Port Townsend was a small town in northwestern Washington state, on the opposite side of the sound from Seattle. It was a small town that relied almost entirely on a small group of tourists who would be ferried in from Seattle and Vancouver, as the town was right on the water, and only a single highway led to it. The town was quaint, full of small, neat houses overlooking the water and a street mall full of overpriced crafts and strange little doodads.

It was not normally the kind of place that Ethan would have found himself. He was not a man for the "quiet life", and thrived on excitement and interaction. But he had been running for two weeks now, and finally found himself in the farthest corner of the continental US from Richmond, Virginia.

He had fled from Richmond on foot, hitchhiking his way out of the state and to Washington DC. He withdrew a small fortune from his bank account over a period of one week, careful never to take so much so quickly that it might raise the bank's suspicions. From there he risked a train, purchasing a ticket that would cart him across the country without the hassle of customs for planes. He had to lay-over in Chicago and Denver, but dismounted from the track in San Fransisco. He had intended that to be his final destination, a place where he could blend back in, and fall back into his usual rhythms. But two days after he arrived he found himself continually checking anxiously over his shoulder as he walked down a deserted alley, double or triple locking his door at whatever hotel he might be staying at.

He was not usually paranoid, but something about the compilation of impossible events surrounding the episode at the casino had him on edge. And, never one to not follow a hunch, he took off north. Tacoma was not as large of a city as San Fransisco, but it was still a hive of humanity. And Ethan was able to keep himself there for one week before he began to obsess again. He stayed a further two days after that, running his fingers through his hair until it was practically standing on end, checking the numbers every few seconds. The boss of the part-time job he had picked up at a local gas station kept checking in on him, but there was no surprise in his expression when Ethan said he was quitting. His eyes were too shifty for someone preparing to stay still. He stole a car that night, driving it north and abandoning it in a town called Port Orchard. He paid a small fee to cross the Hood Canal Floating Bridge on foot, before hitchhiking his way the rest of the way up to Port Townsend.

He had let the ghost of this FBI agent drive him all the way to the furthest corner of the United States. Where did he plan to go now, Alaska? This was a place he could lay low for a few months, before perhaps making his way over to Seattle. He found a local man looking for a roommate to help with the bills, and the two quickly came to an arrangement.

Tom wasn't a bad man, other than the fact that he was a widower with a small drinking problem. He was just as happy to find a roommate who wanted to pay in cash every month, choosing to overlook the implications of such a method of payment for the fact that cash was cash. No one was going to question his ability to pay his bills if he had the cash to show them. Tom didn't bother his new roommate, and Ethan was just as glad for that. He didn't spend much time in the smoke-stained house, only coming home late at night when tiredness drove him to bed, and leaving early in the morning while his roommate was still working off the hangover.

He didn't get a job, even though it would have been easy enough to acquire one. He knew there was no way he would be able to stand still for that much of the day. So he spent many of his days walking the beach or woods, getting as far from the town as he could during the morning, working his way slowly back in the afternoon. He made friends with several of the ferrymen who worked the port, as he often found himself standing on the dock, watching the distant shores. At one point, one of the men was brave enough to walk up to him and ask him what he was waiting for. Ethan replied warmly enough, but the ferryman seemed to catch some of the distance in his voice, because he came back two days later to ask what Ethan was watching.

He explained as best as he was able to about the water. It was both the most random and the most ordered substance in the world, always changing into something new, yet always staying exactly the same. He said it gave him a headache to watch it. Upon further interrogation, he revealed that, sometimes, that headache was the only thing that got him to sleep at night, and kept him from moving on again.

"You should get on that ferry someday," his unexpected friend told him one day. "It might take you someplace better."

Ethan laughed, and cast an eye out over the water. "Some day," he replied, "I'm sure I will."