Certified Superhero (Misfits #2)

8: diana's impressive resume

Unlike most missing children posters I had seen in the past, forgotten pictures at the front of grocery stores or desperately flashed on the five o'clock news, many of these faces were not chubby cheeked children. 

The youngest I saw could pass for twelve but the older half looked almost like adults. Every face was a pair of unblinking eyes and smiling mouths. Family and school photos. 

My mouth went dry. I looked around the shop one more time. The kid talking to Leandra could just as easily be on this bulletin. He would have fit into the line up perfectly. I counted quickly. Five, ten, eighteen posters, not yet faded with time. How many kids didn’t get posters put up?

There in the corner. I recognized that face. From the night I fought Mr. Relentless in the streets. She had been the angry girl I met with at the beginning of the night. It was difficult to confirm her identity. She looked so different in the school picture on her poster. I had only met her briefly with shadows obscuring her face in a dark alley, but I was sure it was her. 

“I’m going to make sure Leandra doesn’t notice, and you take a photo of every poster,” I told Diana. 

She didn’t move. I nudged her with my shoulder. “You good?”

Her voice caught in her throat at first. Almost a choked cry. She swallowed and tried again. “They look like my little sisters.” I had seen her three younger sisters running around her family’s restaurant back in Summersville when we worked there. The youngest must have been ten. 

I laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, and she almost jumped at the contact. “We’re going to figure out what’s going on here. I promise.”

I walked to the cash register to strike up a conversation with Leandra about whatever my fake school project was about. 

I met Diana outside ten minutes later. Leandra had been as slow to give me useful information as I expected. She had stuck to the concrete, public details of the game store. She and her husband opened the shop back in the 80s. Both of them grew up in Old Stones and knew how tough it could be to be a kid in the city. They wanted to give back to the community. 

She gave me enough information to write a puff piece about the store, but nothing that could aid in my current investigation. Maybe I would suit up for patrol early tonight and swing by in a mask. She would be more forthright then. 

In silence, Diana and I walked down the street. I couldn’t think of anything to say. My plans may have brought us to Stones, but there was no way I would have predicted this kind of information being dumped on us. 

A block and a half from the storefront, Diana broke the silence. “What did you mean by breaking into the police station? Aren’t you supposed to stop people from committing crimes?”

I had almost forgotten about that part of my plan. I'm glad she reminded me. 

“It’s for a good cause, especially knowing what we know now.” I stopped walking and turned my full attention on her. There was plenty of foot traffic, but they parted around us with a few scowls. “I need to know how many other missing cases there are and if anything else has been happening in the district.”

She quirked up her eyebrow at me like I was stupid. Her whole demeanor shifted. It was like she shrugged off a heavy coat. “So you want to break in just to get some data and reports?”

“Yeah, that’s what I just said.”

“You’re an idiot.” She kept walking. 

I hurried to keep up. “I would like to argue that I am not, but please enlighten me.”