Two

BRIGHT AND EARLY the following Thursday morning, Victoria walked into the lobby of her downtown office building. She took an elevator up to the thirty-third floor, which her firm shared with two other tenants, a small consulting group and an engineering firm.

Back when she’d been looking for a place to hang her shingle, she’d been attracted to this particular office space because of its clean, modern lines, and great use of natural light. The bright, open feel of the place was reassuring to her clients, who were going through a difficult time in their lives. You’re going to be okay after this divorce. Victoria Slade & Associates will make sure of it, said the sunlit, sophisticated décor.

After unlocking the fogged glass doors that bore her firm’s name, she turned on the lights to the reception area. She liked being in before everyone else, so she could soak in those few moments when the office was quiet and just hers.

Her office had two walls of windows that framed a picturesque view of the city and the Chicago River. She settled in behind her desk and checked her e-mail while sipping the coffee that she’d picked up on the way in. About a half hour later, she heard her four associates trickle in, followed by Will, her assistant.

She heard a knock and saw Will standing in the doorway.

“Give it to me straight. How bad are they?” he asked, touching the rim of his new wire-frame glasses. He’d turned forty years old earlier in the year and, much to his displeasure, had been told by his eye doctor that he needed reading glasses.

“Ooh . . . I like them,” Victoria said approvingly. “Very Gregory Peck.”

“Hmph” was Will’s sole response, although she noticed he seemed to have a little swagger in his step as he took a seat in front of her desk.

“Tomorrow’s the big day. Is there anything else you need me to take care of?” he asked.

She smiled, knowing this was pretty much a rhetorical question. If there was anything else that needed to be taken care of, Will already would’ve thought of it himself. The man was a god when it came to organizing these types of things. “I think we’re all set.”

Tomorrow she would move into her temporary home, a loft condo in a converted warehouse in Wicker Park. She hadn’t lived in an apartment or condo building since law school—her place before the townhome had been a duplex—and, as a relatively private person, she wasn’t overly enthused to suddenly be sharing common space with a bunch of strangers. But this was her life now, at least for the foreseeable future, so she supposed she would just have to get used to it.

Ever since the break-in, she’d hadn’t gotten more than three or four hours of sleep each night. Instead, she would lie awake in her bed, listening for any strange sounds and repeatedly getting up to check her security system—not that her security system had kept the burglars at bay before.

Scary thought.

From what she’d learned from the police—who, thankfully, had arrived quickly on the scene because of the 9-1-1 dispatcher—the masked men had staked out her place for most of the night, with the exception of a short break when the man with the gruff voice needed to use the bathroom at a convenience store a few blocks away because the White Castle sliders they’d grabbed earlier hadn’t agreed with him.

Nice.

Apparently, his partner was a former employee of a home security company, and thus knew how to bypass certain types of alarm systems—including hers. The police had caught both men, one of whom had foolishly fired his gun at the cops and thus earned an attempted murder charge, along with a charge of home invasion. During questioning, they admitted being responsible for the string of burglaries in the neighborhood, and were expected to be in prison for a good, long time.

Victoria knew she should consider herself fortunate, at least as far as scary-ass home invasions by masked men with guns went. But when the two weeks of not sleeping stretched into three, and after Will walked in on her dozing off at her desk, startling her and making her face-plant against her open laptop, she’d decided it was time to face facts.

She wasn’t comfortable living in a place that had more than one level.

She couldn’t relax in her townhome, and feared she would always be tense at night, waiting for that beep of the alarm, and listening for the sound of footsteps on her stairs.

Once she’d come to terms with that, she’d immediately put her townhome on the market and spent a weekend condo hunting with Audrey and Rachel, her two best friends. She decided on a two-bedroom place in the Trump Tower, telling herself that the burglars hadn’t really gotten the best of her if she was moving to a place with its own indoor pool and health club.

And it even has a spa, dickheads.

In her head, she had all sorts of sassy one-liners for the scary-ass armed men who’d broken into her place.

But there was one problem: the current owner of the Trump Tower condo couldn’t close on the sale until late August. She’d been about to walk away from the deal—she needed to get out of her townhome ASAP before she made some sloppy mistake at work in her sleep-deprived state—but then her friend had saved the day. Rachel knew a real estate agent who was trying to rent her client’s condo for the summer, and the place was available to move into immediately. Victoria signed the three-month lease the moment the agent faxed it over, Will found a company that would send in a team to pack up all of her stuff (she didn’t even want to ask how much that cost her), and thus tonight would be her last night in the town house she’d proudly purchased as her first home.

Yes, she was pissed. She’d been chased out of her own place by the Burglar Dickheads, essentially, and that didn’t sit well with her. On top of that, she’d just bought the townhome ten months ago, so she probably would have to sell it at a loss. But she needed to be practical here—she was a busy woman, the head of her firm, and she needed to be at the top of her game when it came to work.

And oh my God, she couldn’t wait to finally get some darn sleep.

*   *   *

SHORTLY BEFORE NOON, Victoria waved at Will as she passed by his desk on her way out of the office.

On the phone, he covered the receiver with his hand and whispered, “Good luck.”

She felt a twinge of guilt, because this was the first time in the five years she and Will had been working together that she’d lied to him. She’d told him she would be unreachable for the next hour because she had a dentist appointment, when in truth she had something else to take care of.

Not a big deal. Just this . . . teeny, tiny problem she’d been having ever since the break-in.

Her research into these types of teeny, tiny problems had led her to Dr. Aaron Metzel, supposedly one of the top cognitive-behavioral psychologists in the city. His office was located in the Gold Coast neighborhood, a quick cab ride from downtown.

Victoria adjusted the lapel of her jacket as she rode the elevator up to Dr. Metzel’s floor. She wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this appointment—it had been over twenty years since she’d last seen a psychologist—but she’d deliberately worn her favorite gray tailored suit and snakeskin heels. It was a suit that made her feel particularly put-together and confident.

There was a small, private waiting room adjacent to Dr. Metzel’s office, with a sign on the interior door that said “Please make yourself comfortable.” Thinking that “comfortable” was a bit ambitious—she was here only out of necessity—she took a seat in one of the empty chairs and distracted herself by checking e-mail on her phone.

A few moments after she sat down, the interior door opened. A balding, fortysomething man dressed in a blazer, khakis, and button-down shirt smiled at her.

“Victoria?” He held out his hand as she approached. “Aaron Metzel. Nice to meet you.” He gestured to the adjacent room. “Come on in. Have a seat wherever you like.”

“Thanks.” She looked around curiously as she entered his office. The blinds were pulled down, but angled open, allowing a good amount of natural light to come in. It wasn’t a massive office, but enough to accommodate a desk and bookshelf in front of the windows, a couch along one wall, and two leather armchairs in the center of the room. She chose the armchair closest to the door and took seat. Not sure where to put her purse, she set it on the floor.

She watched as Dr. Metzel—or was she supposed to call him Aaron?—grabbed a notepad and pen from his desk. They made brief small talk—Yes, she’d found the office just fine; No, thanks, she didn’t need anything to drink—before getting down to brass tacks.

Seated across from her, Dr. Metzel crossed one leg, settling into his chair. “Let’s talk about what brings you here. I know from our telephone conversation that you’re having some issues with panic attacks.”

Whoa, whoa. It sounded like somebody was getting a little ahead of himself here. “Actually, there’s been just the one panic attack, the night my home was broken into.” She felt it was important to emphasize this.

He clicked his pen open. “Tell me about that experience.”

“Well, I remember suddenly feeling very light-headed, and hot, and then I guess I just fainted.”

“Has that ever happened to you before? A loss of consciousness?”

“No.”

“What happened when you came to?” he asked.

“There were two police officers hovering over me, asking if I had a medical condition. And it took me a moment to answer them, because at first I didn’t know who or where I was.” She took a deep breath. “But then, after a few seconds, everything came back to me.”

“Does it make you uncomfortable, thinking back to that experience?”

“Of course,” Victoria said, thinking this would be self-evident.

“In what way?” he asked.

“For starters, it was embarrassing, lying there on the floor like that. And scary. Like I said, I’ve never blacked out before. But I understand why it happened. My heart rate was escalated, I had a decreased oxygen intake, and I was under intense emotional stress.”

Dr. Metzel’s lips curved. “Somebody’s been doing some research.”

Heck, yes, she’d done her research. And she’d also quickly learned that looking up symptoms on the Internet was the quickest way to convince herself that she had every medical condition in existence. “Logically, I understand that I fainted during the break-in because of the extreme circumstances.”

He waited. “But . . . ?”

“But ever since that incident, occasionally I’ll find myself in some sort of situation—a normal situation—and I’ll start to worry about having another panic attack.”

Dr. Metzel wrote something on his notepad and then looked up. “Can you give me an example?”

She nodded. “So the first time it happened, I was riding the subway, heading home from work. The subway was packed, and it was warm and stuffy. You know how it gets. And the stuffy air reminded me of that night in my closet when I fainted, and, thinking back to that, I suddenly began to feel . . . off.”

“Off in what way?”

“Nervous. Dizzy. My heart started racing, like the time in the closet.”

“What was going through your head during that moment? Do you remember what you were thinking?”

“I was thinking that there had to be at least twenty people between me and the exit door, and that if I did have another panic attack right there on the train, it was going to cause a huge scene.”

More note taking.

“So what did you do?” Dr. Metzel asked.

Victoria shrugged. “I basically said, ‘Screw it.’ At the next stop, I bulldozed my way to the door, got off the train, and took a cab the rest of the way home.”

“Have you ridden the subway since then?”

She tried to downplay this with a smile. “A nice air-conditioned cab ride home isn’t all that expensive. I figured why bother with the subway while it’s so hot?”

From the way Dr. Metzel furiously scribbled something down on his notepad, she had a feeling she’d failed that question.

Crap.

She shifted uneasily in her chair, not enjoying the feeling of being so . . . scrutinized.

“Any other incidents?” Dr. Metzel asked.

“Well, I also walked out of an exercise class the other day.” She blushed, a little embarrassed to admit these things. Not to toot her own horn or anything, but as a lawyer, she had a reputation for being fearless and tenacious in the courtroom. Heck, she’d been called a “ballbuster” by more than one irritated male opposing counsel. Yet here she sat, admitting she couldn’t ride the subway or take an exercise class.

Dr. Metzel cocked his head. “What happened in the exercise class?”

She shrugged. “Basically the same thing that happened in the subway. About twenty minutes in, I noticed how hot the room was getting and everything just spiraled from there. I kept thinking, ‘Uh-oh, am I feeling a little light-headed?’ And, ‘Oh, crap, what if I faint in the middle of this class, because that’s going to look really weird and cause a scene.’ That kind of thing.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Have you been back to the exercise class since that experience?”

“If I say no, are you going to start scribbling on your notepad again?”

Indeed, apparently he was.

When Dr. Metzel was done writing, he looked at her. “What if you had fainted? Dropped right there in the middle of the class and everyone saw. Would that be such a terrible thing?”

Victoria shuddered at the mere thought. “I don’t think anyone wants to cause a scene like that, do they?”

He acknowledged this with a nod. “Probably not. But I notice that you keep talking about ‘causing a scene’ and looking ‘weird.’ Is that something you consider important, how other people view you?”

Well.

That seemed like a bit of a loaded question.

“Um . . . maybe, I guess,” she said, not sure how this particular line of questioning was relevant.

“Can you expand on that?” Dr. Metzel asked.

Do I have to? “I suppose I try to present myself a certain way in front of other people. But doesn’t everyone do that? The point is, Doctor”—when he didn’t correct her, she assumed it was okay to call him that—“I run a successful law practice and have a professional reputation to maintain. I can’t be running out of the courtroom because I’m suddenly feeling woozy or worried about having another panic attack.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

Good. Now they were getting somewhere. “I fully recognize that these lingering . . . fears”—she hesitated over the word, debating whether it was too extreme—“are obviously all in my head. And I’m sure they’ll go away as more time passes from the burglary. But since they’re kind of, well, annoying, I was hoping you might have some tricks to help speed up the process. You know, breathing techniques, relaxation exercises, things of that nature.” She went for a joke. “Feel free to order me to visit a spa or get weekly massages as part of my treatment.”

Dr. Metzel chuckled. “I’m not sure about the spa part, but certainly both relaxation and imagery techniques can be very helpful in the treatment of panic disorder. Now, one thing I’d—”

Wait. “Did you say ‘panic disorder’?” she interrupted.

“Yes. Panic disorder.”

She sat back in her chair. But . . . she didn’t have a disorder. She was just having a few small panic issues. Clearly, the good doctor here needed to get with the program.

Then she realized what was going on. “Ah. Sorry, I should’ve mentioned this up front. I’m not fishing around for some kind of diagnosis in order to get insurance coverage. I’m fine paying out of pocket for these sessions.”

“That’s good to know,” he said. “And, admittedly, this is just an initial assessment. But based on what you’re telling me, I’m comfortable diagnosing panic disorder at this time.”

Huh.

Having deposed and cross-examined several psychologists, her lawyerly instincts took over. “If you don’t mind my asking, what, exactly, are you basing that diagnosis on?”

“I don’t mind at all,” Dr. Metzel said patiently. “In a nutshell, panic disorder is the fear of having a panic attack. Your fear of causing a scene, or looking ‘weird,’ and the changes you’ve made in your behavior—no longer riding the subway and stopping your exercise class—are all very classic symptoms.”

Completely caught off guard, Victoria tried to process this. “But . . . I don’t have any history of anxiety.” Not that Dr. Metzel would know this—because she hadn’t intended, and still didn’t intend, for these sessions to be an all-access pass into certain things from her past, but she was about as mentally steady as they came. She was the rock. Hell, ever since she was ten years old, she’d made a point of demonstrating just how unflappable she was.

“In your case, the break-in was the catalyst for your initial panic attack,” Dr. Metzel said. “And as you said, that’s not a wholly atypical physiological response, given the extreme stress you were under at the time. But as for why that incident has now brought on your fear of having additional panic attacks . . . well, that’s something we’ll want to explore in therapy.”

Therapy.

Aw, criminy.

Once upon a time, after The Incident, Victoria had gone through therapy at her mother’s insistence. Two years of it, in fact, “just in case” there was anything she wanted to talk about. So she had a pretty good idea what to expect: all the talking, and the dissecting of her every thought and emotion.

Going through that ordeal again sounded about as much fun as stapling her tongue to the carpet.

“Can’t you just patch me up with some breathing techniques and send me on my way?” she asked, trying to charm her way out of this.

Dr. Metzel returned the smile and clicked his pen. “Are weekends better for you? I have an opening for Saturdays at one P.M.”

She took that as a no.