The gravel path behind the tollhouse was dark, shielded from the guards’ fire bowl by the heavy stone support prop of the southern customs arch.
Bram led the way, his boots moving with the silent, practiced caution of a former patrolman. He kept low, his good left hand guiding Heth by her elbow. His right arm was tucked tightly into his buttoned coat to prevent the jostling of his wounded shoulder. The mountain fog was their ally, swirling in dense, freezing banks that muffled the crunch of their soles on the iced shale and blurred the orange glare of the guard fire bowls twenty paces to the east.
They reached the low pine door of the tollhouse medicine room—a backup entrance used by visiting medical inspectors and quarantine clerks. The lock was an old four-lever bronze rim-latch, green with green rust from the mountain damp.
Bram pulled a short steel tension pick from his waistcoat pocket with his teeth, caught it in his left fingers. Then he slid the flat blade into the keyway. He had picked this exact lock forty times during his years on the border detail. His fingers were stiff with cold, but the muscular memory of his former trade didn’t fail him. Two delicate lifts of the internal tumblers, a quarter-turn of the tension bar, and the latch released with a soft, oiled click.
