[i]She was running, screaming his name over and over again though no sound came out of her throat. Something bad was coming, something absolutely terrible and faceless and it was [b]right behind her[/b] - but she wasn't scared for herself. No, it was the kid sprinting in front of her, the one who was slow, just too damned slow to get away but was somehow always frustratingly just out of arms reach. But then she suddenly put on speed, her legs free of whatever morass wanted to hold her still, keep her from the boy as she reached out once more for his shoulder – 

She was too late, a cold storm wind shoving her aside just as she felt the fabric of his shirt beneath her fingertips, and she fell. She fell and fell and just kept on falling, screaming though nothing came out of her mouth and she finally hit – [/i]

Bree woke with a loud snort of a snore that wracked her whole body, grey eyes suddenly wide with terror as her heart tried to pound its way out of her chest. Riddick yowled as he was bucked off his warm perch on her belly to the deep blue carpet of the hotel room, amber yellow eyes flashing back up to the top of the bed where his woman sat straight up gasping.

[i]’Shit… Shitshitshitshit… ‘[/i] Bree groaned as she let her face fall into her hands, rubbing swiftly and angrily at her cheeks and eyes. She was still in the same clothes, far more rumpled now than they’d been just hours ago, the flickering of the television screen now the only light in the night-darkened room. She panicked for a moment until her fingers scrambled for the keyboard of her laptop lying next to her on the bed, running her fingers over the keys until the screen lit up again and she could see the little clock in the corner.

Bad enough though, she’d lost two hours here in the mediocre bed of this mediocre airport Comfort Inn. She shouldn’t have been sleeping. Some small viciousness whispered in the back of her head that she didn’t [i]deserve[/i] to sleep, not when she’d done nothing, absolutely [i]nothing[/i] that had brought them even a little closer to finding Jacob. Oh sure, they were here in Boston – right outside Logan Airport at that. But that didn’t have a damn thing to do with anything Bree had pulled together herself.

[i]Ethan.[/i] The only reason they were here now was because of Ethan, and she hadn’t the least idea where to go from here now. The sheer number of wiretap requests they’d dropped in the past four days was unprecedented, the surveillance teams from Boston and Richmond, New York and D.C. were working 24/7, but there was nothing – not a damned thing. There were cell phone records of course, but the sheer volume of people involved was simply staggering, and no matter the hundreds of possible leads generated that sent agents over what had to be every last inch of Boston there was still nothing. No Jacob. No sign of Jacob. Not even the littlest hint of where the boy could be… 

Bree groaned softly in the back of her throat as she swung her legs over the bed’s edge, vaulting herself up off the mattress and making her way by television screen light toward the bathroom. She blinked swiftly when she hit the light switch, definitely not impressed with the pasty-skinned, bleary-eyed woman who stared back at her from the mirror. The deep blue-black bags under her eyes made her look like she’d been sucker punched, and Bree couldn’t really help but think just how appropriate that really seemed. 

Mechanically, she began to brush her teeth, pulling a brush through her hair to pull it back into a ponytail that didn’t look like she’d been sleeping on it. She couldn’t sleep now. [i]Wouldn’t[/i] sleep. Still didn’t deserve it but all she could think to do now, was to drive out to the surveillance team Tanner had set up tonight on one of the known warehouses, and know good and damn well to the bottom of her soul, she was a thousand times worse than useless right now.