Superhero Detective Series (Book 2): The Missing Exploding Girl Read online

  THE MISSING EXPLODING GIRL

  BOOK TWO OF THE

  SUPERHERO DETECTIVE SERIES

  By Darius Brasher

  Though this is a standalone novel which can be enjoyed without reading the other books in the series, you can check out the other books here:

  SUPERHERO DETECTIVE FOR HIRE

  KILLSHOT

  HUNTED

  Click below to sign up for Mr. Brasher’s e-mail newsletter for exclusive information on his new releases. His novels are often sold at a discount for only a few days when they are first released. Newsletter subscribers are the first to be able to snap up these deals and discounts:

  DARIUS BRASHER’S NEWSLETTER

  The Missing Exploding Girl Copyright © 2015 by Darius Brasher.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by RMG Book Cover Designs.

  First Edition, Published December 2015.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  EXCERPT FROM KILLSHOT

  EXCERPT FROM CAPED

  CHAPTER 1

  Clara Barton was not a supervillain, but she might as well have been. Dozens of people were about to die because of her powers. Hundreds more would be injured. Supervillain or scared thirteen-year-old girl: the label that properly applied to Clara little mattered. The people she killed would be just as dead either way.

  Clara’s face was placid, almost wooden, as she rode down the escalator from Connecticut Avenue to the Dupont Circle Metro subway station in Washington, D.C. Clara’s mind was anything but placid, though. She was like a serene-looking lake: the surface was calm, but the water under the surface was anything but. Under the surface, predator vied with prey in the age-old struggle that was the survival of the fittest. Clara’s mind struggled against the external mind that controlled her actions. But, like a fish struggling against an alligator, Clara did not stand a chance.

  There were two entrances to the Dupont Circle subway station. One was to the north of the traffic circle from which the Metro station took its name; the other was to the south of the traffic circle. Clara was riding down the escalator at the north entrance. The escalator, at almost two hundred feet long, was the sixth longest in the Metro’s ninety-one station system. When the escalator worked—and it often did not, to the eternal frustration of commuters—it moved at the pace of ninety feet per minute. So, it took about two minutes for Clara to make the trip to the bottom of the escalator standing with her fellow commuters on the right side of the escalator. For those two minutes, Clara’s mind fought and shrieked and wailed with anger, fear, dread, and frustration though her face stayed as still and as blank as a mannequin’s.

  It was a little after 6:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, and therefore the middle of rush hour. Those commuters who were not content with moving at ninety feet per minute by standing on the right with Clara hastened the pace of their descent down the escalator by rushing down the left side of it. They were very important people, or at least they thought they were. The Dupont Circle neighborhood was about a mile from the White House, and was the home to numerous think tanks, high-end shops and restaurants, white-shoe law firms, and several countries’ embassies. The men and women who rushed by Clara had empires in their brains, and traveling at ninety feet per minute was not nearly fast enough for them. They had important places to be, important people to see, and important things to do. Many of the walkers and the standers thought the world revolved around them. Soon the world would find out just how easily it could get along without them.

  Clara stepped off the escalator at the bottom. She walked towards the row of fare gates and stood in one of the rapidly moving lines for them. There were cameras mounted high on the cylindrical walls of the subway station which fed video to a central location. Human eyes scanned the television monitors there for any hint of criminal activity, both terrorists and more commonplace criminals like muggers and pickpockets. In addition to that, facial recognition software fed the faces of the people milling in the subway station through computer algorithms that would alert security forces if they detected a known threat. Clara was a teenager who had done nothing wrong before. Her face was in no government database. She tripped no alarms and raised no concern.

  Both uniformed D.C. cops and agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were positioned at the gates and throughout the station. Their presence was normally not quite so obvious, but there had been a higher than usual amount of terrorist threats lately. There were also some undercover officers sprinkled throughout the rush hour crowd. The eyes of all of the government agents constantly scanned the crowd, alert for any threat, whether that threat took the form of a potential terrorist or simply an industrious thief taking advantage of the throng of people. The agents were on the alert for people who did not look like simple law-abiding commuters. So, their eyes were peeled for people who looked nervous, for people whose body language was not quite right, for people who were dressed unusually, and for people who might be carrying or concealing an incendiary device. And, though their superiors would have denied it publicly and would have insisted their crime-fighting efforts were free of racial, sexual, class, and age bias, the agents paid special attention to brown and black-skinned men under the age of forty who appeared less than prosperous. They knew from both personal experience and statistics what political correctness would not permit them to admit: the vast majority of crimes and terrorist attacks in the area were perpetrated by young, poor, minority men.

  Thought Clara was young, she was a white female. She only wore jeans, a long-sleeved pink tee shirt, and tennis shoes. The clothes clung to her thin developing body. There was no place she could conceal a weapon or a bomb. Though she did not have on a coat and was therefore dressed somewhat inappropriately for the cold winter weather outside, she was not the first teenaged girl in history to dress inappropriately. Other than her age, in no way did Clara fit the profile of the type of person the government agents were on the alert for. As a result, the eyes of several of them glided over her without paying her any special attention.

  Once Clara got to the front of the line of one of the ticket-taking gates of the subway, she pulled a fare card out of her front pocket and slid it into the machine. With a slight whirring sound, the mechanical gate opened, and Clara stepped through. She walked right past two uniformed D.C. Metropolitan police officers, one black, one white, but both having that air of confidence and authority about them which cops so often had. Clara’s face
was expressionless as she walked past the two men. Deep in the recesses of her mind, though, she shrieked at them for help. There were Metahumans who could read minds. But, unfortunately for Clara and the other people who were in the subway station that day, neither of the officers was one of them. They were just normal humans doing their job, powerless to stop what was about to happen.

  Surrounded by a throng of commuters, Clara walked straight ahead to another escalator going down. This one was much shorter than the first she had ridden. Within seconds Clara got to the bottom of it. She dismounted, and walked straight ahead on the subway platform. Dupont Circle was one of the busiest subway stations in the D.C. system, with over twenty thousand passengers boarding the subway through the station per day. There were hundreds of people lined up on Clara’s side of the platform waiting for the train that headed north towards Montgomery County, Maryland. Hundreds more were on the other side of the empty tracks awaiting the southbound train that went deeper into Washington. The ceiling above was a huge arch, looking a bit like a curved waffle made out of gray concrete.

  Clara was shorter and smaller than most of the other commuters. So, though the platform was crowded with people, she was able to weave her way through them with little difficulty, squeezing through holes in the sea of humanity a fully grown adult would have had a hard time getting through. A few times she stepped on people’s feet or brushed up against them, eliciting glares and cries of protest. Clara ignored them as if they did not exist. Her face was calm and still as she continued her implacable march through the throng of people.

  Once she got to the middle of the platform, she stopped. Though her mind reeled and struggled, her body was still as she waited, apparently patiently, for the next train to come.

  The commuters saw the next train before they heard it. Far down in the dark tunnel, the darkness became lighter and lighter as the southbound train approached, powerful headlights lighting the way before it. Then, the people waiting heard the tooting of the train’s horns. Seconds later, the sights and sounds of the northbound train also became evident. The people waiting on both sides of the platform shifted in place, happy their train had arrived. It being rush hour during the workweek, new trains came and went constantly so the people who were waiting had not been doing so for long. But, the people of D.C. were not known for their patience. Most of the commuters were full of self-importance, and, in their own minds at least, had empires to run and a world to conquer. Little did they suspect they would not be conquering any worlds that day. In fact, for many of them, the world would be ending.

  The southbound train pulled up to the platform, slowed, and stopped. Each of the six cars of the train had a seating capacity of sixty-eight people, and a standing capacity of an additional eighty-seven. Seconds later the northbound train of the same length as the other one pulled up next to the first train. Both trains were packed with people like sardines. It was standing room only inside. As some of the people who had been lucky enough to grab seats got up and fought their way through the press of passengers to the closest train doors, they were immediately replaced by people eager to get off of their feet.

  Outside the trains, the waiting people surged forward towards the trains’ many doors despite the computer voice that admonished them to stand aside to let departing passengers off. Only Clara remained completely still as the people around her jockeyed for position. Her mind was not still, though. It continued to both cry and cry out loudly in her head, but silently elsewhere. It willed her body to run, to get away from everyone as fast as her skinny legs would carry her. It was all in vain.

  “Doors opening,” the computerized voice of the subway trains spoke as the doors to both trains opened. People surged out of the trains; others surged in. Clara remained rock still. She was surrounded by a crush of people squirming and writhing shoulder to shoulder. All told, there were over two thousand people in the trains and on the platforms.

  “Now!” a voice in Clara’s head said right as most of the people getting off the trains had exited them. It was a man’s voice. It was cold, implacable, and not to be denied no matter how hard Clara tried.

  Clara exploded with a deafening boom.

  The people closest to Clara were immediately incinerated, their bodies, hopes and dreams converted by the force of the explosion to vapor and ash. A bit further away from Clara, people’s bodies were torn asunder, killing them more messily but just as thoroughly as the ones who had been vaporized. The people even further along the blast radius fared a bit better, at least in some cases. With some of them, eardrums were burst, bones were broken, and burns were suffered. Some people were merely knocked back, crashing into the people behind them like bowling balls hurled at bowling pins. Others were thrown into the concrete walls of the subway and into the metal structure of the northbound train. A few were thrown with such force they smashed through the windows of the train. Their blood and viscera splattered the densely packed passengers of that train car.

  For a second or two after the explosion, there was a hushed silence, like the silence that falls immediately after a thunderclap. Then, as if a switch was flipped, the hellfire of Clara’s explosion was followed by all hell breaking loose. People shrieked in fear, panic, and in some cases, injury and grief. The people who were there with friends and loved ones clutched at them. Some only had severed limbs and entrails to clutch at. And, mostly everyone ran. Or, at least they tried to. Many were trampled and a few were killed in the sudden mad scramble by everyone to be somewhere, anywhere, than in that subway station.

  But, that was not all. Despite the numerous people killed and injured by the blast, most of the force of Clara’s explosion had actually been directed upwards, towards the concrete and metal superstructure of the arched subway tunnel. With an ominous groaning of rending metal and cracking concrete, a fissure appeared in the roof of the arched tunnel. The people down below were too occupied with death, destruction, and the mindless drive to escape to notice it. But, seconds later they did notice it.

  Thousands of pounds of concrete and metal and soil fell from the ceiling. Part of it landed on top of the still packed northbound train. The rest landed on the milling crush of people on the platform. Many died instantly. Many others suffered injuries they would later die from. Others were merely injured, but the pain from those injuries made some of those people wish they were dead.

  Part of the subway roof caving in made the people struggling toward the exits redouble their efforts, which in turn led to even more people being trampled. The shrieks, wails, moans, and yells increased in intensity. The scene, which had already been like Dante’s eighth circle of hell, had descended to the ninth circle.

  Part of the ceiling collapsing had left a jagged hole in the ceiling, exposing the subway tunnel to the winter night above. Fortunately, the part that had collapsed was under a sidewalk and the side of the adjoining street rather than the middle of the busy street itself. If the middle of the street had collapsed and fallen into the subway station below, it would have been an even bigger disaster than it already was.

  On the sidewalk near the newly opened hole, atoms formed into molecules; molecules formed into chains of chemicals; chemicals formed into bone and muscle and sinew and organs and clothes. In less time that it takes to talk about it, Clara reappeared on the sidewalk by the gaping opening into the hellhole she had created. She looked down onto the pandemonium, giving the mind that controlled hers a long look at the chaos. She was none the worse for wear for the havoc her powers had caused. She appeared exactly as she did when she rode the escalator down into the subway tunnel minutes before. Her face was still blank. Her tortured mind was anything but blank.

  Clara turned and walked north. She threaded her way through the crowd of onlookers that was starting to form around the gaping hole in the ground. No one paid her the slightest bit of attention. The unfolding drama going on below was far more interesting. People had their phones out. Some were calling 911. Others were recording the scene. A han
dful—the empathy-challenged—were taking selfies. One intrepid soul got right up to the edge of the hole and held his cell phone down, filming the events below. When the edge crumbled beneath him and he tumbled into the hole, perhaps it was his receding scream that dissuaded others from taking his place.

  In the distance was the approaching wail of sirens. Clara did not increase the pace at which she walked down the street. She calmly but woodenly walked up several blocks. She approached a late model black Mercedes SUV that was parked on the side of Connecticut Avenue. The vehicle started at her approach. Clara opened the driver’s side passenger door and climbed into the leather seat within. She closed the door behind her, shutting out the cold winter night. But, the door closing did not shut out the screams of the people from the subway that still reverberated in her head.

  In addition to the big, brutish-looking man behind the wheel, the car contained another man who sat in the back passenger seat. The driver was in his twenties, but the man in the back was older, perhaps in his late forties. He was white, and had thick black hair that was greying a bit at the temples. He had on an expensive pearl-grey suit, a white monogrammed shirt with French cuffs, pearl cuff links, a black silk tie, and a pearl tie tack that matched the cuff links. He wore black dress socks and black Italian leather shoes that gleamed with polish. He looked like a prosperous businessman, or perhaps a successful lawyer who was a bit flashier than the standard issue white-shoe lawyer. He was anything but those things.

  The man in the back smiled at Clara like an uncle smiling at a favorite niece.

  “Well done, my dear,” he said to her in his rich voice. He patted Clara on the knee. His voice was the same voice that had directed Clara and commanded her to explode. It lacked any kind of regional accent, which was really its own kind of accent. He sounded like a television newsman, as if he should have been broadcasting about news of death and destruction rather than causing it.