“Did you get that last part?” asked Karen.

“With sugar and kisses on top,” repeated the bored voice.

“Thank you.”

Karen hit END and looked at her rearview mirror, which was adjusted so that she could see Abby’s face.

“Daddy loves getting messages from us,” Abby said, smiling.

“He sure does, honey.”

Fifty miles south of Jackson, Will settled the Baron in at eight thousand feet. Below him lay a puffy white carpet of cumulus clouds, before him a sky as blue as an Arctic lake. Visibility was unlimited. As he bent his wrist to check his primary GPS unit, a burning current of pain shot up the radial nerve in his right arm. It was worse than he’d admitted to Karen, and she’d known it. She didn’t miss anything. The truth was, she didn’t want him flying anymore. A month ago, she’d threatened to tell the FAA that he was “cheating” to pass his flight physicals. He didn’t think she would, but he couldn’t be sure. If she thought Will’s arthritis put him-and thus the family-at risk while flying, she wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever she had to do to stop him.

If she did, Will wasn’t sure he could handle it. Even the thought of being grounded put him in a black mood. Flying was more than recreation for him. It was a physical expression of how far he had come in life, a symbol of all he had attained, and of the lifestyle he had created for his family. His father could never have dreamed of owning a three-hundred-thousand-dollar airplane. Tom Jennings had never even ridden in an airplane. His son had paid cash for one.

But for Will the money was not the important thing. It was what the money could buy. Security. He had learned that lesson a thousand times growing up: money was an insulator, like armor. It protected people who had it from the everyday problems that besieged and even destroyed others. And yet, it did not make you invulnerable. His arthritis had taught him that. Other lessons followed.