This story is reposted because the other one was so full of grammar errors. This version is fully edited.

“Put down the knife, old man. We’re thieves, not murderers so we won’t kill you if you do what we say,”

The threat caught George Holt by surprise and almost gave him a heart attack. The seventy-nine-year-old widower had been having trouble with his heart, and the doctors had warned him about undo excitement. However, after skipping a beat, it started up again, only at a much faster pace.

He put the knife he’d been using to butter some toast on the kitchen counter and slowly turned around to confront the intruders, wondering how they had gotten into his house. It was confusing. He was sure he had locked both doors before going to bed last night, but maybe he’d forgotten one. He also wished he’d have put in his hearing aids before making breakfast. If he had done that, he might have heard the trespassers in time to call the police.

The man and the woman quickly closed in on him. They were young, probably in their early twenties, and made a handsome couple. The man had short brown hair and was clean-shaven. He wore black loafers, slacks, and a short sleeve dress shirt that hung outside his pants. The woman was a bottle blonde with large, hooped earrings. She wore a colorful top, black pants, and a pair of red high heels.

“Smart move, old man, cuz we really don’t want to kill you.” The intruder pointed his gun at George. “Just cooperate and everything will be okay.”

George was shaking so badly with fear he had to grip the back of the kitchen chair for support. He could feel his heart thudding like it was working overtime, which wasn’t a good sign because the doctor had told him to take it easy. As his eyes flitted from the gun to the man’s face. He noted with shock that he looked mean and his eyes were cold and lifeless. His fear grew at the realization that he was staring at a cold-blooded killer who would have no trouble shooting him.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll cooperate. Just tell me what you want. I got a few bucks in my wallet. Take it and leave, it’s yours. I don’t want any trouble,” George said in a quavering voice.

“Stop playing around with us, old man. “We come for your coin collection. We heard it’s worth a fortune. Just tell us where it is and we won’t hurt you,” the man replied. Again, he pointed the gun at George as a warning.

“Oh those,” George explained. “I don’t have them anymore. It was quite a collection, and I hated to get rid of it, but I sold it a few years ago when I realized I might outlive my pension.”

“You’re lying, old man. We heard that you valued your collection so much you refused several offers to buy it. Now, show us where it is before we get mad.”

When George didn’t reply, the intruder lost his temper and hit him on the side of the head with the butt of his gun, knocking him to the floor. Then he picked him up and sat him in the kitchen chair. Whole George slumped in the chair, barely conscious, the intruders secured him to it with duct tape.

“Are you sure he’ll be okay?” The woman asked in a worried voice as she stared at the blood seeping from a cut on George’s head. “It seems like he’s barely breathing.”

“Don’t worry about him. He’ll be fine. Let’s search this place for the coins and get the hell out of here,” her companion replied.

They left George tied to the chair with his head hanging down towards his chest and started searching his house from top to bottom.

It was a given. Every morning, the neighborhood seniors met at the community center to play cards, drink coffee, and gossip.

Three men sat at a table for the usual game of cribbage. Bert, who was preparing to deal, is short and stout and still going strong at age eighty. He always wears a checked cotton shirt with his pants held up by suspenders. Next to him sits Charlie, age seventy-eight. He’s tall and skinny as a rail. He has a carefully trimmed mustache and always wears a suit with a white shirt and tie. To complete the debonair look, he wears a fedora and carries a cane, which he needs to help him walk. The third card player is Steve, a grumpy old man of seventy-five who wears thick glasses because his eyesight is terrible. George, the fourth man, is missing.

“Where the hell is he?” Bert shuffled the deck and looked at his companions like they know something he didn’t.

“Don’t know.” They all shrugged and looked at one another, each one expecting the other to explain their friend’s absence

“Bert continued to shuffle the cards and looked around the table. ‘What should we do, start without him?

“I don’t know. This is not like George. You know him, he never misses a game and most of the time he’s here a bit early,” Charles replied. He looked around the table. “When’s the last time any of you seen him? Maybe there’s something wrong with him. He’s been complaining about his ticker and shortness of breath.”

“I saw him yesterday afternoon from my house across the street. He was watering his flowers like he usually does, and waved back at me, so he seemed fine to me,” Steve announced.

At another table, the ladies had already started their game. All of them are seniors. Hazel, petite with short, greying hair, is the youngest at age sixty-nine, but she needs a walker to keep her mobile because she’s having trouble with her legs. Louise, age eighty, is the oldest. She’s tall and slender with long grey hair and granny glasses perched on her nose. Without them she was so nearsighted she couldn’t see anything more than a few feet in front of her. In between those ages are Sheila, plump and short but sill spry at, age seventy-two, and Sally, skinny and frail looking at age seventy eight...

“Any of you women seen George?” Bert asked.

The women looked up from their game. “Saw him yesterday afternoon,” Louise replied as she starts counting her hand.

“Well, he’s not here this morning. I hope nothing has happened to him,” Bert said ... He turned back to his table. “We’ll play a few hands and see if he shows up. Maybe he just got delayed.”

Several hands later Bert tossed in his cards and told his friends to finish the game without him.

“Why, what’s wrong?” Steve asked.

“It’s George. I’m worried about him. I keep thinking something must have happened to him. I hope he hasn’t collapsed in his house. I am going to go check on him.”

Charlie and Steve pushed themselves away from the table. “Maybe you’re right. Let’s all go.” They followed Bert outside and headed for George’s house two blocks away. When the women saw what was happening, they also forgot about the cribbage game and joined the men. After all, George is their friend too, and a regular at the card games.

By the time Bert reached George’s modest three-bedroom bungalow with its neatly kept lawn and prize-winning flowers, there’s a parade of old men and women right behind him. Some are in wheelchairs, others use canes or push the walkers that keep them mobile. They stand uncertainly on the sidewalk, wondering what to do next.

Todd Valentine, the man who had invaded George’s house, pistol whipped him, and left him tied to a chair, happened to look out a window while searching for the coin collection.

“What the hell do we have here, a senior convention? I’ve never seen so many seniors all in one place in my life,” He cursed. Where the hell did all those old fossils come from?” He cursed again and moved away from the window. At the same time, his girlfriend Sherry came rushing into the bedroom that Todd was searching for the coin collection.

“Did you see all those old people out there?” She asked in an excited voice. “I wonder where they come from.”

“How the hell would I know?” Todd snarled. He was losing patience and growing angry because so far the search had proved futile, and he didn’t have time to deal with a bunch of dotting old fools. He still had a couple rooms left to search, and he didn’t want to be interrupted by anybody, especially old fogies. Most of them looked to be on their last legs, or had no legs at all.

“Do you suppose they are here to ask about George?” Sherry dared to ask. She could see Todd was in one of his moods, so she was careful not to make him any angrier. He was okay most of the time when they were able to steal things without much effort, but when their plans went sideways, he had a hell of a temper, and she could see he was about to burst at any time.

Todd looked at her like she was an imbecile. “You suppose,” he snapped. He eyed the seniors on the sidewalk in front of the house and wished he had something more than a pistol. He wanted something bigger to mow a few down, and hopefully the rest would die of a heart attack and let him finish searching the house in peace.

When Bert started knocking on the door, he told Sherry. “I’ll handle this. You stay here where he can’t see you.”

By the time Todd reached the living room, the knocking was getting louder and more persistent. Todd pushed George, who was still tied to the chair, out of sight, and answered the door just as the old man was about to knock again. He flung it open and stepped forward, forcing Bert to step back so quickly he almost tripped and fell off the landing, but he quickly recovered.

“I’m looking for George. Is he home?” He asked as he stared into Todd’s angry face.

“No, he’s not. He got called away cuz of a family emergency,” Todd replied.

“Really, he usually doesn’t go anywhere without telling us. We’re his friends you know.” Bart’s explanation, and his attempt to look inside the house, were interrupted by Todd who took another step forward making Bert stumble backward until he was so close to falling off the steps he had to use his cane for support.

“Who are you?” He asked, refusing to budge another inch until he had some answers.

“I’m Jeff, George’s nephew. Like I told you. He had to leave in a hurry last night and I promised to stay here and look after his place until he returns,”

“And for long, is George going to be away?” Bert managed to ask before the young man stepped forward again, pressing him to back down the steps in a clumsy manner with the help of his cane.

“He’ll be gone for a few days. I’m sure he’ll call you when he returns,” Todd replied. “Now, please leave and stop bothering me.”

There was something in the young man’s fierce glare that compelled Bert to turn around and flee to the safety of his friends, who still stood on the sidewalk in front of the house watching everything that happened.

Satisfied that the nosy old man was leaving, Todd glared at the horde of seniors on the sidewalk, turned and re-entered George’s house, slamming the door behind him. Barely able to contain his growing anger, he rushed to where he’d stashed George. “Why the hell don’t you make it easy on yourself and tell me where the coin collection is?” He grabbed the old man by the shoulders and shook him.

Sherry appeared in the kitchen and heard George groan in pain. “Don’t treat him like that. You’ll kill him and you said we are thieves, not murderers. Besides, he won’t be able to tell us anything in this condition. Maybe it’ll help if I fixed up his head and gave him some food.

Todd glared at his girlfriend in disbelief. Most of the time she was an intelligent, happy- go-lucky, and easy-going companion who eagerly took part in his robberies,, but other times, like right now, she acted like the dumbest blonde ever.

“Go ahead, fix the old fart up and give him something to eat if you want, but he’d better tell me where those coins are or else.” Todd lifted his shirt to show George the pistol stuck in the waist of his pants.

Sherry wiped the blood away from the cut on George’s head and bandaged it up with gauze and tape. She also gave him a drink of the orange juice she found in the fridge, and since he was still tied up and Todd refused to let him use his hands, she fed him some scrambled eggs and toast by the spoonful, just like he was a baby.

“Why are you so stubborn, old man?” Why don’t you give up and tell us where the coins are? You do that and me and Todd will be out of your hair pretty quick,” she promised.

The juice and food were making George more alert. As he swallowed a spoonful of eggs, he stared at Sherry. “I already told you I don’t have them any more,” he mumbled between bites.

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that. I’m being nice to you, so just tell us where the coins are, and we’ll take them and leave,” Sherry pleaded as she spooned more scrambled eggs into George’s mouth.

George shook his head and refused the eggs. “I’m telling you. I don’t have them any more so being nice to me ain’t going to work.”

A frustrated Sherry slammed the half-eaten plate of eggs on the kitchen counter and glared at George. “I warned you, old man. Tell me right now because Todd won’t be as nice as me. He has a terrible temper, especially when he doesn’t get what he wants.”

George nodded and rested his head on his chest. “How long have you known him?”

Sherry, hoping a little conversation would bring the stubborn old man around to their way of thinking, replied. “We’ve been hooked up together for a few months now, and you know, started pulling off robberies and home invasions like this one ... to steal things we can sell for money.”

“You trust him, do you?” George asked.

“Sure, most of the time he’s pretty nice, but he has a bad temper, other than that he’s okay.”

“I wouldn’t turn my back on him if I were you because he’s a cold-blooded killer and he’s shoot you in the back if it suited him,” George warned.

Todd, who had stepped back into the kitchen, slapped George hard on the side of the head. “Don’t you go filling my girlfriend’s head with nonsense,” he warned, as he pulled the gun out and pointed it at George’s head.