Page 8 of Edge of Honor

Two other travelers were already there waiting. One was an older woman with a large, soft-sided suitcase on wheels. When the bus came, Rogers asked if he could help her. She gratefully accepted.

They made small talk on the way to the terminal. She was headed to see grandchildren in Colorado. Rogers lied and told her he was headed to Texas.

When the bus arrived at her stop, he helped remove her bag and placed it on the sidewalk for her. She thanked him and he watched her walk inside. The woman had no idea that he had slipped his cell phone into the outer pocket of her bag.

Entering through a different set of doors, Rogers headed down to the arrivals level, passed several baggage claim carousels, and made his way outside to where the complimentary hotel shuttles picked up guests. It only took about ten minutes for the one he wanted to arrive.

At the hotel, he thanked the driver, gave him a small tip, and debussed with the other passengers. He then walked two and a half blocks to a much cheaper, considerably run-down motel where he paid for two nights in advance, in cash. The idea was to leave no electronic trail—nothing that the people who were hunting him could follow.

After checking into his room, he grabbed a quick shower, changed, and then took the metro to Pentagon City, where he bought a prepaid cell phone at Target, along with a baseball cap and a handful of other items. Once he had everything he needed, he picked up some take-out food and returned to the motel.

Sitting at the desk, with its cracked Formica top, he tucked in to his beef and broccoli as he made a list of names. Whoever he decided to contact would not only have to be one hundred percent trustworthy, but they would also have to be someone who knew what they were doing.

Ranking the names based on their skill sets, experience, and network of contacts, one name kept rising to the top. Rogers circled it with his pen. This was who he needed to get in touch with.

His only question washow.

CHAPTER 5

FBI HEADQUARTERS

TUESDAY MORNING

FBI special agent Jennifer Fields set a cardboard coffee carrier atop a stack of file boxes and, looking around the suite of dingy basement offices, asked, “What’s this? Are we the fuckingX Filesnow?”

As a rule, her boss, supervisory special agent Joe Carolan, didn’t care for profanity. But when it came to his number two, he had learned to let it slide.

They were from different generations. He had been at the Bureau longer than anyone could remember and was nearing the end of his career. Fields, on the other hand, was less than eight years in and had nothing but wide-open space in front of her.

“Welcome to anonymity,” he replied, waving her over and clearing some room for her to sit.

Pulling one of the large black coffees from the carrier, she handed it to him saying, “Your Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino.”

Carolan stood six feet four, weighed two-fifty, and could swing from a calm, highly skilled investigator to a bite-your-head-off-and-breathe-fire-down-your-neck monster if you wasted his time. Colleagues had long ago taken to calling him “Bear.” Somedays that meant Gentle Ben. Others it meant full-on, bloodthirsty grizzly.

From day one, however, Fields had made it clear that she wasn’t going to let his size or his demeanor intimidate her. Embarrassing Carolan, who only took his coffee black, with ridiculous-sounding coffee orders, hadbeen one of her ways of keeping him in check. It had become their running joke and she did it whether they were alone, like now, or in a room full of people. That was the kind of relationship they had built.

Shaking his head, Carolan thanked her, peeled back the lid, and blew some of the steam off the surface. “When did you ever watch a single episode ofThe X Files?”

She shot him a surprised look. “Black people can’t watchX Files?”

“Jesus, not again.”

“Or,” she continued, “are you saying that people from Harlem are just too poor to have TVs?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Carolan replied, rolling his eyes. “Give me a break. Your dad was a cop. Your mom was a nurse. You weren’t that poor. You went to Penn, for crying out loud. And this isn’t a Black-White thing. It’s an age thing.X Fileswas before your time.”

Fields smiled. She loved needling him. “My grandma, actually, was a fan. A pretty big one. She had all the episodes on VHS. Whenever she took care of me, we’d watch together.”

“That’s great. Now I feel old. Thank you for that. I’m sorry I asked.”

“Technically,” Fields said, correcting him, “I asked. What is all this? What are we doing down here?”

“Hiding.”

“No shit. From who?”

“The new administration,” Carolan replied.

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