You Don't Know My Name (The Black Angel Chronicles #1)(14)

When we moved from Philadelphia, every car I didn’t recognize on our street, every person who walked onto our property who I didn’t know, even someone who just looked at me too long would send my heart racing or close up my throat. I was convinced the hitman was still going to find us and that we’d never be safe. But every car, person, or look could be explained away. My brain—I couldn’t trust it. It played tricks on me. I’ve done my best to hide the paranoia and anxiety. My parents think it was just a fluke. A rough patch after the hitman. They don’t know I’m still struggling. That it’s escalated.

This spring, I noticed someone following me. Or at least, I thought he was following me. This was after two false alarms, so I kept it to myself. I put the fear and anxiety in my little box, pushing it into the numbest part of my body. But when Mom and Dad were on a mission, I was mid-makeup routine and suddenly couldn’t breathe. I started sweating and my chest was pounding so hard, I could have sworn you could see it beating through my shirt. I grabbed the cold granite countertop with my clammy hands, my arms and legs trembling. I thought I was having a heart attack or dying or something. I lowered myself down to the icy tiled floor, my back up against my wood cabinets, and sat there, begging my throat to open back up so I could suck in a full breath. Aunt Samantha found me, curled up on the ground, a few minutes later. She laid me down on the floor and put a cold washcloth on my burning forehead, asking me to describe my symptoms.

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked, staring up into her warm blue eyes.

“You’re having a panic attack,” she answered very quietly. She sat on the floor next to me, stroking back my dark hair, telling me it would pass and I was going to be okay. Once my legs stopped trembling, she helped me off the floor and insisted I lie in bed.

After two hours of lying side by side, watching over-caffeinated anchors on morning talk shows, I was finally feeling better. I could breathe again.

“What was that all about?” I asked, turning my head to face Sam. She twisted her strong, lean body to face mine, settling her head back down on my extra-fluffy pillows.

“I don’t know,” Sam said, shaking her head slowly. “I’ve never had one but I know they can be really scary.”

“It was,” I replied, my voice quiet. We stared at each other for a few seconds, waiting for the other to speak.

“I know what happened in Philadelphia is weighing on you,” she said, grabbing my arm, rubbing the fabric of my blue shirt between her thumb and index finger. “But you’re safe here.”

“I know,” I replied, even though I didn’t believe her. Not for a single second.

“I don’t want to put pressure on you, my love,” Sam said, picking at the errant fuzzies on my bedspread. “But if you suffer from panic attacks, we’ll need to tell your parents and they may want to stop your training. Or at least think about not having you train for rescues and take-downs.”

Sam explained that panic attacks and anxiety would cloud my brain and alter my judgment, making it unsafe for my teammates and me in the field. She never said it out loud, but I could read between the lines. Have another panic attack and I’d be out of the Black Angels.

“Please,” I said, grabbing Sam’s hand. “Don’t tell them. Not yet.”

She didn’t. And I learned to bury the fear.

That panic attack was my first and only. But what’s taken its place are the daymares. They creep into my brain, sometimes without warning or even a trigger. I’ve coined them daymares because they’re like the vivid nightmares that startle you straight up in bed, panting and sweating, except I’m awake. I haven’t said a word about the daymares to anyone. Perhaps it’s normal. Perhaps everyone has these worst-case scenarios play out in their minds. Just not as vivid and violent as mine. I could ask, but I don’t think I want to know the answer. Because then it’s just one more thing on a very long list that makes me abnormal.

We’ve been perfectly safe in New Albany for over a year now. So what would I even tell them? A janitor looked at me funny today? A van pulled down the main street slowly? People do that all the time, gawking at the million-dollar homes. No. I won’t say a word. It’s all in my head. Again.

“Mom, Dad?” I call out. Nothing. I walk down the hardwood hallway. The heavy strike of my heel is the only sound. My natural walk (or as natural as a walk can be when you’ve been trained to walk a certain way since practically your first step) is silent. I’m a sidler. I scare the shit out of people when I show up at their side in stealthy silence. So to alert Mom and Dad to where I am in the house, I walk hard. Like hear-you-two-stories-and-five-rooms-away hard. When I walk hard, Dad likes to call me Elefante, the Spanish word for elephant. When he hears me coming down the hallway, the bone of my heel slamming into the floors, he sings out “Elefanteeee.” It always makes me laugh.

I stick my head inside the kitchen, then inside the family room. The only two rooms they’re ever really in. I swear I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve stepped foot in the living and dining rooms. I stop and listen again for the hum of a TV or the shuffling of feet somewhere in the house. It’s silent.

The garage door opens with a whiny creak. I walk down three concrete steps and stand in front of locked steel cabinet doors. I flip open the keypad and enter in our six-digit code. I hear the steel beams unlock. I pull hard on both of the metal handles, separating the heavy cabinet doors and revealing wooden steps. We’ve had a secret door in every house we’ve ever lived in. CORE always finds us a house with an unfinished basement so they can transform it into our gun range, weapons room, martial arts studio, and, of course, panic room.