"Just what are you trying to tell me, guys?"

"Well, Daddy," Jennifer had said, "you have been getting a little pot belly lately."

"Yeah, Dad," Timmy had nodded. "You're starting to pork out. What happened to all your muscles?"

In fact, Eric Ravensmith was practically solid muscle. His arms were long and sinewy, his legs bronzed bulges, his chest lanky but hard. True, his stomach, once flat and rippled, like the top of a six-pack, had begun to puff a little lately, the ridges slightly less defined. But Eric was pleased about that. He was purposely cultivating a little pouch, which he hoped would someday bloom into fleshy love handles around his waist. Not real fat, just a hint of the easy middle-class life of his neighbors. No more need to stay hard and alert.

Quietly, but with sharp easy movements, Eric bent over, twirled loose the setscrews on each end of the bar, and slid off the weights he'd used only twice, both times under the stern supervision of his children. He hefted the black bar to waist level, balancing its fifteen pounds of solid metal. It would do.

The doorknob had stopped turning. The door was opening.

Eric moved lightly across the floor, dodging around the corner of the small entranceway that boxed the door. If the intruder was properly trained, and there was every indication he was, he was pressed against the wall outside the door, his right hand holding the gun next to his face, his left hand turning the knob. That way if the intended victim saw the door opening and started blasting away, the intruder was still protected. There'd only be a second or two when the intruder would be exposed on the other side of the door. Eric waited, sniffed the faint sour smell of fresh gun oil.