His eyes went to the mirror, to Maren holding the two terrified boys in the cabin, and something in his face changed. He keyed the radio, called his intentions to a tower that would spend the next hour furious with him, and put his own eyes down the secondary taxiway — the private hangar lane, long and straight and, right then, empty.

“It’s clear,” he said. “Hold on. All of you.”

He brought the throttles up and the Gulfstream rolled, nose swinging left, tracking down the empty private lane and leaving the security car stranded across a runway we were no longer using.

The jet wash rocked the vehicle hard on its suspension as we passed.

We broke onto the secondary strip, gray asphalt running out toward the red rock mountains, and Marcus fed in full takeoff thrust. The acceleration pinned us into the leather.

The twins let out small yelps that were half terror and half thrill, the world outside smearing into brown and white, and then the nose came up and the tires left the ground and we were climbing hard into a clear blue sky.