle, for the carnage he had witnessed screamed at him that there was no honor in death. It was insanity, and he had been a willing participant. He'd returned hollow, a mere shell that functioned. Life no longer held interest. And so he had made his way back to this desert, to the only people he could think of who still knew of balance, who were sane.

  Now he sat… waiting.

  Casting out the memories and centering himself within the elements of the earth, Jack Delaney called out to the Great Spirit not to desert him, but to reveal his vision. For he had no inten
tion of leaving this mountain without completing his quest. He was prepared to meet his death rather than fail. There was no meaning to it all any longer, and he had lost his fear long ago on a forgotten battlefield. His brothers, the Paiutes, had recognized the sickness within his soul and had instructed him in the cure. The balm, they had assured him, was within himself.

  Opening his eyes, he blinked in disbelief. His heart began racing and he held his breath in awe as he gazed over the valley spread before him.

  What was that, falling out of the sky?

  He brought up his hand to shelter his eyes and squinted as the thing twirled and slowly, gracefully, fell toward earth. Something powerful took hold of his body, infusing it with a tingling force that demanded his full attention. Whatever effects the peyote had were long since worn off. The small button from the mescal cactus had produced some colorful dreams, but this… this was no dream.

  This was his answer. His vision!

  It had come out of heaven.

  Standing up, he brushed the dust from the seat of his pants and started the long descent to meet his future. He had called out for help and been given an answer. Gratitude and hope, strange emotions thought to have been lost, entered his heart as he realized all he had to do was find his gift and he would somehow again be whole. A vitality he couldn't remember ever having filled his lungs and raced through his aching muscles, as he seemed to leap down the rocky mountain surface. His body lengthened and expanded, reaching toward the desert floor like a thoroughbred stretching toward the finish line. His quest was almost complete.

  Find the gift, his mind kept repeating.

  He knew once he did, life as he had known it would never be the same again.

  Now… what the hell was that?

  Chapter 1

  It was like a bad dream, the kind where you don't wake up before hitting the ground.