Disclaimer: Jericho is not mine.

"You wanna repeat that?" He demanded stepping into the other man's personal space as soon as the words had left his mouth. He could hear her voice in his head telling him that he needed to calm down. He could also hear his younger self telling him that he should slam him up against the car in order to bring home his point that he was less than pleased with what he was hearing. He didn't touch him. He kept his hands clenched firmly at his sides, but he did not back up at all.

His eyes wanted to flick toward the back seat of the car again, but he knew that it would do him no good. It was not as though there was some place in the vehicle in which she could be hiding. It had been obvious from the moment they had pulled in that they were missing one of the passengers. Mitch had been stunned enough by all of the potential reasons (each one more horrible than the last) that had begun running through his head when his eyes processed what it was that he was seeing that he had frozen. All three of them had been out of the vehicle and greeting Jimmy before his feet had started moving. They had walked him straight at Jake who was doing his level best to avoid looking him directly in the eyes even as he offered a halting story about where Heather had gone. That did nothing but make him angrier because it screamed guilt. It just made Mitch close in on him further.

"Son," the elder Green started from somewhere over his shoulder.

"I want an explanation, Mayor Green," he shot at the man without taking his eyes off a Jake who was starting to look like he was going to start pushing back. There was a part of Mitch that would have relished the fight - he would have enjoyed having the outlet for all of the turmoil that was rolling around inside of him. There was another part of him that knew that he didn't do that anymore. A fist fight in the middle of the street wouldn't get him any answers. It wouldn't get him any closer to Heather. It would just waste time that he could be using to figure out what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. He did need to do something, but he needed to make sure that what he was doing was actually productive.

"I'm not the Mayor anymore," the other man deflected in a tone of voice that told a tale of how many times he must have said those words in the days since the election.

"And I'm not your son," Mitch snapped back. He was trying, but he wasn't in a mood to be patient.

"She wanted to help," Jake told him finally looking him in the eye. Mitch didn't even want to try to decipher everything that was visible in that look.

"She always wants to help," Mitch responded. "That's why she went in the first place. It doesn't tell me why other people let her get in a truck with a group of strangers and go traipsing off to who knows where in the middle of the end of the world as we knew it with nothing but a backpack. Which part of that was it that you thought was a good idea? Huh?"

"She's a grown woman," Johnston Green interjected. "If she wants to go with someone she said was a friend to try to work out this equipment problem that we're having, then none of us have any call telling her that she can't."

"You think this was a good idea?" He spun around to find the other man entirely too close behind him.

"I think something good can come from it."

"Not what I asked."

"I understand that you're upset . . .," he started.

"Screw this," he managed to maneuver by him without actually having to push him out of the way.

"Don't go doing anything crazy," he called from behind him after a couple of beats. Mitch turned back around.

"That's funny because I told her the exact same thing," he muttered. "I'm fixing this."

"You can't go running off to New Bern in the middle of the night," Jake decided to offer.

"What happened to not telling people what they can't do?"

"You need to calm down," Jake told him moving in his direction. Mitch could see shadows of the Jake he used to know peeking through on his face even in the dim lighting. He had a short moment of wondering about whether the two of them were actually in a similar place - trying to keep their head above water before they got sucked back down into the habits and temperaments of what they used to be. He found himself wanting to ask the other man if Jake found the temptation as exhausting to deal with as he did in these moments when it seemed as if everything would have been so much easier the old way. He pushed that down as quickly as it occurred to him. He and Jake would be having heart to hearts in exactly never.

"What do you care? Ain't your job to look out for me," Mitch reminded him.

"Look," Jake had that pretentious expression on his face that screamed that he was trying to be oh so very gracious while the person with whom he was dealing was just being unnecessarily difficult. "Heather wanted . . .," Mitch didn't let him finish expressing the thought.

"Don't pretend like you care what Heather wants," he snorted. "You've been brushing her off for weeks. Didn't put up much of a fight when she said she was going, did you?" He accused. "Makes it easier on you this way, doesn't it?"

Johnston physically stepped between them even though neither one of them had moved toward the other. Apparently, they weren't the only two standing there struggling with who they used to be.

"Let's just take a deep breath," he tried to calm them both down. The problem with that was that Mitch was already calm. He was calm and focused, and he was going to get Heather.

"Mr. Cafferty?" He had forgotten the kid was lurking in the background.

"What?"

"She asked me to give you this," he said holding out a folded piece of notebook paper.