Ops had his back and would inform him if anything came up. Hell, traipsing all the way across town to his place just to sleep seemed to make little sense to him. Anyway. He was happy here with his computers and his statistics. He felt important and that the job he was doing was worthwhile.
He yawned widely and stretched. His neck was aching from being bent over printouts of code but after some sleep he should be relaxed enough to be able to concentrate on the tasks at hand again.
A small movement on one of the scrolling screens caught his attention and he blinked away tiredness to focus.
At the lawyer's house? He paused the rotating screens on that feed. Was that someone hovering by the back wall?
Climbing over it? No one would be that stupid. The house was walled, secure, and gated. Going over said wall was the work of an idiot. He clicked to zoom in on the feed. The closer the zoom the more pixilated the image but there was no denying who the hell it was taking his life in his hands.
"Shit." He pushed himself to stand and within seconds he was in the ops room.
"Manny, we have movement at location K," ops reported. Cain was on rotation and sat at the desk already tapping away at a keyboard. Doing his job. Finding out who was in the locale and trying to pull as much information as he could.
"Who do we have in the field?" Manny asked quickly. The question in itself was stupid. It didn't matter if any of the Sanctuary operatives were available, none of them would be able to get to the house as quickly as he could.
"Thirty out for two operatives." Cain blinked up at Manny as he reported, his eyes wide behind large round-rimmed glasses.
"Forget it," Manny said brusquely. "I need comms."
Cain passed Manny a small box that contained an ear bud and he grabbed it quickly. Pushing it in his ear he left comms at a run. He took the stairs three at a time and was in the parking lot in the space of maybe two minutes after seeing the figure climb the wall.
Calling details in as he started his car, ops were booking everything and finally Jake was there on the line with him.
"Talk to me, Manny."
The roads were quiet and Manny pulled out on to the main road from the business district to the outskirts of the city. "Punch in the lawyer's house," Manny instructed comms and didn't check as the soft tones of the sat nav filled the car. Cain knew what he was doing and Manny glanced at the screen. Eight miles out. Eight minutes with no traffic and sticking to the speed limit. Six if he pushed it.
"Manny?" Jake asked again.
"Just saw Josh freaking Headley at the lawyer's house."
"Wait." Jake was firm and the line was quiet for a second. Downtown Albany sped past the car and Manny narrowly avoided running a red in his determination to find out what the fricking hell was going on. "Jennifer says he's gone from the safe house and that security was down."
There was no time for argument as to how the idiot had managed to get out of a Sanctuary cabin lockdown and away from a bodyguard as switched on as Jennifer. "I'm three minutes out," Manny confirmed.
"Nik's on his way. He's twenty out now. Fuck." Jake paused. Manny concentrated on winding his way past cars parked in the first lanes of the housing outside the city limits. "We can't let the lawyer get Josh. It'll blow everything up that we have with his dad. Can you get Headley without being seen?"
Manny imagined the layout of the house and the walled garden as he narrowly avoided a parked Toyota with its ass too far out onto the street. To cross the garden would take mere seconds but it would be longer to break security.
Could Josh even do that? What was Josh doing breaking into the house? Was he after some kind of revenge on the Bullen lawyer? Was this a misplaced sense of justice? Why did he leave the safe house? Why was he screwing everything up?
"I'm on it, Jake," Manny answered instead. No point in rehashing fears, concerns, and his own questions. He pulled up a street down from the house and was out of the car and at the wall in little more than a minute. The property was set back from the road, entirely walled, and had security on the house itself. He calculated Josh had been on the lawyer's property a good ten minutes. Fuck.
Anything could have happened.
Inhaling and centering his focus, he pulled his gun from the small of his back, the weight of it in his hand was settling him. He wasn't entirely sure what he would find inside the gardens or the house. The lawyer could have muscle. Hell, the lawyer could have Josh at gunpoint.
Checking the chamber, he imagined the path from here to the house. He was very aware of the cameras put in by the owner's security company. Facing away from the camera that formed part of the Sanctuary feed he briefly gave ops the thumbs up. If comms crashed again he wanted them to be sure he was on-site but there was no sense in having his photo plastered everywhere. He turned up the collar on his jacket, took a few more calming breaths and then he was up and over the wall and dropping noiselessly to the grass
