Her voice pulled Ethan the rest of the way into reality, and he slowly lifted his head off of her arms, glancing around. He carefully undid the tight lace of his fingers, wincing slightly as the blood rushed back into the appendages. And then he set about extracting himself from Bree. He did it warily, carefully, almost as though he had woken up to find himself sleeping with a poisonous snake, and one wrong movement might cause it to strike. But nor was he inclined to stay still, to leave himself wrapped in her arms. Perhaps it was fear, perhaps it was weakness, but he was not going to stay there. She was touching him almost like a lover, something that Ethan had not experienced in a long time, and it was making him uncomfortable.

He pulled himself a few inches away from her, sitting up carefully and tucking his knees up to his chest. He wiped at his nose, smearing the trails of blood across his upper lip and over his hand. He glanced down, using this as an excuse to not meet her eyes, before shaking his head slightly.

"No," he agreed wearily, almost blankly. "No more running. There's no point in it anymore."

He was silent for a few moments, unwilling to continue. One of his hands had slipped off his knee and was trailing gently in the piles of pebbled that lay on top of the rock. He rolled one between his fingers, taking comfort in the sensation. And then, finally, he looked up at Bree.

She had taken her shirt off, and his eyes traced briefly over her scar. A small flicker of disappointment flashed through him at the mass of scar tissue. He would have hoped that his efforts had done a better job than that. Yet the fact that she was alive at all after a wound like that should have been more than reward enough. His eyes traced up the curve of her throat, and finally came to rest on her own eyes.

Still he was silent. She had finally asked the question that he knew had been burning inside her, perhaps for even longer than she had known. She wanted to know what he could do. And Ethan had promised to himself that he would explain. Yet he still sat there, silent, and his eyes unconsciously dropped away once more.

What was he? That was hardly a question he was going to be able to answer. As far as he was aware, he was human. His parents had been human, as far as he could tell, as they had never been able to find an answer to the strange things that seemed to follow their son. Yet perhaps he wasn't human, simply because no human should be able to do what he did.

"Are you going to arrest me now?" he asked, a touch of humor staining his bland tone. It was a diversion, and he knew that. Bree would probably know that as well, but it was also something that needed answering. Right now, if she said she was, perhaps he might even go quietly, despite his assertion on the top of that fifteen story building in Chicago. At least, he would be quiet for a little while, until he once more managed to convince himself that he had found the perfect way out, and he got another person killed. He had told Bree the truth. He was done running. There seemed to be no point in it anymore.

"Yeah sure, Ethan." Bree shook her head with exasperation, knowing full well he was deflecting, pushing her away - but she was just too tired, and far too relieved - strangely, inexplicably relieved - he was actually alive and coherent to give much of a damn.

The woman lay back, palms of her hands over her suddenly exhausted eyes. The stones of the riverbank dug into her bare back, but she was just far too tired to even squirm to a more comfortable position. "Just like... Cuff yourself or something with these nonexistent handcuffs I've got tucked away... Oh... Somewhere? Don't get any ideas there, we'll both regret it."

"Then you go do the right thing, turn yourself in. Like, the closest park ranger station, all right? I'm just going to lay here a little longer and soak up the fact that somehow, some way, I'm not dead. All because the person who's haunted my nightmares for the better part of a year did something... "

Bree barked a short, curt laugh, cut off quickly as she let her arms fall to her sides.

"Something impossible. That was impossible, Ethan. I should be dead. You should be dead. Hell, for a few moments there, I thought you were." Bree lifted up her head for a moment, eyeballed the green-eyed man for a moment and then letting her head fall black for again. Weakly, she tossed the wet remnants of her T-shirt toward him, the whole thing kind of splooshing in a soggy mass relatively close by.

"You're still bleeding, by the way," she said, the fingers of one hand waving toward him weakly. Bree hadn't missed the look of revulsion on his face when he looked up at her from her arms. Just one more contradiction in the mass of contradictions, improbabilities and impossibilities. He somehow had Victor killed; but he still cradled the FBI agent hunting him through some of the most deadly whitewaters in the nation. She disgusted him - yet he saved her life, wrapping his arms and hands around so tightly that even unconscious, he didn't let her go.

Bree didn't get it. But if he wasn't going to explain himself, she was in no condition to beat it out of him. 'Beat it out of him? Really?' The very thought made her grin, as if she'd ever done such a thing in her life, but the wistful little smile still felt good.

"So are you going to answer my question," she asked, face skyward where she lay catching her breath, "Or are you still calculating the odds of me ever figuring out what the hell just happened on my own? I can tell you the chance of that right off - they're practically nil."

Ethan did not wish to begrudge Bree her sarcasm, but he did anyways. Consciously he understood that it was her way of coping with the fact that everything she believed, everything she had been taught about the world since birth, was being shattered. He understood that. At the same time he resented it. He resented the obligation that she represented, and he resented her for putting this burden on him.

After all, physically, Ethan had been alone since he had left his parents at age eighteen. But, emotionally, the child Ethan had been abandoned before the age of ten. Now, for the first time in a very long time, he was expected to confide in another human. He was expected to be accommodating, and truthful. And he didn’t want to. He didn't know how.

So he chose to linger in silence, waiting for something to arise and save him. He didn’t even realize that he was still scanning the numbers, was looking for something that could get him away, until he saw the chance to run. He took in a small breath, startled, before sighing. Was that really what he wanted to do? Did he really want to go back to running, with no goal in mind, glancing over his shoulder constantly, waiting for the world to fling him back towards Bree?

If it meant that he wouldn’t have to tell her anything, maybe. He let out a small snort of laughter, before picking up the shirt she flung at him and wringing it out. The watered down blood dripped onto the rock in a small torrent, and he stared at it blankly. He stuck the shirt back under his nose, wiping away the blood that had pooled in the corners of his eyes and in his ears with the hem.

For a moment there was silence, and he tried to relax. He tried to prepare himself so as to be able to answer her questions. But when she finally spoke again, he broke.

“What,” he said, voice dripping with pained sarcasm. “You want to know what I am?” He let out a harsh bark of a laugh, before tossing her shirt back at her. “Do you want me to say I’m a monster? That I sold my soul to the devil?” He was silent for just a moment, turning his eyes back to the water.

“Well, I didn’t,” he finally managed to spit out. “And I’m not. I’m a man. Just...” he choked slightly, gagging over the lump that had formed in the back of his throat. He swallowed hard, biting the inside of his lip, before choking out his final words. “Just a man who wants to live his life.”

Bree winced as he spoke, shaking her head as she sat up painfully. She heard the hitch in his voice, the unexpected defensiveness she couldn't possibly have known her words would elicit, but she had no words for it, no defense.

"Well don't we all?" she said, as much statement as a question. Bree was confused by his reaction, his words, utterly at a loss for words for some seconds as she watched him. Obviously something in her own speech had hit... A nerve? A wide open raw nerve but for the life of her, she couldn't begin to guess what it was. Sell his soul to the devil? Really!? What in all the world would possibly make him think she'd been insinuating any such thing?

Had someone accused him of that before? Seriously? What in the hell had he done, could he do, that would lead anyone to think... Bree rubbed at her sore eyes with her fingertips, as if she could somehow wrest an answer to this painfully strange enigma from her aching eyelids.

"What I wanted to know Ethan, is what the hell you did to make this happen," she said finally, hands falling from her face, wrapping easily about her knees as she brought them to her chest. "It's not... normal. Not maybe one in a billion - hell, maybe not even one other person on the planet - could have done what you just did."

"I'm not your therapist, and I'm not going to rehash your childhood injuries or your adult traumas, and what 'life choices' brought you here to this riverbank today. I've also got zero interest in burning you at the stake either, for whatever the hell that might be worth. I left my pitchfork and torch in my other change of shorts. Sorry."

Bree shrugged, and then she tried a smile. It was a confused smile, an exhausted smile and, quite likely, a relatively battered smile, but it was still there, and still genuine nonetheless. " Please Ethan. You're here. I'm here. You just saved me from the proverbial watery grave, and I'm not out to poke fingers into whatever tender parts you have. I'm tired. I'm confused. I think I swallowed half the damn river and, I'm pretty sure, you swallowed the other half."

"I'm also a genuinely sarcastic bitch, and it's both a gift and a magnificent defense mechanism. I want to know what just happened, and how you did it - and honestly that is all."

He had to tell her something. The numbers told him that much. That fact calmed the twisting in his stomach and dissolved the lump in the back of his throat. He had something that he needed to do, and it calmed him down. All he had to do was focus on this one, last task.

If he didn't say anything now he could make her go away. Eventually she would just get up and leave. But it was impossible that she would leave him forever. The hunt would not be over until she found an answer that would satisfy her. And that was what he needed to find. An answer that would satisfy her. She was done with this hunt; as done with it at this moment as she could ever be. But if he left her with nothing that fire would kindle within her again, and they would be right back to where they had begun.

He had saved her life. She knew it, and he knew it. That act had changed something between them. If he could just find the right words now he could end this. The numbers answered his subconscious plea, and he longed to close his eyes, to devote his complete attention to them. He had to find a solution, one that could get him out of this situation for good. That was all that concerned him.

"It..." he began, stumbling over the words. How could he say something? But his mind latched on to something she had said, only moments ago, something that he had dismissed without even recognizing it. "You said it yourself. Probability. It was probability." That wasn't enough. It wouldn't be enough to satisfy her. But this was where he had to be careful. He had to pay the strictest attention to what he said, and what implications were, or, more importantly, were not, in his words.

"I've always been good at making predictions about the world. Looking at something, and... quantifying what is going to happen. Water is a very predictable substance. It doesn't do things randomly. It is always affected by gravity and is always influenced by the path and the landscape surrounding it. I just made sure we were in the correct spots at the correct time."

Not once in his short speech did he imply that he could actually alter the probability of something happening. That was far too dangerous. Things happen all the time, and if there was something odd or exceptional, well, that was life. And that was ok. Other people were ok with that. It was ok for him to win thousands of dollars at a casino, because sometimes people just got lucky. So long as he lost more than he ultimately took away, he was safe. If he just happened to walk out of a police station, so be it. But as soon as he implied that he was responsible for it, then things always got out of hand. It was alright if the exceptional happened around him. It was not if he made the exceptional happen through the power of his own will.

Bree did her level best to understand, to try to wrap her head around what it was that Ethan was saying. Her instincts told her he was telling her the truth - but only just so much. There were whole layers of truth he was keeping beneath the surface. It seemed to Bree that he was showing her an iceberg from the prow of a ship, and trying to convince her it was floating like an ice cube in a cold drink, and not concealing a mountain of treacherous ice beneath the frigid waters.

But at the very least, there was some truth there. It was a start. Bree could work with that.

"All right," Bree said, pulling her knees to her chest, wincing in pain though she rested her chin atop her kneecaps. She let out a slow, ragged breath before taking yet another, to speak once more. "So... You can see the... Probabilities? Though in water it is... Somehow easier for you. Because water is predictable?"

It was really more of a statement than a question, and Bree chewed her lip thoughtfully, knowing she was missing something vital here, something crucial. But her body ached, her head ached - hell, she would have sworn even her brain ached. All the impossible things she had ever seen him do ran through her thoughts like a stream she was helpless to dam. Water. Probabilities...

The leaf.

The leaf she had watched him play with just before he went over the edge, dancing on nothing at all but Ethan's will. There was so much Bree had seen him do, so much that should not have been - but the leaf. He had made a leaf float. She had seen it with her own eyes, and she wasn't insane, or concussed or delirious or hallucinating.

"But how did you make that leaf float, before you went over the railing back there? What does probability have to do with that, Ethan?"

The leaf?

For a moment he had been so close, so close he had honestly allowed himself to believe he was free. He had relaxed, watched her slowly process the information that he had given her, watched as the numbers reassured him that this was it. She might not have truly believed he was telling her everything, but she was willing to let it go. Or so he had believed.

The human brain was a fickle thing. It made connections that even the numbers couldn't predict. It made sudden connections, and whole paradigms could shift. And so it was with Bree at that moment. She found something to keep her looking.

The leaf.

It took Ethan a moment to even remember about what she was speaking. The little games he played with the world around him were so second nature by now that he didn't even notice them. It was like a comedian telling a joke in his head and laughing out loud, or a musician who tapped out the keys to a song of which they were particularly fond on a solid surface. It was an unconscious gesture, his way of interacting with the world. Finally he was able to pick out the memory, a memory that he would never have remembered after all of the excitement if she hadn't pointed it out to him.

He had grabbed the leaf because the water had been so easy, madly spitting all over the place, every which way. The same water that had allowed him to jump into it, had carried him all the way through the rapids without ever bashing his prone form against the rock.

She was staring at him, and the longer he hesitated the less she was going to believe the next partial truth he would feed her.

He shook his head side to side, a motion somewhere between complete denial and a desperate attempt to placate her. "The leaf wasn't floating. The water spat it out, and I grabbed it. It is easy to do when you can predict where it is going." That wasn't enough. She didn't trust his words. Why would she? Well, perhaps she would trust her eyes. "Here. Look."

With one hand, Ethan picked up a pebble, with the other, he held out his hand, palm up, mutely asking for Bree's own hand. As soon as he had it, he looked around, tossing the pebble lightly up and down, up and down. He studied the numbers, doing exactly that which he was pretending was all he could do. Read the numbers, observe and predict, but not alter. As soon as he found the perfect moment, he threw the pebble wildly up into the air at an angle that made it seem impossible it could ever come back. The pebble quickly disappeared from sight, but, up higher, a small gust of wind grabbed the light rock, sending it skidding back in Ethan's direction.

His eyes never breaking contact with the pebble, Ethan negotiated Bree's hand with deft movements. The pebble bounced off the rock, and landed lightly in Bree's palm. It rolled slightly, but stayed balanced in the center of her palm.

"Gravity works the way gravity works. Nothing can change that. But gravity and wind, they always do the same thing. Just like water. That makes them easy to predict."

Now he had her convinced. He had to have her convinced. This was getting far too close to the truth for comfort.

Bree stared for a moment, mystified, at the pebble sitting so impossibly in the center of her palm again. It was the same pebble, she was sure. Of course it was. She had watched Ethan toss it away, and then it had simply... Come back. Ethan seemed to be saying he could somehow predict these... Probabilities? And she'd certainly gotten the proof, such as it was, in the palm of her hand.

She honestly could not believe she was willing to consider this possibility, that the man before her was somehow... Superhuman? Like a superhero from the comics, able to somehow see the probabilities of this world and use them to move through the world so easily.

She poked at the pebble for a moment with the fingertip of her hand, the pebble that had somehow or other found it's way back to her, however unlikely. And Bree was quiet for several long moments, letting the thoughts run through her head as they would. Yes, she could see now, attribute all the insanely improbable and impossible things she had seen him do with her own eyes. How Ethan could walk off a 15-story rooftop, and somehow glide all the way down to the ground; how he could make that impossible leap to the ferry, leaving her stunned at the dock. It might even make sense, how he could walk out of a jail, and then a police station - impossible probabilities.

Still, there were some questions that simply could not be explained away so easily, so pat as this seeming bit of magic Ethan had devised.

Her gaze turned up from the pebble in her palm to the man before her. Yes, there were still a couple vital questions left, answers she could not sleep again without hearing from the only man in the world who could provide them.

"Gravity works as it does, and wind as well. Water yes - apparently water is easy. Isn't that what you said?" Bree chewed the inside of her lip thoughtfully, trying to ignore the strange, phantom ache in her chest, over the scar that had actually stopped causing her the least trouble some months ago.

"What about bullets, Ethan? Do they work the same way?" She leaned forward just a little, hand closing into a loose fist over that pebble, something of a sudden, strange talisman to her now. "Why did you kill Victor? What had he ever done to you, that you would? I knew him, for some time. To the best of my knowledge Ethan, you weren't so much as an acquaintance of his. Not even his gardener or his manicurist or his pool boy. Nada."

"So why? How?" Bree stopped chewing the inside of her lip, letting out a long breath of air she didn't even know she'd held inside. "And did you mean to nearly kill me too, Ethan? I've chased you all over this country, East coast to West, just to know these things."

"I can barely sleep, Ethan. Not since that day," Bree admitted, helpless to stop the words once they had begun. "I close my eyes, and I see Victor's head explode, and then I'm falling. Just falling, until I hit the ground and wake up screaming, piss off my neighbors, scare the hell out of my cat. But even worse are the nights he talks to me, Victor does. A dead guy with half a gory head, asking me why I didn't keep him safe like I said I would, so much for witness protection and all that B.S... "

Her voice finally trailed off as she closed her eyes, wrapping her arms almost protectively around her knees, covering her belly, her vulnerable chest and her long scar, until she could finally meet Ethan's gaze once more.

He let her talk. Ethan didn’t interrupt her flow of words, the words that had been building inside of her since they met four months ago on that fateful raid. That one desperate question that had haunted the both of them was finally out in the air, and there was no avoiding it.

He had known what he was going to tell her for a long time now. The answer had been building inside his subconscious since she had shouted that question to him for the first time, just over three months ago as he glided away on the ferry bound to Seattle. For a moment he tried to find a way around them, around the dishonesty that burned within them. Technically his words would be the truth, but they would be skirting so far around his desperate desire to avoid the truth of his ability that they might as well be an outright lie. Why did he care about lying to her? Where in this absurd game of cat and mouse had she become more than the hunter, and he more than the prey?

“The mob was already there, Bree,” he told her gently, softly. Would she break? Would the answer to her question take away the few supports that kept her upright? “That is why I was wearing the uniform. I was there to make money. Knowing what cards you are going to get is the ultimate gambling technique. I didn’t need the money.

“When I noticed the raid coming I tried to leave. The last thing I wanted to be was caught by the police. But when I tried to leave I noticed the presence of the mob. If I’d actually walked out of the building I would have been shot. So I decided to take advantage of the raid.

“You weren’t supposed to notice me. I was supposed to be one of the many workers taken away. I’d answer the questions, and no one would look twice at me. But then you gave me a personal escort, and I had to find another way to get away.

“The mob had left one hitman. Just in case the off chance of a shot presented itself. There was a clean line between him and Victor. The only thing blocking his sight was... me. And I just... stepped aside. It was one little move, and it seemed so easy. Everything is easy in your head. Reality is a lot harsher. It didn’t feel like murder when it was just an idea.

"I didn’t do anything to the bullet. It took its course. All I did was step aside.”

And it was true. He was the only thing blocking the hitman’s line of sight, and he did simply step to the side. But he didn’t tell Bree that he had set things up. He didn’t tell her that the only reason the mob had left a hitman in the first place was because he fixed the numbers. That the only reason that there was a clear line of sight was because he had made sure that it would be there.

But he hadn’t lied about the numbers. It hadn’t felt like murder. It wasn’t as though he had pulled the trigger. But Ethan had accepted that darkness on that very same ferry ride. He had accepted the pride within him that let him believe he had the right to manipulate the course of events. That he had the right to change things however he wanted to promote his own desires.

Somewhere in that raging waterfall a stroke of relief had found him. His crime wasn’t any less, but there was atonement waiting for him. It didn’t make what he had done any better, but it still freed him.

He had saved her life twice. But she had saved him, too. She had saved him, and she had shown him himself. Perhaps they were even.

'As simple as that?'

No, Bree wasn't been broken. She had not melted into tears nor slipped into gibbering madness. She was simply... Listening. Absorbing Ethan's every last word, letting the soothing tenor of his voice run over her far gentler than the river that had nearly drowned them.

Her knees were still pulled up to her chest, almost protectively. Her fingers cradled her head, rubbing slowly against her scalp, eyes staring sightlessly at the ground and the tops of her bare feet. These were the words she had waited to hear, for so long. So why did it all still feel... Incomplete? As if she were finally putting the very last pieces of a puzzle together, the picture meant to be forming before her very eyes - and yet pieces, vital pieces were still missing that stole away understanding, that marred the whole picture. But Bree didn't even know where to look for the missing pieces, nor even what questions to ask that might lead her to them. She couldn't escape the surreal feel of this entire conversation, despite all she had seen, experienced for herself - however impossible these things might be in the world she had known not even an hour ago.

Bree reeled, but she was not broken.

"So you stepped aside, and Victor took a bullet to the head and... I suppose you got away." There was no question in her voice, only a statement.

"It all sounds... Simple enough. Well, after accepting the possibility - reality, sorry. The reality that someone can actually do the things you can do in your head, with numbers. If you walked out of that casino, you'd have been dead. So... Victor or you. I can... I can understand that. Almost. You didn't know him." Bree blinked, slowly raising her gaze from her feet to the green-eyed man sitting across from her.

"You said I wasn't supposed to notice you. But I did. Do you know why, Ethan? Why I noticed you?" Bree waited several long, thoughtful moments before she continued.

"I noticed you Ethan because of all the people there in that casino - the wait staff, the bouncers, the dealers, the clients? You alone were like the eye of a storm. Calm, collected - not at all anxious, nervous, crying or shaking like a little girl." Bree laughed mirthlessly at the memory, her brow furrowing in concentration as she followed a far darker thought raised its ugly, serpentine head.

"All these things you see, or know or... Or calculate. Did you try to kill me then, Ethan?" As if they had a mind of their own, Bree's fingertips found the thick pink rope of scar on her chest, peeking over her bathing suit nearly to her throat.

"You saved my life today - I know that. But did you see or... Or calculate your numbers, or... Or think through all the chances, all the probabilities, the possibilities. Did you want me dead too, right next to Victor?"

t might have almost been funny, if the whole situation hadn't been so lacking in any humor. Him, try to kill her? No. That was the last thing he had done. It hadn't even been a possibility, that little shard of a bullet that would enter into her body. It had been such a small number that he had dismissed it, for it had felt like the same chance as him waking up tomorrow to realize he had gone blind. Now he knew that something about Bree made the numbers different. It was like there was a little warp around her, and it made the impossible happen. Surely there was no one else in the world who could be sitting with him, right here, right now.

"No," he said. "I did not want you dead. I did not even know you would be hit." And that was all he could say. It was all he could offer, and it was probably the most honest thing he had said for as long as they had been talking.

And I saved your life. He added silently, a trace of bitterness in his mental voice. You don't know it, but you were supposed to die then. And I didn't let it happen. This whole chase, the whole distortion of his life, in the end it was all his fault. His actions, and Bree, who was somehow able to find him over and over, stand right next to him in the one city in America where he just happened to be, one day before he was planning on leaving.

"My turn for a question," he finally said. "Why didn't you let me go? Why did you even start chasing me in the first place? How did you keep finding me?"

It was, in a way, only one question. The first one was the obvious one, but the last one was the one to which he really wanted to know the answer. They were directly connected to each other in Ethan's mind, and the last could not have been asked without the first.

But, underneath it all, there was a touch of relief. She had accepted his explanation about what he could do. He wouldn't need to make up more excuses, more lies. Maybe, at the end of this all, they would be able to separate, and never see each other again.

Bree buried the laughter - slightly hysterical, utterly inappropriate - that tried to well up when Ethan railed off a string of questions. For a guy who could 'see' numbers, he sure did have a strange idea about the definition of "one." She'd asked her questions though and, at the very last answer, she truly believed the green-eyed man. Yes, he may have stepped aside, let Victor eat that bullet - but he didn't want her dead. No, she couldn't escape the impression there were certain vital pieces she was still missing, still didn't even know how to ask about - but Ethan hadn't tried to kill her.

That, at least, was no small thing.

"I started 'chasing' you, because that is what I do. I'm an FBI agent - Victor was my source. My informant, right up to the second that half his head was vaporized. For all I knew Ethan, you were a mobster, complicit in some way I had yet to figure with Victor's murder. Hell, I even wondered if you might be a hit man yourself."

"I couldn't just 'let you go.' That's also what I do. 'Letting you go' was never an option, not so long as I could somehow, some way, follow that trail of crumbs that always seemed to lead me to you... " Bree's voice trailed off, her brow furrowing in thought as she chewed her lip.

No, that wasn't entirely true. Yes, investigative work led her to him the first time. In Chicago, it had been a tip from that dirt bag "night manager." True, both encounters had their own surreal endings as Ethan traipsed out of the Seattle PD jail, or stepped off the roof of a 15-story building; but at least she could point to a reason, a clue, a piece of information - however flimsy or unlikely - that had sent her in one direction or another.

She hadn't been searching for Ethan today. As a matter of fact, it would be fair to say coming to Bend with Jarod had been the 'Hail Mary' of all ways to run as far from Ethan as she possibly could, in every conceivable way. The weight of all the impossibilities had been crushing her confidence beneath boulders of doubt, sapping her faith in her very sanity.

She hadn't been searching for Ethan today at all and yet, here he was. Here she was.

Bree suddenly realized, she hadn't the least idea how she managed to keep finding him. Not really. Those crumbs that led to him had always been miniscule at best, not fit to feed a sparrow.

"But... I honestly don't know how we keep coming together. Not really. I wasn't looking for you today - far, far from it. Maybe we're just... Damn, I don't know. Lucky?" Bree almost snorted the laughter out her nose, shaking her head. "Unlucky?"

Over her dead body was Bree going to voice the other option that came to mind, one that made about as much sense as nebulous, fickle luck; or a man who could somehow 'see' numbers and possibilities and chance.

That perhaps the two of them were, somehow, meant to come together, again and again and again.

"I don't do unlucky," Ethan replied, a touch of humorous snark entering his tone. It was enough to finally get him to smile, an honest and somewhat surprised expression. The flow of blood finally seemed to have come to a halt, and he wiped is face one more time, looking down at her bloodstained shirt. No, Ethan didn't do unlucky. Maybe, when it came to Bree, there was no such thing as lucky or unlucky. It just... was.

"We seem to have come full circle," Ethan said a moment later. "What now, Bree?" They had gotten a brief chance to talk on the roof of that building in Chicago, but that could hardly be called a real conversation. But now they had spoken enough to get the most important questions in their relationship out of the way, and the buzz that had been keeping Ethan awake and functioning was starting to fade. More than anything, he wanted to return to his hotel room, change into a dry pair of clothes, and sleep until his pounding headache went away.

He couldn't tell, though, whether or not he wanted to get away from Bree. This was the second time she had pushed him to use his abilities in a way he had never used them before. Probability was the bounds of what was possible. Luck was pushing the impossible into the realm of probability. Both of the times he had saved her life, he had been forced to step over that edge. It frightened him, but it also intrigued him. The dark lure of power. Perhaps the best way to stay away from that darkness was just to get as far away from Bree as possible.

"If you try and arrest me, I will run again. I'm not going to jail. I'm not going to go sit in an interrogation room in some FBI compound. And, as you have already told me, you will be obliged to chase me. We will be starting our little game of cat and mouse all over again, and next time it may not end until one of us is dead."

When Ethan finally laughed, a genuine laugh not tinged with bitterness or barely repressed anger, Bree finally felt something inside simply... Let go. He wasn't a monster. He wasn't the murderer or the mobster or the criminally-connected villain of her nightmares. He was just... A guy. A guy who could do some extraordinary things, but just a guy nonetheless. And Bree laughed too, even shaking her head incredulously at Ethan's dire predictions of doom and despair and death.

"Well damn, I bet you're a ton of fun at parties, aren't you?" she said with a chuckle, stretching her arms overhead until she felt the satisfying pop of her spine, unfolding her cramped legs until she could feel the muscles loosen and lighten.

"I already told you Ethan, I'm not going to arrest you. Did you miss the part where I'm not concealing a gun or cuffs?" she quipped as she pulled her legs up beneath her, almost springing to her feet as she looked down at him. The smile never wavered. "I'm tired of chasing you Ethan. I'm done. I was wrong. I never in a million years could have guessed just how wrong, but I was. Victor wasn't my friend, he was my source - but he wasn't a bad guy either. He screwed up - a lot - and he didn't deserve to get shot. But there isn't a jury in the world that would convict you for taking a step."

Bree stood to her feet, the water shoes on her feet already dry. She looked to the blood-stained shirt Ethan used to stanch the bleeding, and decided to write it off with a small shrug of her shoulders. "I won't either. Still... " The corners of her lips made a mischievous little twist, an impish light in her grey eyes just beginning to shine, suggesting just a hint of the woman who had been, before the day she met a green-eyed man.

"Come with me if you want to live," she growled as she held her hand out to Ethan where he sat, her voice deep and low in the absolutely worst imitation of Arnold Schwarzenneger's accent of, quite literally, all time. Bree chuckled warmly, wagging her fingers to him again.

"No really, come with me. Seriously, if you'd like to have your life back. I'm not arresting you, and I'm not going to hunt you down if you turn and disappear this very instant. But right now you are a wanted man in Washington state - hell, nationwide really. I can't just walk into my boss' office and offer up a mea culpa or two, say I had a 'come to Jesus' moment and realized I was wrong, and could you please call off the dogs we set on Ethan? Christ, they already think I'm going batshit crazy anyway - no need to add fuel to that bonfire."

"But if you want law enforcement across the United States to stop looking at you funny everywhere you go - hell, if you'd just like to go into a Dunkin' Donuts again without wondering if the patrolman at the counter with a dozen sprinkled and glazed is looking at you funny? I'm going to need you with me, Ethan. I'm not asking you to tell my higher ups what you've told me, about the... The numbers. The probabilities you see. But they'll need to see you, to hear you with your own words, your own reasons. It's not a perfect solution, but it's the only one I have to offer to get you your freedom back, so you can stop looking over your shoulder everywhere you go. When we're done, then you can turn, go, disappear - whatever you like."

Her hand was still outstretched, her fingers beckoning Ethan one last time. "What do you say?"

For a moment Ethan remained sitting on the ground, staring blankly at her hand. Thoughts and numbers whirled in his head, competing for attention. And, as he always did whenever the situation got even remotely tricky, Ethan turned to the numbers to better understand what course of action he should take. They were the only thing in his life on which he could rely with complete certainty. Even his own mind had betrayed him before this point.

The one thing for certainty he knew was that he wanted his life to go back to normal. Ethan knew how to crave excitement, but there was a whole realm of difference between excitement and fear. And running from the FBI would only ever lead to more fear, paranoia that around every corner he turned he would find another battle with the police. Now that Bree was no longer going to be on his trail it was entirely possible that the numbers would be enough to keep him from ever running into someone who was looking for him, but that would still keep him constantly on the move, constantly on guard. He could say with certainty that was not what he wanted.

He barely even reacted to her humorous attempt at imitation, barely even flicked his eyes as she continued to speak to him, explaining what his options were. He didn't need her explanations. The numbers told him everything he needed to know. Not that he wanted her to know that.

There was no doubt that the best way for him to return to his former life was for him to accept Bree's offer, to let her escort him to the FBI, and answer their questions willingly. He had run the last time because he knew that they would be looking close. They would try and dig up everything about him, and would find the many secrets that Ethan had scattered around the country. At that time they would almost certainly have found the multiple identities he possessed, and the millions of dollars that were scattered in various banks across the country. And every time they tried to get one layer closer to the truth they would find more and more reasons to hold him, to keep looking deeper. He would have come out looking like the worst kind of criminal.

Now... now it was far more likely to be a wrap up. Bree would vouch for him, and there would be far fewer reasons for them to try and find out about him. It would be far less effort for them to just accept whatever information he gave them, and let him go. It would be one more case closed, and any people who had been put on his case could be withdrawn, and put to better uses than chasing him across the country. He would pick one of his most innocuous identities, and just keep his eye on the numbers. He would act carefully, do his best to appear perfectly honest, and keep things going in the direction that would get him out of questioning the fastest.

His hand reached out blindly, and closed over Bree's fingers. Now he finally looked at her, and even though his eyes were distant, he really was looking at her. "Fine," he agreed, pulling himself up onto wobbling legs with her helping hand. "But we will need to make a stop in Denver on the way to Virginia. I need to pick up some identification."

The return walk to the landing where she'd left Jerod and Matt was almost blessedly quiet. The strangely mismatched but fatefully linked pair made their way back up the miles of river that the water had hurled them down, and for the life of her, Bree could not think of a single thing more to say. Instead, she simply wrapped her arms tightly, one over the other, about her chest, in a sparse defense from goose bumps rising all over her skin, thoroughly chilled without a towel to dry off on this cool Oregonian day.

It was not lost on Bree in the least, that during the entirety of their first brief, incredibly strange conversation, that Ethan had kept her at the proverbial arm's length during the entire exchange. Whatever kept their interaction stilted and awkward was, she was sure, something more he did not want her to know, yet another secret [secrets?] he most desperately wanted to keep to himself. But Bree did not read minds - nor numbers, obviously - and she had to content herself that whatever else he held close, it was not apparently criminal.

Or at the very least, she had no proof that it was, which was more-or-less the same thing. And there was nothing that said the two of them had to be friends at the end of all this - hell, they didn't even have to be friendly. Yes, his request to stop through Denver for identification raised all kinds of red flags in her head, but considering he knew very well the FBI were coming after him, perhaps it would not be so strange that he'd have secured his true identification far away, on the off chance he was arrested or stopped by authorities for any reason at all - even a speeding ticket.

Then again, wouldn't Ethan be able to foresee something like that, a speed trap, if...

Bree groaned, unfolding her arms just long enough to let her fingertips massage her temples for a moment. Trying to figure out how all of this actually worked would give her a headache like no other, and she was just too damned exhausted for the effort. The wave of relief that washed over her when she saw the landing where they were meant to launch, Jarod and Matt and a few other family friends milling about around the raft, Jarod's strong face darkened with worry as he spoke animatedly with his middle brother Josh.

"Jarod!" Bree called his name, waving and then jogging the remaining distance before she threw herself into his arms.

"Damn it Bree," he said tenderly, a relieved smile that promised he wasn't really mad at all. "I was about to call in the National Guard!"

She let her head lie against his chest for a moment before she spoke, wrapping her arms around his waist. "I went into the river," she murmured softly, "We both did." Bree lifted her head to look to Ethan, waving him closer with her one hand.

"You... What!?" Jarod's dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully as they swept between Bree and this green-eyed stranger.

"Jarod, this is Ethan."

"Ethan... ?" His brow furrowed for a moment before widening in genuine shock. His lips pulled back over his teeth in something very like a snarl, both his hands wrapped around Bree's upper arms as if he would pick her up and pull her away to safety from some rabid dog that had followed her home.

But Bree only put one palm gently on Jarod's wide chest, the other tenderly bringing his handsome face to hers. "No. No, it's all right Jarod. I'll explain to you later, but I promise, it's all right. We were both in the river. He saved me - I saved him too. But I'm afraid I've got to cut our vacation short. I'm so sorry, but there are simply things I have to do... "

She stood to her toes to kiss Jarod lightly, and his arms slid easily around her slender form as he pulled her to him tightly. His dark eyes lifted over her shoulder to glare at Ethan, his mouth a thin, disapproving line.

For his part, Matt leaned against a nearby tree trunk and maintained his usual silence, brows furrowed curiously over his hazel eyes as he took in the whole of this strange, strange scene.

The silence between the two, agent and criminal, was not comfortable, but at least it was mutual. Bree had nothing more to say to Ethan, and Ethan most certainly did not have anything to say to Bree. He had made his peace with the situation, or so he kept telling himself, but that didn't make it any better for him. How many times now had he simply wished he could go back in time and redo the whole situation, make it so that none of this nonsense had happened? He still wished it now. And it still didn't matter. Once he got to the FBI and explained this whole situation to their satisfaction it could be over. He could go back to his former life, and try and forget that any of this ever happened.

Only once did Ethan consider breaking the silence, and that would have been to ask where exactly they were going. They were both soaking wet, exhausted beyond measure, and, to the best of Ethan's knowledge, walking away from town. But they were both soaking wet and exhausted. Bree was not going to take them somewhere they didn't need to go, so he remained quiet and kept his eyes on the ground.

When they reached the launching platform Ethan hesitated towards the back . This was his last chance to leave, vanish and let the FBI keep up their pointless search forever. Once he walked over there he would be around other people and his path would be set. He could not remain a figment when other people knew him and knew exactly where he was and what he was doing. But when Bree beckoned him over he stepped up, posture bold and harsh, wet shirt still plastered uncomfortably to his back. For the most part he looked as though he was ignoring Jarod and his guard-dog attitude, but that did not change the fact that Ethan was carefully watching both Jarod and the numbers related to him. Ethan did not trust the man any more than he trusted Ethan, and that was how it was going to go.

Two other men in the area gathered closer. The first was innocuous, and looked to be the younger brother of Bree's boy-toy. However, when Ethan saw the other one, he felt a mild shock run up his spine and cause his eyes to widen in surprise. The other person in Jarod's entourage was Matt, the same Matt who had given him a list from Chicago. For a moment Ethan wondered if he should ignore this strange encounter, pretend it wasn't happening, but he knew it would come up eventually.

"Hello, Matt."

"Ethan," Matt replied somewhat hesitantly, watching the clearly hostile attitudes his elder brother held for the green-eyed man.

At this moderately friendly greeting Jarod finally looked away from Ethan, eying his brother in surprise. "You two... know each other?"

"I gave Ethan a lift from Chicago when I drove out," Matt replied, shrugging big shoulders.

Ethan said nothing, only shook his head sightly before rubbing his brow. Honestly, nothing should surprise him any more.

"Are you ready Ethan? Just a sprint to the finish line now, I suppose." Bree's eyebrow cocked in question as she looked to the man beside her from the corner of her grey eyes. She did not really expect much of an answer, but she would have settled for a smile. For better or worse, one way or another, some inexplicable something existed between them, some connection Bree could not even begin to understand. She doubted Ethan did either, no matter how intelligent or "lucky" he seemed. And his reaction when he saw Matt there on that river landing only sealed the deal on that matter in her mind.

The click of her calf-high boot heels on the polished granite of the Richmond FBI entryway resounded in a staccato rhythm through the high, spacious foyer. She fixed the Persian-patterned scarf of many colors about her neck, lying over the dove grey sweater and a black knee-high skirt. She nodded and smiled at pretty Stephanie, the receptionist who waved a quick hello before directing them toward the metal detectors and bag X-ray.

"Hi Allen." Bree laid her purse and bag on the conveyor, and stepped through the metal detector.

"Agent Scully!" The good-humored security guard apparently never tired of his ancient joke, no matter the only thing she ever had in common with the actress Gillian Anderson was the auburn hair and the purported FBI badge. He gave a cursory glance toward the screen at her bag, noting the gun of course, the credential case, the pens, paper - all in order. Allen ran his hand through his still thick grey hair, those spectacularly bushy brows furrowing curiously. "Now wait just a second there - aren't you supposed to be on vacation still there, Scully?"

Bree collected her things on the other side of the conveyor with a shrug and a smile. "You know how things go Allen," she quipped with a shrug of her shoulders and a lop-sided grin. "No rest for the wicked. Keeping my nose to the grindstone. The truth is out there. Pick your cliché - and he's with me." Bree nodded toward Ethan.

"Agent Mulder?" Allen asked with a wide, friendly grin, waving for Ethan to head through the metal detector himself after Bree.

"Not exactly, Allen" Bree said with a bright twitter of laughter, wondering what the security guard's reaction would be if she told him, in all truthfulness, that Ethan was far more an X-file than a Mulder.

Bree's office was on the third floor and, in truth, calling it an office was really a bit of a misnomer. Her office was really more of a glorified cubicle, with three and a half walls and a wrap around desk situated so she could face out her "door." She had precious few bits of personal paraphernalia in this bare bones space anyway - she spent as little time behind her desk as humanly possible.

And so there was standard issue office furniture, comfortable enough, functional enough too - nothing fancy. A picture of Bree cuddling with Riddick, one of Michael and Lyndsey, and an old picture of their Mom and Dad, smiling and laughing about something off-camera, something she had been far too little to remember, but this was how she liked to think of her parents.

A plastic placard affixed outside her cubicle proclaimed her 'office' to passers-by - mostly other agents who, in truth, did not hide their curious stares at all, recognizing Bree's bogey man in an instant but wisely saying not a goddamn thing now that he was here in the flesh. But the RAC had put it out before her arrival - not a damned word from anyone, things were happening here were beyond the pay grade of most of the people here.

"Go ahead Ethan, have a seat here, and I'll go see if the conference room is ready. All right?" Bree quickly reached into her desk, grinning as she pulled out a couple wrapped pieces of toffee - Werther's Original. She would always be a sucker for those little candies, and Ethan had come far enough with her now, why the hell not? Yeah, he rated a bit of her private stash if he wished. Bree patted her office seat for a moment before slipping by Ethan, and heading back toward her boss' office.

Ethan sat down quietly in Bree’s chair, tucking his legs in close and leaning his head back. He really did not want to be here right now, but it was as Bree had said. This was the final stretch to the finish line. All he had to do was get through this without doing something stupid and he would be set.

He was, however, grateful that Bree was going in to speak with her boss before Ethan’s interrogation began. He fully understood that coming to the office was the only way to clear his name of all the strange situations surrounding it, but since the evidence against him was muddled some small part of him was still anxious that something was going to go drastically wrong. There was nothing to suggest that he had ever had anything to do with Victor, but he had escaped from police custody without permission in Seattle. Bree’s prudent preface might make the conversation that was soon to follow that much smoother.

Of course, significant tidbits would be left out of the conversation; both of them had agreed that would be for the best. According to Bree the FBI would be more than willing to close any hanging cases relating to him so long as there was something even resembling an acceptable answer, and they would have no reason to dig any deeper than the basic facts they needed to close the case and redirect the wasted manpower to a more valuable location. So far, the numbers had given him no reason to doubt her.

Such, he knew full well, would not have been the case if he had allowed himself to be brought in back after the casino. At that time they would have dug until they were certain that they had cracked open every secret he possessed, and Ethan had a lot of secrets he did not want revealed. Not the least of which was several million dollars scattered across the county in various bank accounts under various names. The only thing protecting him now was Bree’s apparent belief in his innocence. Now that she no longer had a desire to plumb his deepest secrets he should be protected from most, if not all, plumbing of any sort. All he had to do was sit quiet for a few minutes, eat a candy or two, and make sure that whoever spoke to him had no reason to doubt Ethan’s story. The only one who had ever witnessed any of his truly miraculous events was Bree, and she was not going to hinder his bid for freedom now.

Unfortunately, it soon appeared that sitting quietly was the only thing he was not going to be allowed to do. There was someone moving his way unavoidably towards Bree’s small office, and that someone was very, very interested in having a long and rather rude conversation with a certain green-eyed man.

The man was not particularly tall, nor particularly heavy set. He was muscular but not bulky by any means, and though his jaw was strong and his eyes were deep set there was nothing particularly intimidating about his physical appearance. All the same, he might as well have been a giant from the way everyone and everything around him reacted to his presence. He should have been a brown-eyed brown-haired everyday man, but he wasn’t. He should not have been intimidating, but there was no doubting the fact that the man who was now approaching Bree’s desk was very, very good at intimidation.

He had clearly not been expecting to see anyone as he passed by Bree’s office, but it only took him a couple of seconds to put the details together and determine exactly who was the man sitting before him.

“So,” he said with no preamble, voice clipped. “You are the one Walsh has chased halfway across the country and back. Why aren’t you in handcuffs?”

Without the context it actually would have taken Ethan a few moments to remember that Bree was actually Brigit Walsh. It was a name he had only just gotten on the flight here, and was one he would never truly associate with her. But in that context the man could have told Ethan any name, and he would have known that he meant Bree. There was only one person in the world who fit that description.

“Handcuffs?” Ethan asked, playing the innocent even as the numbers told him with near certainty that it would do nothing to sway the agent who was now firmly rooted to one side of the doorway, and who seemed to be preparing for a long fight. “Why would I be in handcuffs?”

The man snorted, folding his arms across his chest. “No way the innocent routine worked on her. Been a long time since I’ve seen anything get to her the way you did...” he trailed off, intense gaze locked onto Ethan, clearly trying to figure out just what he could have done to get Bree to change her mind about him.

“Who are you?” Ethan asked, knocking off the ‘anyways’ a moment before it would have slipped from between his lips and made an already unpleasant situation that much worse.

The man eyed him for a moment before deciding that giving his name could do no harm. “I am Special Agent Tanner. I’m also Brigit’s... Agent Walsh’s to you... partner. And you are?”

“Ethan Sampson,” he replied, giving his cleanest and most unobtrusive false identity without the faintest tremor. It hadn’t taken Ethan long to settle on that identity when the plane had landed in Denver, giving Ethan and Bree a day to gather what he needed. Sampson was a gambler who made millions on the lottery and lost most of it just as fast in Vegas. Nothing spoke of truth more than a man who lost far more than he won. Sampson owned an apartment complex in Denver, left it to be managed by a realtor, paid his taxes every year through an auto-pay service, and somehow managed to stay just pennies above deficit year after year. It would take a massive amount of digging to discover that Sampson had appeared only a couple of weeks before he won the lottery, digging that no one, according to Bree, would be willing to do. Suddenly, Ethan was starting to have concerns about her certainty. Bree had a very good partner. It was clear he had no interest in letting her investigation go until he was satisfied with it, even if Bree herself had decided to end it.

Ethan had to find a way to nip this in the bud, and do it now. The only problem was even he could not see a way to change things. The human mind was unpredictable. It made connections in a split second that had nothing to do with probability . There could never be any certainty, no matter how much he pulled at the numbers.

Neither of them spoke at that moment. For Ethan there was simply nothing to say, and tanner seemed far more interested in staring at Ethan than actually talking to him. It was a star that spoke volumes, and suggested that Tanner knew far more than he was telling. If Ethan didn’t know for a certainty that the man was only grasping at straws, he might have actually been somewhat concerned. And so they sat, and Ethan watched with growing irritation as everything he attempted with the numbers was immediately rendered null and void by this man’s stubborn persistence. It truly seemed that there was nothing he could do.

But self-preservation was an incredibly strong instinct within him. He had sacrificed Victor in the name of self-preservation, and he wasn’t about to let one over enthusiastic FBI agent ruin things now. That line of thought had gotten him in a lot of trouble last time, but he had to believe that a recognition of that vain darkness within him, along with the new found knowledge that it did not need to either define or control him, would keep him from stepping over the edge of humanity again.

The fact that everyone, Bree, her boss, the people who were soon to be questioning him, were going to support the claim for Ethan’s innocence was going to slow Tanner down. His investigations would have to be subtle enough that no one would wonder what he was doing. By the time he even got started Ethan would be long gone, buried back in the woodwork with a clean record. But if Tanner kept digging he would eventually find out that Sampson did not actually exist, and he would certainly bring the information back to the agency. If he did that the hunt would be back on.

Of course, without Bre chasing him, it was doubtful that they would ever be able to catch up to him. But the whole reason he had come here in the first place would then be rendered null and void. Equally important was the fact that Ethan truly did not want to spend the rest of his time in America looking over his shoulder. He wanted to be free, and that was all he had ever wanted. But how could he get away when someone was insisting on chasing him? It sent a bit of a chill down his spine to realize that, even with his abilities, it was possible for his life to turn into such a mess with just a single, apparently simple, act.

Finally, Ethan let out a sign, breaking the silence between the two men. “I truly am sorry that there is nothing I can say that will convince you I am innocent of whatever it is you suspect.”

His tone seemed to take Tanner by surprise. “That may very well be the first honesty thing you have said to me,” he replied. “doesn't change anything, of course.”

Ethan let out a humorless laugh. “Of course.”

“You could just save me the time, and tell me everything I want to know now.”

“I don’t think it is possible for me to tell you what you want to hear, and tell the truth at the same time.”

Perhaps it was the fact that Ethan spoke first, but Tanner seemed to have gained whatever he wanted from the silence. He barely even paused before beginning his interrogation. “What were you doing in Richmond?”

“Working. The best dealers are always the best gamblers. They know how to stretch the rules for the house.”

“So you admit to working for an underground gambling ring?”

“I don’t think anyone could dispute that. But nor do I think that is what you want to know.”

“But you ran.”

“Of course I ran. Everyone there was either running or trying to run.”

“But then you continued to run.”

They were getting closer to the question that Agent Tanner really wanted to ask. How? But that was the one question that Ethan did not want asked. It was time for him to throw a little kink in the Agent’s carefully planned script.

“No.”

“No?” Tanner repeated incredulously. “What about Seattle? Or Chicago?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I was very cooperative when the police arrested me for no apparent reason in Seattle. When I tried to open the door and it wasn’t locked, I assumed I was free to go, so I walked out. No one tried to stop me. I really don’t see how that qualifies as running.

“As far as Chicago,” Ethan continued before the agent had a chance to interrupt, “everyone there knew the place was a meth lab. Like everyone else, I simply assumed it was a drug bust. I didn’t know they were after me until Br... Agent Walsh found me in Oregon. Now here I am, willingly explaining how all of this is just one giant misunderstanding. Thus, no handcuffs, and no running.”

Agent Tanner had been growing more and more frustrated the longer Ethan talked. Finally, he was able to explode. “A misunderstanding?! What you are suggesting is entirely impossible. A person in lock-up can’t just walk out of a police station.”

“Exactly.” Ethan interrupted gracefully. “What else was I to assume except that I was free to go? When the alarm went off, I was just as glad to b missing all the hubbub.”

Tanner was gaping, his mind desperately trying to come up with a new explanation as Ethan put more and more pressure on to him. “But...”

“Even if someone let me out,” Ethan began again, using the numbers to predict Tanner’s next argument. The fact that he could predict it would make it seems all the more invalid. “I walked past another ten to twenty people on my way out. I didn’t even know I was going to be arrested. How could I have arranged any of that without you hearing something from someone?”

“What about Chicago?”

“What about it?” Ethan desperately wanted to laugh as a vein in the agent’s forehead twitched. His frequent and fluid interruptions were doing far more to put the man off than his actual argument.

“They chased you up to the room. How could you not know they were after you?”

“I don’t know who they chased up there, but it certainly wasn’t me.”

Tanner opened his mouth, hoping to interrupt Ethan’s own monologue and regain a touch of control, but Ethan pressed on, unwilling to relinquish the control. “If it was me, I would have been completely cornered. They would have arrested me then and there. Unless,” Ethan's lips twitched slightly as he contained a smile, “you are suggesting I can jump off the roof of a fifteen story building and live to tell the tale.”

Finally Ethan seemed to have stumped Tanner. At least for right now he had run out of arguments. For a moment, even against the evidence of the numbers, Ethan allowed himself to believe that might be the end of it. But only for a moment.

“Goddammit, I don’t know where the truth ends and the lies begin, but I know you are lying. There is no way it is all as simple as that. You be able to fool everyone else with those sweet words, but I know Walsh’s instincts about you are right. There’s something off about you, and I’ll be damned if I won’t prove it.”

“Your loyalty to her is truly admirable,” Ethan said quietly. “But if you are so ready to trust her on that, why won’t you trust her now?”

“Her first impressions are never wrong. She knows that and, apparently more importantly, I know that. I wasn’t here to help her at the beginning of all of this, but I’m here now.” A small smile twitched at the corner’s of Ethan’s lips as he noticed a certain red-haired someone approaching her office. Agent Tanner was about to help dig his own grave. “I don’t know if you seduced her or blackmailed her somehow, but I won’t let her stay under your control.”

"Royce, you must be out of your goddamned mind." Maybe it was the carpet over the office floor that masked the sound of her booted heels as she approached; or maybe it was the fact that Agent Tanner was so deeply sunk in his furious diatribe that he could not notice a thing beyond the cocksure replies of the green-eyed man before him.

No matter. Bree had heard quite enough. Her cold whisper of a voice, thick with barely concealed rage, cut through the air between them like a razor-sharp knife, and if she could have? The frigid gaze of her grey eyes would have pinned Tanner to the canvas walls of her faux-office like a butterfly to a board.

"Do you see any handcuffs on Mr. Sampson? Leg irons maybe?" She cocked one eyebrow as her arms fold over her chest, the fingers of one hand thrumming impatiently against her arm. The question was entirely rhetorical, and she wasn't waiting for a response from Tanner at least.

"No? Really? You're sure?" Bree glanced at Ethan for a moment, shrugged her shoulders as if she were helpless to find an answer herself before looking back at Tanner. "You know why? That's because he's not under arrest. He's not being detained here either. As a matter of fact, he's as much a free person as you and me and, if he wished, could walk right on out of here, right now. This very second. He is here entirely of his own volition, Royce."

And while this statement wasn't entirely true, Bree was on a roll and she wasn't really in a mood to cut Tanner any slack at the moment. Ethan needed to be here if, for no other reason in the world than to clear his name [or at least one of them], and get his life back. But damned if that was any of Tanner's business - any more than a whole bunch of other Bree-related issues that he apparently had decided was suddenly in his purview.

Somehow her voice never rose above the decibels needed to travel between this odd little threesome congregating outside her cubicle. "And for the record? No, I'm not screwing Ethan Sampson either. But the man I am currently sleeping with is due back in Richmond tomorrow evening, so if all goes well? I will definitely be getting lucky tomorrow night - at the very least, smiling wide by morning after. I'll keep you in the loop."

"And but for the aforementioned decided improvement in my sex life with the ex-Navy Seal turned banker? What in the hell do you think I could be blackmailed with? Crazy cat lady spinster here, remember?" Bree dropped her folded arms, opening them wide with another shrug. "Unless you think me and Riddick were somehow in the center of some international crime syndicate on my weekends off, holed up with my fuzzy slippers and a pint of Ben & Jerry's every weekend with our Netflix? No?"

Bree let out a long, frustrated sigh, rolling her eyes mightily as her arms fell to her sides. "I like you Royce, a lot. You're a great partner and probably one of the best agents I've ever worked with. But how about you give me just half of that respect. Oh, and kindly stay the hell out of my personal business."

Her grey eyes turned to Ethan now, shaking her head slowly, incredulously. "Let's go, they're ready for us in the conference room." She didn't wait for Ethan to rise or Tanner to speak before she turned to stalk away - and then whirled back around once more. "Bring the Werther's with you. No, not those... The whole bag, right there in the drawer. Yeah, I get the feeling this is the start of 'one of those days... '"