Meet Vic, the young lockpick helping find Murderers in *The Hazard for Spies*

A hand dropped on Vic’s shoulder. He stopped scratching his picks through the lock’s resisting tumblers.

The round moon cast her silvery eye over the alley. Soon she would drift beyond the narrow walkway between the buildings. The silvery light would travel with her, leaving the alley dark except for the golden gleams peeking through the cracks of Elise’s shuttered lantern.

Her light hand lifted from his shoulder, and he returned to his work, figuring out the tumblers on the heavy lock safeguarding the warehouse side door.

She bent close, her breath a warm wisp across his cheek. “How much longer? That’s the third pass by the watchman.”

“Nearly there,” he lied. He didn’t know if he could get past this lock, rusted after long months in rain and cold. He fumbled for a heavier pick.

She huffed, and Vic knew she hadn’t believed him.

Times like this, the job chancy and the watchman vigilant, Vic missed the known of Liverpool. The

escape routes, the likeliest hiding places, refuges from stout fists, the constable who would turn eyes elsewhere. He didn’t like London’s crowded buildings and sooty streets, the seething markets, the constant noise even in the deeps of night. He’d stay, though, till they found the information that Elise and her aunt Phinney hunted.

The pick Bessy worked past Hook and Fine to reach the last tumbler, stiff with rust. Vic gave a jerky twist. The tumbler resisted then “creached”, the word Ollie had taught him, for the soft screech of metal giving way to his picks. As the lock swung from its shackle, he caught it, cold in his hand, rough with rust.

Elise snatched up the shuttered lantern. Her sharp elbow moved him aside. The door opened into darkness with a glow of light off to their left. That was street-side, where the front office would be. The light lured the unwary, but Vic knew better than to head for it, for the light meant watchmen resting between their patrols.

High windows admitted the moonlight. The silvery radiance might illuminate the night sky, but they would need stronger light to find their way through the warehouse. Stacked crates formed haphazard walls, and piled on and around them were boxes, trunks, and barrels, too many to count.

Elise glided over the bricked floor, smoothed by years of use. She didn’t open the lantern shutters, but light streamed around the metal plates, joined badly, repaired worse, but still better than candlelight that would signal a watchman. Cautious skittering started off to his left. Rats, the big London ones that stared before running to hide, considering attack rather than flight. A good mouser would have a battle against London rats.

She reached back, grabbed his coat, and hauled him inside. He shut the door gently.

“Lock?” she hissed.

“Pocket.”

She dragged him a few steps before Vic planted his feet. “Come on,” she demanded.

“Where to?” he retorted, keeping his voice equally low. “Can’t see nothing.”

“We’ll use the lantern upstairs. The windows are shuttered there.”

“Steps or ladder?” He didn’t like ladders. Rickety things weren’t kept in repair until someone fell and died.

Elise snorted, “Stairs. In the middle,” but she didn’t sound sure.

“This the right warehouse?” he questioned, not for the first time.

“Come on,” she ordered, and he followed because she still had his coat bunched in her fist.