my gifs never match the chapter lol but its fine. Also yes Ik I have been slacking on mockingbird I'm gonna update it I promise that one is just so hard to write for some reason lol

As always enjoy!

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Natalie sat next to Mayor Kline in the back of Jim's cruiser, holding tightly on to the headrest in front of her as he once again sped towards Mayor Kline's house.

Mayor Kline, well Larry, they would probably be on first name terms by now, was looking pretty rough. When he noticed that she was staring at him he lifted his lips into a small smile.

"Wouldn't peg you for the type of girl to like this Rambo kind of stuff, Dr. Blackwood," he said, fixing his gaze on her. "Once word gets around that you're involved with all this shit that Jim stirred up, I'm afraid that quaint clinic of yours will become nothing."

"Shut the hell up," Jim snapped from the driver's seat and swung one of his hands around to smack Larry upside the head causing him to let out a shout of surprise.

Natalie smiled brightly at Jim and then looked at Larry, "Oh, Larry," she began with a laugh, "no offense, but I don't think you're really in any position to make threats."

Larry scoffed rolling his eyes, about to say something snarky, but he saw Jim raise his hand again and he shut up.

After a good five minutes, they made it to Larry's ridiculously large house and Jim parked his car and hopped out, opening the trunk and dragging Larry out by the scruff of his neck. He held out his hand out for Natalie to take and helped her out.

Larry chuckled, "ah so you two are a thing, how cute."

Jim tightened his grip on Larry's arm, "I swear I will knock your front teeth out if you keep talking to her."

Larry flinched and laughed nervously, "just being friendly, Chief, no harm, okay, chill out big boy."

Jim narrowed his eyes and dragged Larry up the stairs and into his house, Natalie and Joyce right behind him. Natalie scoffed at the zebra skin rug on his floor.

"Hope that isn't real," she said angrily, she hated anyone who hunted exotics animals with a passion.

Larry chuckled nervously, "nope, not real! Totally fake!"

"No shit!" Jim said sarcastically as he practically threw Larry up to the last step and watched Larry scrambled into his room.

Natalie caught up to Joyce that had already reached the top of the stairs and was looking at a map of some sorts. Jims was shouting at Larry again who was trying to plead with him about his 'reasons' or something

Natalie sat against Larry's bed as Jim got him to unlock the safe and hand him his documents. Joyce immediately started to flip through them.

"All right, so what exactly are we looking at? Land deeds, transfers of property. So your buddies at Starcourt, they suddenly start buying up all this property. They tell you why?" Jim asked,  fiddling with the papers that Joyce didn't take.

Larry sighed and sniffed, trying to breathe normally with tissue paper stuck up his nose from when Jim punched it, "like I said they told me nothing."

Jim scoffed rolling his eyes, "They're just using you, I get it. What I don't get is why you have a bunch of land deeds in a safe in your bedroom."

"These people, they're bad new," Larry said looking at the wall in front of him, his face passive.

"So, what is this blackmail or something?" Natalie added, curious as to why Larry was not flat-out telling them who they were dealing with.

Larry bitterly laughed and shook his head, "protection."

"Protection?" Jim repeated, standing to his feet.

Natalie noticed that Joyce had walked out of the room with the papers Jim got from the safe, so she go up and walked out of the room. Joyce always seemed to have a sixth sense for figuring things out.

"Hold on a second," Jim said following Natalie out of Larry's room.

Natalie stopped by Joyce looking at the map in her hands, "did you figure something out?"

Joyce nodded slowly, a little out of it as she thought, "Hess Farm, Henry's place, Bullocks Look, they're all here. They're all in Southeast Hawkins, right near Jordan Lake, and what else is near Jordan Lake? "

"The power plant," Natalie said and raised an eyebrow looking at Jim.

Jim cracked a smile, "y' know I take it back Joyce, you actually might be better at detective work than sales," he looked at Natalie, "you though, stick to your doctor stuff."

"Hey!" she said defensively and shoved him, which made him laugh, "the rats are a real problem, just you wait I know I'm right."

Jim held his hands up, "whatever you say!" He then quickly rushed back into the room when he saw Larry trying to climb out of his own bedroom window, "Larry! Don't think so, buddy," he snapped as he pulled him back into the room. Jim shoved him down to the ground hard and pulled out his handcuffs and cuffed him to his nightstand, "thanks for the info Larry, you've got a lovely house," he said sarcastically and exited the room, meeting up with Natalie and Joyce again.

"So, are we going to visit all of these places to see if there's a power plant there or something?" Natalie asked as they descended the stairs.

"It's a start," Jim said as he pulled his keys out of his back pocket.

They all piled into the car and Joyce quickly wrote down all the of the farms that they needed to go to. First, though they had to drop Joyce off at her house so she could leave a note for Bob, just so he wouldn't worry. Joyce said that after the demo-dog incident last year he probably wouldn't want to dabble in this sort of stuff again.

Natalie watched as Joyce raced into her house and then leaned back into the passenger seat, her eyes closing momentarily- she was tired.

"You okay?" Jim asked, taking her hand in his and rubbing his thumb over hers.

Natalie opened her eyes and nodded, smiling softly at him, "yeah, I'm just tired."

"We can drop you off at home since it's on the way," Jim offered, secretly hoping that she would say yes.

Natalie shook her head, her smile growing larger, "no way, can't get rid of me that easily, buddy."

Jim chuckled, "I know." However, he was feeling a turmoil of emotions surge through him, the main one being fear, he didn't know what they were going to run into at these farms or even after that. He just had to hope that nothing would happen to her.