“Man, are you tweaking?” the male agent asked him.
Liam began tossing newspapers around the room and moving anything that could be moved to check behind it. They weren’t there. They weren’t anywhere. He wouldn’t have been surprised if those other two agents had thrown them out, just to fuck with him. Dammit!
“Hey!” the man snapped. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Tablets,” Liam choked out. “Can’t breathe.”
The male agent’s face paled. “Shit.”
Liam couldn’t bring himself to look at the woman, but as Agent…Delgado ran from the room, heading in the direction of the kitchen, the woman approached.
Liam clutched at his chest and gasped for breath. Panic attack, he told himself. Just a panic attack. He just had to calm down. That was all. He sagged back against the wall, sliding to the floor.
It had been a long time since he’d had a panic attack. He’d hoped he’d seen the last of them, but apparently not, and it didn’t matter how much he told himself it would pass, right now it felt like he was going to die, and in some small part of his mind it occurred to him that perhaps he should just go with it, and let it happen. After all, there’d be no one to miss him if he did.
Then the woman’s hands landed on his upper arms, and she held him still.
“Liam?” she said, her angelic voice gentle, as if afraid she might spook him. “Look at me.”
He lifted his head and looked into her eyes, and it was as if nothing else existed but her. Only her.
“Breathe,” she said. “Breathe deeply for me, okay?”
Liam nodded then opened his mouth and sucked in a great big lungful of air.
“That’s it,” she said. “And again. Good. You’re going to be all right. I just need you to breathe for me. And again.”
Liam did as she asked and felt calm descend. It took a little while of her talking to him gently and of him following her instructions before the panic attack fully subsided. When it did, he stared at her in incredulity.
“How did you do that?”
Before she could reply, Agent Delgado rushed back into the room, brandishing Liam’s bottle of pills and a glass of water. “Are these what you were looking for? I found them in the kitchen.”
Liam heaved a sigh of relief. “Yes, thank you.”
He shook out two of the pills and chased them down with the water, then sagged back against the wall, eyes closed as he took in a few more calming breaths. Then he froze, feeling suddenly embarrassed. When he reluctantly opened his eyes again, he found both agents watching him closely.
“It’s okay,” he snapped. “I’m not going to freak out again. So you can stop looking at me like I’m about to lose it.”
“What are they for?” Agent Delgado asked, nodding to the pills. Liam recalled one of the other agents calling the man Hawk.
He ducked his head and stared at the ground between his feet. “Schizophrenia.”
When the man whistled, Liam nodded. “Yep, that about sums it up.”
A look passed between the two agents that Liam pretended to ignore.
“Do you get panic attacks like that often?” Agent Sincero—the beautiful female one—asked.
Liam shook his head. “It hasn’t happened in years before tonight.”
“Yeah? You surprise me.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“In your line of work, I’d have thought you have things to panic about on a daily basis.” A shadow passed over her eyes. “Or is it just that you make other people panic?”
“Kit,” Hawk said, a note of warning in his voice.
