Page 29 of Edge of Honor

“I have no idea,” said Harvath. “I just want to make sure we put enough chum in the water. Which brings me to his car.”

“What about it?”

“I don’t want him to have to start it with a stick if you know what I mean.”

Nicholas’s dark sense of humor got the better of him and he chuckled at the image. “No, you don’t want that.”

“So how do we make sure it hasn’t been rigged with a bomb?”

Rubbing his chin, Nicholas ran some options through his mind.

“He parked in the extended lot at Reagan National, correct?”

Harvath nodded. “Correct.”

“I know somebody out there in airport operations. They’ve got a couple of trucks that are their own mini version of AAA. They help fix flats, jump batteries, that sort of thing. We might be able to get one of our tech people to ride along and make it look like Rogers is having trouble starting his car. The tech could pop the hood and give it a full, top-to-bottom, bumper-to-bumper sweep, just to make sure it’s clean.”

“Perfect. Let’s get that in motion. In the meantime, I’ve got to recruit some more muscle.”

“As long as it’s not Haney, who are you thinking about?”

“I have an ex-federal employee that I’ve heard is very angry. I think he’d be great for this job.”

Nicholas looked at him. “Because he’s angry?”

“No, because even though he doesn’t know it yet,” said Harvath, “he’s got his own skin in this game.”

CHAPTER 14

Dead bodies give me the ick,” said Fields as they pulled into the underground parking garage of the D.C. medical examiner’s office.

“Since when?” replied Carolan as he searched for an empty spot.

“Since always.”

“I’ve been at multiple crime scenes with you where we’ve had to deal with dead bodies. You’ve held tarps and sheets up for me, you’ve gone through their pockets, looked in their mouths and under their fingernails. I’ve never heard you complain. Not once.”

“Because when they’re at the scene, they’re victims. But the minute they get to the morgue, they become corpses. And corpses freak me out.”

“So moving them from the scene to here somehow transmogrifies them?”

“It amps up the ick factor. That’s all I’m saying. It amps it way up.”

“I’ll bet you don’t like hospitals either,” replied Carolan as he found a vacant stall and pulled in.

“What the hell do hospitals have to do with anything?”

“It’s called nosocomephobia and it’s nothing to be ashamed about. At least ten percent of the population has it. A fear of doctors, lab coats, clinical settings, and hospitals. It stems from unresolved issues around illness, pain, and death.”

“Listen, I don’t like cherry ice cream. I don’t like men with back hair. And I don’t like corpses. Okay? It’s that simple. None of it needs to be explained by me having a phobia.”

“What is it they say?” Carolan asked as he turned off the ignition and opened his door. “The first step toward fixing a problem is admitting you have one?”

Fields gave him the finger.

“It would appear we’re still in the denial phase,” he stated. “We’ll have to work on that.”

Fields gave him her other finger and got out of the car.