They were about to.

My father used to say a thing that annoyed me as a teenager and steadied me that night. Anybody can be brave when they’re not scared, he’d say. Courage is the thing you do while you’re terrified.

If you’re waiting to stop being afraid before you act, you’ll wait forever, and the wait will kill you. I’d thought it was one of his gruff self-made-man speeches, the kind fathers give.

Lying in the dark with a storm coming and three murderers moving around above and below me, I finally understood it wasn’t advice.