Page 45 of Edge of Honor

Backing out of his space, Carolan paused and looked down. “You’re forging my name. On a government document.”

“If I’m going to die, I want to be properly compensated.”

“First, you’re not going to die. And second, if you’re dead, ‘you’ can’t be compensated.”

“It’s for my mom. She’s my beneficiary. It’d be a little something extra to ease her pain.”

“No,” said Carolan, laying down the law. “End of discussion.”

“Fine,” Fields replied, tearing up the document. “You know it’s terrible the way you hate on old people.”

“Old people?Your mom had you at seventeen. She’s younger than me.”

“Whatever.”

“Can we just focus please?”

“Sure,” said Fields. “We’ve got nothing but bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic to do just that.”

“Listen, we’re lucky we got those videos processed through facial recognition as quickly as we did. Practically every Bureau resource has been tied up working on last night’s attack.”

She knew he was right. The FBI was under massive pressure to make a break in the case. One of the reasons it was so hard to get Dark Web fight-club videos processed right away was that the facial-recognition systems were being used to sort through all the recent protest footage the Bureau had secured. The thought being that the attackers might have attended prior protests to conduct pre-attack surveillance. And while it had taken some arm-twisting, Gallo had eventually gotten the Texas and California videos into the cue.

None of the men in the morgue had shown up in either. As for the fighters with the sword-and-tree tattoos, one was from Texas and the other was from California. Neither of the men had a criminal record nor any ties to the D.C. area.

There was, however, a face in the crowd that appeared in both videos. It belonged to Lucas Weber—a twice-convicted felon who managed a mixed martial arts gym in one of the seedier neighborhoods of southwest Baltimore.

Weber was a White supremacist who had done time for kidnapping, armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, and attempted murder. He was definitely no altar boy.

“Help me understand your rationale here,” said Fields. “This guy Weber is going to want to help us out because what? He’s secretly pro–law enforcement?”

Carolan smiled as he exited the FBI garage and headed south for Interstate 395. “He’s not going to want to help us out at all. At least not at first.”

“So how do you plan to change his mind?”

“That’ll be a piece of cake. Guess who didn’t get permission from his parole officer for the trip to Texas or the trip to California?”

Fields smiled right back. “He’s going to hate your guts when you tell him that.”

“He’s going to hate it even more because it isn’t going to come from me. You’re going to tell him.”

“Me? What the hell for? You’re the one who spoke to his PO.”

“Because I want to rattle him; really push him off-balance. He’s a real piece of shit, this guy. On top of being into all that master-race garbage, I think it’s safe to bet he doesn’t think much of women—especially women in positions of authority.”

“So I get to wind him up and see if he springs?”

“I’ve watched you fight. You can handle yourself. Besides, I’m too old to be mixing it up with a guy half my age.”

Fields shook her head. “I think we can officially pronounce chivalry dead.”

“Assaulting a federal officer is a felony. If he’s dumb enough to do it, it’d be his third strike. You’d also get to whup a Nazi’s ass, which would make you queen for more than just a day at headquarters. You wouldn’t have to pay for another drink all summer.”

“Says the immediate supervisor who wouldn’t authorize my hazardous duty request.”

“It’s a knock and talk. You can do this in your sleep. I’ll be right there with you.”

Washington Village, also known as “Pigtown” because of its nineteenth-century slaughterhouses and the pigs that used to be driven through the open streets, was a poor, down-on-its-luck neighborhood of crumbling rowhouses, vacant lots, and boarded-up businesses adjacent to Camden Yards. It was also home to White Wolf Combat.