They paused at the threshold. Melendez played her flashlight around the interior searching for signs of life but found none. In an upper corner inside the door, they discovered a spider's web, its architect and builder failing to move when the light fell upon it. Jacobsen reached up and tapped the web, but the spider remained motionless.
"Dead," he said.
"Must be," Melendez concurred, "But it could be from something else. Old age, maybe."
The two agents stepped into the lobby onto a deeply stained, frayed, floral print rug from a bygone era. Wind howled through the abandoned building, reawakening the image of a wounded tiger, a desperate beast crouching in the darkness, ready to pounce and kill in self-defense. Tattered curtains flapped along the dark, dank walls. In the center of the r
