A strange glint flashed in Bella's eyes as she walked inside. She let her shoulders slump and let her face twist into something scared and lost.
"Mira? Mira, where are you?" she shouted, her voice echoing off the crumbling walls and bouncing back at her from the shadows. The warehouse was vast and cold, the ceilings high and lost in darkness. She looked around wildly, her eyes darting from corner to corner, from shadow to shadow, from broken window to rusted pillar.
But her focus was on the staircase at the far end of the room, the one that led to the second floor where the tracker on her phone had placed Mira's signal.
She calmed herself down. Breathed in. Breathed out. Steady and slow. She could not afford to panic. Panic made people stupid. Panic made people dead.
"Mira?" she shouted again, louder this time, her voice cracking just enough to sound real, just enough to sell the act.
Then the door slammed shut behind her.
