When Cara awoke, her right eye wouldn’t open. It was swollen completely shut, and a searing pain ripped through her head. She realized her hands had been tied behind her back, and her feet were secured to the chair she was sitting in. Blood had caked on her forehead, gluing her hair to her skin like a shell.
After a few moments, she managed to open her good eye and look around. Most of the fluorescent lights above her head were burned out, but there was just enough eerie blue light for her to make out some shapes hidden in the shadows.
The floor was made of dusty, broken tiles. There were empty clothing racks and jewelry display cases, cash registers turned upside down and emptied on the floor.
An abandoned department store.
Cara blinked through the stabbing pain in her head and the
