Not Until We Are Lost

Johnny hadn't slept.

It wasn't a long enough period of time to determine if he didn't need to shut his brain off like a normal human being. One night wasn't a good indicator. He felt like shit as the sun rose, and couldn't really tell if it was because he had been sitting on the couch, waiting for the door to open, the sound of keys jingling to unlock, not sleeping or if it was because of the anxiety he'd been filled with the whole time.

He'd been turning the events of the night over and over in his head. Wondering if he'd done something wrong. Maybe she'd changed her mind over the course of their time together. Maybe she'd come to see him as nothing more than a friend. Their night at the movie might have been affection she lavished on those closest to her, and not the sort that went along with deeper feelings. Maybe he'd misread. And now it was him stepping over lines and boundaries.

This, of course, was not what she'd indicated when she'd left. But she might have been saying those things to be nice, hoping that he'd take the night to think things over and realize that it wasn't the time or place for those kind of feelings. Or maybe he'd realize that he didn't really feel those things, that they were just the product of the game that he and Mary had been playing for the rest of the world. Then she wouldn't have to let him down, gently or otherwise.

She'd said she'd be back, either way. And that's what Johnny was waiting for. For Mary to walk through the door of their shared space so he could tell her he was sorry. That if she didn't want that from him anymore, he'd let it go.

Johnny waited until noon for Mary to come back to the apartment. When she didn't show, he went up to the bar to ask Harry if she'd been seen there, and to wait for her. He knew that if she didn't find him in the apartment, she'd come upstairs. Then they could go back to the tiny basement dwelling and talk. In the mean time, he could use alcohol as a distraction, though it wouldn't do much for actual brain quieting, at least the ice and liquid would give him something new to look at. And maybe Harry would have work for him.

But Harry saw the worry and ordered Johnny to sit on the customer side of the bar. He glanced hopefully at the back door and the front every time Johnny did. He kept the talk light and far away from any subjects that might call her to mind, and continually supplied Johnny with new drinks. He didn't pry. He didn't ask if there had been a fight. Harry knew only that Mary had said she needed to take a walk by herself, and that Johnny was worrying about her.

As two pm approached and rolled by, Johnny's worry was in high gear. Surely Mary should have returned by now.

A few days after she’d gotten the information about Mary’s whereabouts from Cas, Jo finally realized that she’d put it off all she could. She needed to see her daughter. She also needed to track down Dean, but that would come next. She knew Mary’s location and maybe it would be better to see Mary first anyway.

Once inside the bar, she didn’t go straight up to the counter. She spotted Johnny behind it and Mary was weaving in and out of tables, delivering orders and chatting with customers. They both looked at home here. If one didn’t know better, it would be easy to believe that they’d always lived in this time period, and that they belonged here.

Jo took a seat at a table and simply watched and waited quietly for Mary to notice and approach her. She would want to talk to Johnny too but she needed to work up to it all. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about the fact that he’d practically whisked Mary away from that diner and now they were still together. She was glad that he was watching out for her kid, but she was also... well, she couldn’t help but wonder what his intentions were and what Mary’s intentions were. She didn’t want to see either of them hurt and there was a bit of an ‘ew’ factor about a friend of hers dating her daughter. Especially when you figured in how old he’d be in Mary’s time.

( Things are not as they seem... )

Jo was getting a little sick of sequins. It didn't matter that she couldn't see what color they were. She could tell that every one of the stupid dresses that she had to wear were garish and over the top. She definitely couldn't hunt in them.

She didn't mind dressing up every so often, but she wanted a better reason than literally singing for her supper. And that wasn't really going to happen here. Or anytime soon anywhere really.

The one good thing about Jo's job was that it came with room and board. She was living in a house with all women-all performers who were aspiring to something grander, whether it was break-out stardom or a rich husband. Jo stuck out a little bit in that respect, but that was okay. She didn't expect that she'd be here all that long. She could ignore the backstabbing and cattiness as the women tried to one-up each other in search of jobs and husbands. Some of them were nice, especially once they realized that Jo wasn't a threat.

But mostly, Jo was thinking about the others who had shown up in that diner with her. She really needed to seek Mary out, but she was a little scared to do so just now. She also needed to find Dean and they really needed to talk, but she wasn't sure she was ready for that either. And she definitely wasn't ready to face the reality of possibly diverting the future that enabled Mary to exist. There was a lot of guilt about that, even if she knew logically that the future had already been changed when they'd all been abducted.

Her mind was heavy with all of those things as Jo made her way back to the boarding house after her latest gig. She really just wanted to grab a snack and maybe sneak one of the bottles of illicit liquor that she'd stashed in her room and go to bed early. What else was there to do here, really? Certainly not hunting. And a woman out on her own raised a lot of eyebrows and Jo didn't have the patience to deal with that just now.

The nature of the invite was suspect, though the entire conversation had been wrong. The woman who had offered had told him they needed a bartender - naturally, he'd assumed that was Harry's decision to make, but even as his current employer gave the woman his blessing likely in favor of monetary gain, Cas had watched the woman closely. Yvette Simmons, or so her name had been. Wife of Daniel Simmons. She'd never blinked. She had ordered a drink, though she'd not touched it. She'd sat at the bar, looking as if she'd been waiting for someone. And in terms of dress, she'd not fit in along with the rest. Too rich. Likely more than enough money to afford a better place to drink. He may have had poor skills in terms of reading others, but...he could at least pick up on simple details.

Yet he was locked into going and it was just as well. If this needed the attention of a hunter...then Cas was all too willing to investigate, especially due to the fact that there had been nothing to hunt as of late. It made him...very uncomfortable, to say the least. Not having a cause to serve inevitably took its toll and while he was pleased about recent developments regarding Anna, he still needed a mission of some kind.

Knowing all too well that his mutant friend would also appreciate it, he'd tracked the other man down. It was surprisingly easier to do than he would have expected. Knocking on the door to the hotel room, he still looked over his shoulder. Made certain he was not being watching. There may have only been a speck of angel left within him. He knew that...but he'd learned to trust his Grace. It had never wronged him, but...to say never was likely a misnomer. There was always a distinct possibility it someday would.

This was not one of those times. When the other man answered the door, he looked up and met the other man's eye, unblinking and stiff. It was still a habit that was ingrained in him, no matter what species he'd adopted as his own.

"Hello, Piotr."

Cas and Anna and even Mary had moved on to finding places to stay for the night. Jo still wasn't sure how to feel about Mary and Johnny, though she was starting to accept it. Despite Mary's reassurances to the contrary, something was there. While Jo didn't want to see either of them brokenhearted when they did find a way to right things, she also didn't know how long they would all be stuck like this. Never aging, moving from planet to planet. At the mercy of some sadistic aliens who thought they were a science experiment of some sort. If they were stuck for awhile, Jo supposed that Mary deserved someone who might bring her comfort and maybe even some happiness in all of this.

That didn't mean that she wasn't worried. Her expression was set in a grim line after her future daughter rode off into the sunset with the cowboy. The fact that Dean hadn't even bothered to look her way and seemed too busy drooling over some brunette didn't exactly help her mood.

She wasn't sure what was going to happen for the night, but she didn't want to go anywhere with Dean until they'd cleared the air about the lies that had been told regarding Sympathy. In fact, she wasn't sure where that left them at all.

Jo moved among the people still in the diner and spotted a guy who didn't seem to be grouped up with anyone. There was a moment where she couldn't help but notice that he was cute. Hey, two could play the ogling game, right? Jo moved over to the guy and gave him a small smile. She hadn't seen him before the meeting, so she wondered if he'd been in Electric City too.

The strains of 'I'll be seeing you' started playing on the jukebox in the diner. There had been various songs from the decade that they'd landed in playing the entire time they'd been there. It only served as a reminder that they were not anywhere near 2012 or home.

"Nothing like the golden era, huh?"

Though he'd grown accustomed to the strange goings on of alternate realities, if there was anything Cas disliked, it was waking up in strange places. He always made a point of taking in his surroundings - the bed had been facing the west wall of their bedroom and Anna had been to his left. There had been a devil's trap on the ceiling in front of their bedroom door, which they closed and locked each night out of habit. There had been a gun, a pack of cigarettes, and an ashtray beside his half of the bed...

...This was not their bedroom or likely even the planet they'd been on before.

For one, it was a diner. He'd been in enough of them to recognize it as universally similar to all of the others, though the time period was decidedly off. He would not have needed his vessel's eyes in order to be aware of that fact. The wait staff didn't seem to notice any of them as they woke up slowly, some with stiff necks and others just confused. He could see Dean off in the distance, along with Mary and Johnny. He also breathed a sigh of relief as his eyes fell on Piotr, Phaedra, and the Doctor. That was mildly comforting...but there was only one person he was looking for. It seemed everyone had been deposited into the booths overnight and there were no faces he didn't recognize.

It was a good thing that she was beside him, however. Where he would have tried to seek out the remains of her Grace or look for the telltale red hair, there was nothing to actually be seen. Only black and white. Apparently the extra-terrestrial had done something to his vision, but he was willing to concern himself with that later and set to checking on Anna. He placed an arm on her back, noting the change in her attire. Someone had evidently dressed both of them and while he was not unaccustomed to wearing a suit as he had previously...he found he disliked the idea of something taking such liberties. "Anna," he said softly. "Anna, you need to wake up. There's been another change."

That was when he looked across the booth they were sitting in and saw the small, blonde woman slumped over the table. "Jo?" he asked curiously, also placing a hand on her shoulder. "Jo, it's Cas. Wake up."

Eventually, Piotr decided that enough socializing had gone on. People knew that their friends and loved ones were here with them, and that was a good thing. They could catch up further later, however. If he didn't interrupt, the meeting would go on far longer than anybody wanted it to. He'd provided some snacks, but no actual food. There would be a need for actual food at some point.

He cleared his throat to get the attention of everybody present.

"We are all here right now for the same purpose." Piotr's voice wasn't loud, but it was demanding. His accent cut through everything else easily. The edges of it were sharp, the middles heavy. He wouldn't, couldn't be ignored. "All of us were brought to this place, world or dimension, and we have all been seeking answers since we woke up. It is time to share what we have found."

He smiled a little at Mary, at Cas, then at Rob, still not giving up his position.

"I will do this in the most orderly manner that I can, so we can get the information and compare notes as needed."

Piotr turned to Castiel, who had spoken up first.

Piotr was anxious to get everything rolling. While putting the meeting off had given extra time to round up others who might need to be in on it, it meant a delay of information that he wasn't truly comfortable with. He'd managed to play it off with everybody that he'd encountered, making as if this wasn't as big a deal as it really was to him. Inside, Piotr had been twitchy. Anything could happen at any time. They were all dealing with the unknown. There were too many variables, the risk was far too high. Lingering only swayed things away from their favor.

It was very domestic, the way he readied for the guests. He didn't let Max lift a finger. It was the only way he could keep himself from stewing, really. To move, work. Put plates together. Ready beverages. Create a spread that Martha Stewart would have been proud of.

He even dressed up.

Black suit, crisp white shirt, black tie, shiny black shoes, hair combed impeccably, guns tucked away in their holsters under his arms and hidden carefully by the jacket of his expensive outfit. Not a lick of metal showing anywhere to give him away, and that was more a throwback to the long nights of watching a mark than anything else. Piotr didn't have any good reason for it now, but it felt right.

When there was nothing left to do, he leaned against the arm of the couch and worried his lip between his teeth. There wasn't a watch to check on his wrist, so he glanced every few minutes at the clock on the wall, ticking away in its hideous orange and purple motif, strange detached bunny ears the hands, a mangled face grinning behind them. It was disturbing at best, though Piotr didn't really see the image, just the minutes.

The doorbell rang and he opened it, taking up the entire doorway. He smiled at the first guests and stood aside to allow them in. He made motions toward the table of snacks and directed them toward the kitchen for drinks. Every single newcomer got the same treatment. Max still not allowed to do anything that might have taken even an iota of the control out of the Russian's hands. They weren't military people, those who were showing up, they weren't highly trained like he was, but he would be damned if he wasn't in command of everything.

There were so many faces that he didn't recognize, and still no sign of the one that he was still seeking. Rayne was not with any of the others that showed up. Piotr couldn't help the worry he felt for his charge. The strange woman who he'd met in Malden, what felt like a hundred years ago now. He didn't ask after her, knowing that if any of these people knew her, she would have been here. He'd been careful to set the time of the meeting right after sunset to accommodate her and any others that might be like her. If she was here, by some strange chance, and had not been informed of the meeting, and hadn't come looking for him, if she had, in fact, decided to keep herself secret, then she had a reason for it, and it wasn't Piotr's place to draw attention to her. The hope of that was beyond slim, however, and he knew it. She wasn't here, he just had to admit it.

He let everybody mingle for almost an hour, to make sure that all the people that had been told had a change to show up. That and it was obvious that some of them had been looking for each other for a while, and they were just now discovering one another. He couldn't bring himself to break that up. He knew how he would have felt if he'd found his friend. He wouldn't have been able to focus on anything else but making sure that she was alright.

Finally, he stood in the center of the living room, his eyes skating over the seating, knowing that there wasn't enough for everybody and regretting it, and cleared his throat to get the attention of the assembled.

"We are all here right now for the same purpose." Piotr's voice wasn't loud, but it was demanding. His accent cut through everything else easily. The edges of it were sharp, the middles heavy. He wouldn't, couldn't be ignored. "All of us were brought to this place, world or dimension, and we have all been seeking answers since we woke up. It is time to share what we have found."

He smiled a little at Mary, at Cas, then at Rob, still not giving up his position.

Jo wasn't sure how long she'd been on planet Easter/Halloween, or whatever the hell it was actually called, but she knew that she was getting frustrated. There were people she'd been looking for and so far the only ones she'd found were Mary and Phae. She was relieved to have found both, but there were still other people she was worried about.

As such, she'd spent the last few days wandering the town and looking for some sign of the Impala or Johnny's motorcycle. She hadn't gotten to the point of knocking on doors on the street they were on, but she was close. The trouble was that she didn't know what else or who else might be lurking behind those doors.

She was also starting to get a sense for the things that were lurking outside after dark. She had yet to venture out after the sun set simply because she needed to get her bearings, but she was getting antsy at not finding Dean yet and so she really wanted to shoot things.

Which was why she wandered outside at night with a large knife in hand and a shotgun full of salt rounds.

Jo had found Mary easily enough, but so far she'd seen no sign of Dean, Johnny, or even Jack. She was worried about all three, and she was missing her boyfriend. Worse, she wondered what it would do to Dean for her to disappear again like this. She didn't mean to keep doing that, but it seemed like there were forces outside of her control that were determined to keep pulling them apart.

Jo wasn't one to wallow which meant that she decided now was a good time to take a break before she started wandering too far into those darker thoughts. She found a small pub-a place with tacky neon signs that depicted Cadbury Beer and Pumpkin Ale. She ordered herself a beer and then grabbed a booth in the corner of the room. The booth provided a good vantage point to keep an eye on what was going on in the rest of the bar and to keep her eye trained toward the entrance. It was as much a defensive move as it was a hope that she might see one of the people she was looking for walk through those doors.

For now, she settled into her corner of the bar and started to drain her first beer. It would take a few before she was pleasantly fuzzy, though that was the goal right now. She didn't need to be more than that since she was in a new place and didn't know what threats might be out there in the night, but a little bit fuzzy could be good. It was better than thinking about the people that she might have lost with this latest abduction.

Jo didn't remember her dream, beyond that it had been unsettling. She woke in a bed that she didn't remember, in a room that was a lot nicer than the typical seedy motel room. Worse than that, she woke alone. That wasn't entirely unusual, but there was no sign of Dean in this room. His clothes weren't on the floor. His guns weren't in the corner like usual. There were no wrappers from burgers or bags from diner food take-out. No hint of his scent hanging in the air.

Everything about this was very, very wrong. This wasn't where she'd gone to sleep. Jo fought off the panicked thought that maybe she'd missed a few months again.

None of those worries seemed to matter when she heard something crashing around below. She fumbled through the room before finding a gun. At least some of her weapons seemed to be here. Shotgun in hand, she made her way out of the bedroom and down the stairs in search of the source of the noise.

She moved through a well-appointed living room and dining room before she stopped just short of the kitchen area. Her mouth fell open as she took in the sight before her eyes.

"What the?"

Jo’s dreams hadn’t been pleasant since her return from the dead. Then again, she’d had nightmares before then too. What hunter didn’t? Though these dreams were worse. It was getting to the point where she could almost predict them. They almost always started out with her parents. With sunshine and happiness and everything they’d had on their best days when her dad wasn’t out hunting. And she’d always been ripped away from all of that by chanting creatures that felt... demonic, even if they weren’t like any demons she’d ever seen in her time awake.

She knew now that the dreams were just reenactments of being ripped out of Heaven. She knew exactly what she’d lost, and why sometimes she woke up crying.

This dream was different. She was yanked out of Heaven as always. Saerian was there, which happened sometimes.

What was different was that there was an escape route. She didn’t care where it went, as long as it was away from them. She let herself into the doorway and ran down the stairs, paying very little attention to what they looked like.

In fact, she didn’t pay much attention to anything until she’d found herself in the middle of a forest. She felt a slight breeze and looked down. She was naked from head to toe.

“So it’s one of those dreams now,” she murmured with a sigh.

After all, who didn’t have those “whoops, I went to class/work/the DMV and realized I was naked?” dreams?

She would have covered herself, but she was trying to stick with the idea that this was a dream as she moved through the forest. She thought longingly of her favorite pair of well-worn, faded jeans. And her Misfits t-shirt. Those didn’t magically appear, but slowly-slowly, clothing began to form.

There was the amulet that had once been Dean’s. Though a part of her wondered if that had been there throughout the entire dream. It was one of those things that was a part of her now that Mary had done the blood ritual to anchor her and keep the things that had brought her back out of her head.

She was wearing her mom’s jean jacket. Jo swallowed the tears as she looked down at the jacket, which seemed to fit like a glove. It covered the black dress that she’d worn the night before she’d died. It was simple, elegant, and everything she might have wanted to be and wear if she could ever get a day off.

The boots that she sometimes wore hunting topped off the strangely paired ensemble.

Jo was confused, but she decided to just go with it. It was better than being chased by Saerian, wasn’t it?

( Follow me down... )

Jo didn't really know what she was going to say to Johnny, but she knew that she needed to say something. Preferably without bringing her shotgun or hitting him, no matter how much that might have been her instinct.

She liked the cowboy. She respected him, and he'd been nice enough to accompany them to Electric City. Not to mention that she realized that he couldn't possibly know when Mary was from or any reason why he shouldn't get involved with her. And he really couldn't know that she was Jo's daughter. No one was supposed to know that after all.

So she knew that reasonably, she couldn't be angry about the fact that he'd been drinking with her daughter in his hotel room. She also realized that he'd carried her back to her room instead of... well, whatever else could have happened.

That didn't make the war with her head and her gut instinct to protect her future daughter any easier.

What Jo did know was that there were two people who might end up hurt once Mary was able to get back home, and she wanted to try to prevent that if she could. Her talk with Mary didn't seem to have made an impact, which was why she found herself knocking on Johnny's door a few hours after that talk, and after the run-in with jack.

Jo didn't feel any less weird or any less cranky after the conversation with Mary. She still felt like Mary was holding things back and while she'd downgraded from wanting to shoot Johnny to simply wanting to hit the vigilante, she still wasn't happy with what she'd witnessed the night before or with the very obvious feelings that Mary was starting to develop.

She really did think that everyone involved was going to end up hurt and she just... she just wanted to spare this woman that was her flesh and blood that hurt. Jo knew it was ridiculous to think that she could save a grown woman from getting her heart broken, but that didn't mean that Jo's head had caught up with her own heart, which was saying very clearly that Mary was her family. Mary was her daughter. That meant it was her job to protect Mary in every way possible, whatever it took.

She just wished that it was easier to figure out what it would take to protect her.

By way of getting her mind off all of that, Jo started to look around Electric City for any more answers that she could find. She still had Simon's 10 answers in her mind and she was still making her guesses as to which of them were truths and which were lies. Everywhere she went, she spotted the pupil anomaly. She was beginning to wonder if she should return to the hotel and hold onto Mary and Dean, just in case this was more of a situation where pod people were taking over instead of alien abduction. And even if it was alien abduction, maybe she should be keeping the people she cared about close so they couldn't try to divide and conquer.

She had just decided to head pack when she passed a little shop that looked like it might actually have some legit products among the typical new age crap. If there was a chance that someone in there might be human and might have answers, well, Jo had to take it. She let herself into the shop, the bells tinkling to announce her entrance.

Jo had stepped outside to get some ice during the night. She hadn't been expecting to see anyone else, and she really hadn't been expecting to see Johnny carrying Mary to her room.

Mary. As in her daughter. Jo's eyebrows raised as she watched the pair from her vantage point by the ice machine, she was just far enough away that they wouldn't have noticed her unless she made some noise but close enough to see the pair as Johnny made his way toward Mary's room.

What the hell had happened that he was carrying her daughter? It was only when Jo watched a little more carefully that she realized that Mary was not injured and Johnny seemed to be just cradling her in a way that didn't say he was worried so much as simply caring for the woman in his arms.

It struck Jo that he would be well into his sixties if not in his seventies in Mary's time and that was just... not right. At all. Her first instinct was to go back to her room and get her shotgun and threaten Johnny away from her daughter.

Her daughter. Who was currently an adult. Because that didn't stop being weird.

It was only after Jo took a few deep breaths that she realized that Johnny probably didn't know that Mary was from the future, or that Mary was Jo's daughter. Not that any of that made it better, but Jo busting in and shouting at him or threatening him over a situation he didn't understand might just draw attention to that situation.

It also occurred to her that while Johnny didn't know about it, Mary sure as hell did.

Jo ducked back into her room, seething. She was going to let Mary sleep for now, but come morning she was damn well going to sort this out.

( It runs in the family apparently? )

Simon was delighting in the strangeness of wherever it was that they all were. He was too connected to his surroundings, too ingrained in the real Electric City, to not be aware that things had changed. He hadn't quite worked out the how, and was completely clueless as to the why, but it didn't really matter to him in the end. They were some place that was not their true home, yet everything looked and acted the same. Oh, there was the peculiarity with the humans who strutted around, the way that their eyes changed. But Simon thought that to anybody else, anybody who was not him, everything likely felt the same, as well.

The fairy sat outside at a small cafe, the better to watch those that passed him by. He had not told Niks of the change when he'd seen her last, waiting to see if she would come to him, asking questions. The Tower themselves had not even stepped forward, wanting to know if he knew anything, or if he had done anything. He would be their first line of questioning on such things. They knew that he had the ability and will to do a lot of damage, though they had found a way to tamp down his power.

That was the other beautiful thing.

Whatever the Tower had done to restrict his natural power and abilities was gone. It had been the first thing he'd noticed, his first clue. He no longer felt bound, caged in. He could feel every bit of himself, as if a limb had been reattached. It was beautiful, really. He hadn't had this much control since the Tower had found him, so long ago. Anything that he wanted to do now, it was within his scope to do it.

He could get rid of Evan.
He could make Niks into what he wanted.
He could burn down the whole of the Tower, just by willing it so.

Simon had yet to act on any of these things. He did not want to play his hand so swiftly. Let the girl and her little puppy believe that he was still held back by the rules and the bindings that had been placed on him. Let them think that they, and everybody else, were safe from his desires and moods.

Smiling, Simon sipped his tea.

Talking to the woman who was supposed to be her future daughter was still not something that Jo was sure she knew how to do. All the same, she couldn't help but feel a bond with Mary-even if she was still shaky on things with Dean. That didn't change the fact that Mary was family. That Mary was hers.

If Dean had spent a year looking for her, it sounded like Mary might have spent the past year in the same way. Jo felt like she owed Mary a visit to let herknow that she was back and to try... she didn't know what she could try-to make up for lost time perhaps? That hadn't gone over all that well with Dean. Not really.

She still had to see her daughter. However it might turn out.

The surprise came when she reached Mary's door and realized that she wasn't the only person heading to see the youngest Winchester daughter.

Jo was getting really sick of waking up with the sense that something wasn't right. That was twice now that she'd had her mind hijacked and woken up days or weeks later. Dean and Mary had done something to make sure that it wouldn't happen again, so she didn't know why she felt out of sorts upon waking. She especially didn't know why since she'd woken up in the motel room that she'd been sharing with Dean for the last few months.

Her hand reached up to touch the amulet that she wore at all times now. She still hadn't gotten over the fact that her daughter from the future had been integral in saving her, or that her other future daughter was missing. That was a lot to deal with, and Jo was just as desperate as Dean and Mary to find a way to get Ellen back.

The sunlight filtering through the room window really threw her off. She didn't think she'd taken a nap in the middle of the day, though she supposed that explained why Dean wasn't here. Then again, it felt like they were ships passing in the night, even if they were sharing a motel room. Things had been weird. Not that she could blame him, considering everything that had come their way.

Jo jotted a quick note, just because she didn't want him to have to wonder if she disappeared without saying a word. Then she dressed and stepped out into the later afternoon sunlight. She was itching to get back to pounding the pavement and searching for answers. They had to be out there. People didn't just vanish... did they? She started walking in the direction of the town, still wishing that she'd had the chance to get herself a vehicle. She was really sick of hoofing it everywhere or having to depend on her boyfriend for a ride.