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"Dance with Me"

Dance with me, I want to be your partner

Can't you see the music is just starting

- Orleans

Joyce rode in the back of the cruiser, while Hopper and the mayor took the front seat. She wasn't sure where they were going, but it was clear Larry Kline wasn't happy about it. What Hawkins' mayor had to do with a guy on a motorcycle who had been prowling Hawkins Lab and had nearly killed Hopper, she couldn't imagine—but it couldn't be good, whatever it was.

They pulled up in front of one of the fanciest houses in Hawkins, which apparently was where Larry lived. Joyce didn't get to this neighborhood much—at all, actually—and she couldn't help wondering what life would be like now if she could have raised her boys in a place like this, given them all the advantages of a stable home and money for college and all the things growing boys needed and wanted.

It was as nice inside the house as it was out, decked out in marble and super clean. Looking around, Joyce took it all back—she couldn't imagine raising boys in a place like this, so hard and soulless.

Hopper whistled sarcastically. "Wow, I love your place, Lar." He looked down at a zebra skin rug on the floor. "Hey, you shoot that fellow yourself?"

"That's … that's not real," Larry said, his voice rough. Hopper had really done a number on him in the office.

"No shit." Hopper drew the words out, his contempt for Larry dripping from his tone. If he wasn't careful, he was going to lose his job, Joyce thought. Which would be too bad, because he loved it, and he was good at it, for all that he pretended to despise what he did.

Larry led them up the stairs to his bedroom, where he opened a safe in the wall and took out a packet of files, handing it to Hopper.

Taking the elastic band off the files, Hopper opened the top one. "All right. So, what exactly are we looking at?"

Larry sat down and took from his nose the wad of paper napkin that was all he could find in Hopper's car to stop the bleeding. "Land deeds. Transfers of property."

"So your buddies at Starcourt, they suddenly start buying up all this property. They tell you why?"

Joyce was catching up now, and she didn't like what she was hearing. The mall had been bad enough for established businesses in Hawkins. More development could only be worse.

"I told you," Larry snapped, "they don't tell me anything."

"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."

While Hopper was talking, Joyce took the files of deeds from him and started paging through them, noting the locations of each property.

Larry sighed. "These people, Jim. They're bad news."

"So, what, this is blackmail?"

"Protection."

Joyce held up a finger. Something was coming together in her mind as she looked at these deeds. She remembered passing a map of Hawkins hung on the wall as they came up the stairs. "Hold on a second." She carried the files with her out into the hallway, studying the map, certain she was right.

Hopper joined her after a moment. "Hey. What is it?"

"Hess Farm, Henry's place, Bolick's … Look, they're all here. They're all in southeast Hawkins, right near Jordan Lake." She traced the properties on the map with her finger, to make sure he was seeing what she had noticed. "Know what else is near Jordan Lake?"

"The power plant." He took the files from her, looking at them intently.

"Four nights ago, there was a huge power outage, and the next day—"

"Your magnets fell."

She was relieved that he had not only followed where she was going, but that he finally was willing to take the magnet issue seriously. "I mean, Scott says that this machine would take a massive amount of power to run."

Hopper leaned against the stair railing. "Yeah."

"So what if this machine that we've been talking about really does exist, and the reason that we didn't find it at the lab is because it isn't at the lab, it's at one of these properties?"

He stood up, looking at her like he was seeing her for the first time. Joyce had never seen quite that look on his face before, and it warmed her all through. Slowly, coming toward her, Hopper said, "Um, I want you to … forget about sales. I want you to come work for me at the Hawkins PD."

She smiled up at him, accepting the compliment. "And have to look at your face every day? I don't think so."

Hopper smiled back, and for a moment Joyce could imagine herself leaning up, and Hopper leaning down, and—

From the bedroom, they heard a noise, and the moment was broken as Hopper hurried to stop Larry from climbing out his window to escape them.

Still, it had happened, and Joyce couldn't help imagining what it would be like, the two of them working together, solving crimes, growing closer to each other …

But before any of that could happen, they had to fix whatever was going wrong in Hawkins. Again.