[i]Out of the mouths of babes...[/i] 

Bree's head shot toward the boy and his mother, in an instant realizing her hallucination was no hallucination at all, just one more impossibility in a long, breathtaking string of impossibilities. 

Grey eyes wide, her head shot back to Ethan. Something dark and calculating passed behind those all-too-real eyes, and then? Then he did what he always did, what he'd done each and every goddamned time she'd ever seen him, so tantalizingly close she could almost reach out and touch him...

He fled. 

"Son of a... "

Straight over the railing, into the raging waters below as if he were just jumping into a neighborhood pool.

"ETHAN!" Bree clutched the railing, screaming his name, but he was gone, already long gone. There was no possible way he'd hear her - but what about any of this was possible in the first damn place? Not a thing, not a goddamned thing and he was running from her yet again, leaving her standing there again helpless, her heart in her throat - 

No. Not again, dear God no not again... Bree knew the instant she moved, what it was that really sent her over that railing after the green-eyed man, and it was nothing so noble as courage, bravery... Heh... Honor? Duty? Oh no, not in the least.

It was fear.

In that one moment, she feared the nightmares, the never-ending abattoir that ravaged her sleep and stole her peace, a terror far deeper than even her fear of death. It had been fear that kept her rooted to that spot fifteen stories above a Chicago street, and it was fear now that sent her over the railing behind the green-eyed man, into the roiling, watery hell below, the sound of terrified screams of mother and child behind her accompanying her the long way down.

But she was strong, she was a good swimmer - a damn good swimmer - and if Ethan could somehow make his escape... 

At least that was the small, swift glimmer of hope that crossed her thoughts as she fell.

Bree knew the minute she hit that cold, hungry water, closing over her head instantly and muffling the world as if sunlight and air simply ceased to exist - oh God, she'd made such a mistake...