The service shelter was an unpainted concrete cube half-buried in the clay berm behind the municipal overflow basin.
Jonah Price led them through a screen of dead staghorn sumac to a low steel door recessed into the embankment. Above the lintel, behind a rusted iron louver, a narrow slit of blue glass glowed faint as a dying match—the shuttered signal lantern he had wired two days before the inspection visit.
Jonah tapped the iron plate three times with the butt of his pocketknife: twice slow, once sharp.
The deadbolt turned inside with the dry scrape of unoiled brass.
Naomi Chen pulled the heavy door open, her arm braced against the frame to keep it from swinging wide into the brush. She wore her faded wool car coat over her work smock, a pair of canvas work gloves tucked under one arm, her wire-rimmed spectacles spotted with mist.
“Jonah,” Naomi said, her breath catching as her eyes swept the group in the darkness. “We heard the sirens five minutes ago.”
“We’re in,” Jonah said. “Help Gideon with Luis.”
Naomi stepped into the wet grass, caught Luis’s sound arm, and helped Gideon maneuver him through the low doorway. Luis groaned as his shoulder grazed the jamb, his boots dragging through the dirt threshold.
