I told it all to her again, more slowly this time. She asked a couple of clarifying questions, and then, once I was finished, said, “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

“I was fine, really, Lawrence knew what he was doing. He’s a professional.”

“You are. You are out of your goddamn mind.”

I shrugged, then realized she might be onto something, and suddenly felt that I was going to lose my coffee and doughnuts, because car chases laced with gunplay are not typical activities for former-science-fiction-authors-turned-newspaper-feature-writers. I was breathing pretty rapidly, and Sarah let me fall into her arms. It’s possible that I was, perhaps very slightly, shaking.

“You are a stupid, stupid man,” she said quietly. “You’re not cut out for a life of adventure. You’re not Indiana Jones. If you tried to be, instead of carrying a whip tucked into your belt, you’d have a bottle of Maalox.”

“We’re going back out there tomorrow night,” I whispered into her hair, and she shoved me away abruptly.

“You really have lost your mind,” she said, suddenly looking angry enough to slug me.

I held up my hands, as much to protest as to defend myself. “We’re going into it with our eyes open this time. And Lawrence will be talking to the cops, and it’s not going to be the same kind of thing at all. We know what we’re up against.”

“So what does that mean? You’re taking a bazooka next time? Something big enough to bag an SUV?”

Seriously, I said, “I let Lawrence make the firepower decisions. It’s really not my area.”

She got up, stormed into the bathroom, and closed the door behind her. From inside, she shouted, “You’re done. This assignment is terminated. Write what you’ve got, it’ll be a fine feature.”

Whoa. Wait a minute.

“Who’s that in the bathroom?” I asked. “Is that my wife in there, or is it my editor?”

Sarah opened the door abruptly, a fierce expression on her face. “Take your pick.”

“Is that what you’d tell Cheese Dick Colby? If he was on this assignment, would you pull him off it, just when it was getting good, because he might hurt himself?”

“I don’t know. I don’t sleep with Colby.”

“I don’t even know how he sleeps with himself. You gotten close to him?”

She went back into the bathroom and closed the door. I shook my head, then unbuttoned my shirt and slipped off my pants. What was I supposed to do? Apologize? Had I done something wrong?

Maybe. Maybe not. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from twenty years of marriage, it’s that you don’t have to be wrong to apologize.

It was awfully quiet in the bathroom, so I went up to the door and quietly rapped on it. “Listen,” I said. “I—”