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According to the source, Spears agreed to return to L.A. so the two could talk over her options in person. Instead, on Feb. 15, she left her boys with caretakers and, accompanied by two bodyguards, flew on a private jet to the island of Antigua. There she was driven to Crossroads Centre, a rehab clinic founded by Eric Clapton. "She spent a fair amount of time there, about two hours," says a local source. "She walked around and checked it out."
But she didn't stay. By 9 p.m., Spears was heading back to Miami – and the free fall that began the next day. During the afternoon of Feb. 16, passengers at the Miami International Airport were stunned to see Spears running through the terminal, hoping to make an American Airlines flight to L.A. When she arrived, out-of-breath and without a handler in sight, she was told that the plane's door had been shut and the walkway retracted. "She was really upset," says David Paulsen, 28, a passenger on a plane at an adjacent gate who witnessed the exchange. "She said to the agent, 'I've got to get on this plane to get home to my kids.' She was blinking a lot and the corners of her mouth were going down. She looked like she was about to cry. So the agent got on the phone and said, 'I've got Britney Spears here and she wants to get on the plane.' "
She got on the plane – but not into first class, which was full. So Spears walked past the astonished passengers in coach and took a seat in the last row. "It was one of those surreal moments, the shock of my life," says a passenger seated a few rows in front of her. "She sat by herself for five hours. She looked like she was trying to hold it together, but she wasn't doing well."
