Revenge (Batfamily) - Sequel to Brother In Arms

Chapter 19 ~ Shadow of the Day

Dick stood in front of his desk at the police station of Blüdhaven, sorting through files of cases he had yet to close. On one side of the desk, those which were over and he needed to put the final thoughts to. On the other side, those he still had to work on. The piles consisted of files of various sizes but one of them stood out the most. It was one related to people disappearing, mostly runaways of sorts. All of them seemed young, in their twenties, and had more or less the same profiles.

In conflicts with their parents, bad grades at school, wishing for independence and yet they still lived with their parents. Some of them also had backgrounds with drugs and other things of the sort.

At first, Dick had thought it was perhaps a coincidence that all these people disappeared. They were adults after all so it probably wasn't something to get really concerned about. However, after three people with almost the same profile, disappeared in the span of a few weeks, he stopped believing it. He hated telling frightened parents that he was going to do his best to find their kids even though he had no lead whatsoever as to where said kids could be. 

But there had to be something and he wasn't sure what it was.

He had gone to the families' houses again, doing his job as a police officer, to ask questions but every time the parents said they had left home one day never to come back and from there, had completely lost contact with their offsprings. 

And that was weird, even for Blüdhaven.

Dick knew better than to ignore his gut feelings. It couldn't all be a simple coincidence. He had asked Bruce, Tim and Jason if they knew anything which could link the disappearances to any human trafficking network but none of them had reported activities coming from the known networks corresponding to the individuals declared missing. Dick had dug deeper and found more unknown networks, which he had helped disable both as Nightwing and during his day job and which resulted in him getting a very generous promotion at the end of the month (which he didn't really care about to be honest. All he wanted was to do his job and find the missing people).

"Hey Grayson, you done with the file?" one of his colleagues asked him, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"Which one?"

"The guys who stole the car last night? I need it now."

Dick pointed at an orange file in front of him. "Yeah, take it."

"Thanks," the officer grabbed the file and flipped through the pages absentmindedly. "Hey, are you going on patrol today? You look like you need some fresh air."

Dick stared at the pile of files on his desk. He probably shouldn't go out with all the work he still had ahead of him but maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to get some air. He was starting to get a bad headache from staying inside the police station for too long. "I will. I need to go get myself something to eat anyway, I'm starving."

The officer smiled. "Great! See you later then."

Dick waved his colleague goodbye. He rubbed his eyes and yawned. He had gotten close to no sleep the night before because Victor Zsasz thought it would be a good idea to make a major comeback. Nightwing had found him before any major damage could be done but it had still swallowed most of his sleeping time nonetheless. So fresh air it was. He got up on his feet, took the jacket of his uniform and swiftly put it on before he headed to the garage and got into one of the police cars.

A few minutes later, he found himself driving around Blüdhaven. It was noon so people were out to get their lunch. Dick thought he should probably grab something to eat as well since he didn't really remember the last time he ate something aside from his cereal bowl. Dick smiled at the thought of Alfred discovering how badly Dick fed himself. Hell, even Jason put more care into the food he was eating than him.