The sweat under his pajamas became a geyser. “If it isn’t, whoever it is will sure as hell regret ever meeting me,” he whispered. His fingers found the light switch and flipped it off.

Darkness fell over him and his dying wife of thirty-seven years.

Was there someone in the living room, watching these two old, frail-before-their-time bodies, waiting to strike? Regret hit him hard in the gut. Salma could have been safe upstairs, but pride had made him refuse Harry’s suggestion that they sleep apart. They had never spent one night apart, he had told his son, except when he had his spinal surgery.

“Don’t be so selfish,” Harry had spat at him. “Can’t you see Ma is exhausted?”

Yes, he had seen it. In the gaunt face, the way the weight had dropped from her softly rounded middle until the flesh shrank into strange folds, the tremor of her hands.

Perhaps it had not been pride. Perhaps it had been fear that made him refuse Harry’s suggestion that they sleep apart. Not for himself. But that the cancer would steal her away, in her sleep, on the upper floor of their house, where he couldn’t reach her.

And now, all there was between her and the intruder who stood so silently watchful in the living room was him.

And his gun.

Twisting awkwardly, he leaned toward his pillow and slid his hand under it. The sensation of the cold, smooth metal of his revolver eased his pent-up breath. He closed the gun into the palm of his hand. Using it to support his weight, he slid along the board into the wheelchair.

“No. Mel. Don’t.” The fear in Salma’s voice was palpable. They both knew the price he had paid the last time he had confronted a robber.

God, please don’t let this kill her. She is so weak.

One more push, and he was in the chair. He slid the board across the bed, careful to make no noise. “Stay in here. Don’t come out,” he whispered. “Call 911.”

He disengaged the safety latch on his revolver. He kept it loaded. He cleaned it every week. It gleamed, thickly solid, on those legs so shriveled from disuse. But he didn’t need his legs when he had a gun. He reached down to the wheels on his chair and disengaged the brakes.

Behind him, he heard Salma lift the phone receiver.

And then a floorboard creaked. Right by their bedroom door.

Salma heard it, too. Her breathing became high-pitched, a strange whistle in her throat that he had never heard before.

The phone thudded to the floor.

The footsteps stopped.

But where? Was the intruder waiting for him to exit the room, poised to attack?

He could hear nothing but the blood rushing through his ears, punctuated by his wife’s breathy whistle. It scared him. Salma.