Cain shrugged and Manny frowned.
"We never dug too deeply into Josh Headley. We were too busy saving his freaking life."
"I'm right here," Josh protested.
Manny and Jake rounded on him immediately.
"Shut up," they said in unison.
Jake stalked to his office and pushed open the door wide. "Get in here," he snapped.
Manny watched the play of expressions on Josh's handsome face. Anger, frustration, hurt, and finally acceptance. With tight-lipped submission he walked into the office and Jake stepped back out and pulled the door closed behind him effectively shutting Josh inside.
"What the hell, Manny?" Jake asked.
The elevator dinged to indicate another arrival and Nik Valentinov exited the steel cage and joined them. His eyes narrowed as he looked around, clearly expecting Josh to be standing there.
"What the fuck was the idiot thinking?" Nik immediately snapped. "Where is he? Does he not realize he could jeopardize the whole case against Alastair Bullen? If his dad finds out we couldn't keep him safe—"
"He won't," Jake said simply. "He's in my office."
"It was a clean extraction," Manny said. "Though Josh did knock Eric flat on the floor."
"Eric, the lawyer's son?"
"Also the ex-boyfriend, it seems."
"How the hell did Josh even get away from the safe house?" Nik looked confused. And tired. Manny knew for a fact he and Morgan were in the city at the moment as Morgan was presenting to everyone in the morning the details of the case they had begun against the senator. He guessed there hadn't been much sleep so far tonight. Manny wished he had an answer to Nik's question.
"I don't know, but we'll find out."
When Manny opened the door to Jake's office he wasn't surprised to see Josh sitting at Jake's desk with the computer switched on. Josh glanced up at him with a look of frustration on his face. Clearly he had been attempting to break into the computer and had met Manny's security. He stood and pushed the chair away from the desk.
"I'm out of here," he snapped. Manny stood his ground—a barrier between Josh and the door. He crossed his arms over his chest and spread his legs a little for balance. Josh may well outstrip Manny in height by a good three inches and a healthy amount of muscle, but that didn't mean he was getting past.
"Nope," Manny said simply. "Not going anywhere."
"You can't stop me—"
"Do you realize what you've done?" Manny tried to remain patient and calm but Josh was simply belligerent and that didn't bode well for him actually listening to anything Manny said. "If your father finds out we couldn't keep you safe, if for one minute he thinks you are in danger, then he'll revert to his default position. We'll have lost Alastair."
"I know what I'm doing," Josh snapped quickly. "I'll take care of Alastair myself—"
"How? You gonna kill him? Like your dad killed Elisabeth?"
Josh's face lost all expression and he paled. Manny noticed his hands curled into fists and a dead look entered his dark eyes. Okay, it had been a low blow to bring up his dad and the murder, but hell, Josh needed to see what he was doing. He was causing chaos where there needed to be calm.
"Fuck you," Josh finally said. "You don't know what it's like."
Manny didn't even rise to that one. He knew exactly what it was like but he wasn't about to share that with Josh.
He brushed off the flood of shame inside him and focused instead on Josh who had walked around the desk to stand toe-to-toe with him.
"Tell me then," Manny said instead.
"Tell you what?"
"What I don't understand. Tell me why you jeopardized the whole case against Alastair by putting yourself in danger."
Josh twisted his hands in his short dark hair. The action was one of frustration with a touch of that temper Manny had seen before. "Because I needed to do something. I'm not my mom. I'm not just gonna sit on my ass in a safe place."
"Okay…" Manny encouraged Josh quietly.
"Hell. She sits there like she has to be this victim.
She'll let you hide her away until it's all over, give her a new life, whatever the fuck you think you need to do. She'll go with it. She craves it. That safety. I don't want to hide. I want to fight. My dad—what he did—it's a mark on me and I want to do something to make things right. You can't stop me."
Manny considered the impassioned speech. Wasn't it exactly the same tone he had used on Jake back in the department interview room at MIT eight years ago? The passion and life and need to do something.
"I can," Manny started. Josh began to reply but Manny held up a hand to stop him. "I won't though. I know what it's like to have the need for action eating away inside you." God. Manny thought he even sounded like a well-reasoned adult. That was a first. Jake would be proud. "I have a question for you." Something that intrigued him.
"Okay," Josh sounded hesitant. He frowned.
"How did you break out of the safe house in a lockdown?"
Josh shrugged. "Usual trope. I imagine most of your residents," he paused. He had imbued residents with enough disdain to make it sound like a curse word. "I imagine they aren't looking to get out. I just watched Jennifer input the code."
"That doesn't explain the fact you managed this without tripping an alert to Sanctuary or Jennifer."
Josh shrugged. "I know enough to do stuff," he said.
He had evidently decided that being deliberately vague was the way to communicate with Manny.
"You've been in this room about ten minutes yet you haven't broken into Jake's computer," Manny observed.
Josh narrowed his gaze thoughtfully. "I wasn't trying."
Manny thought of the various alerts that had popped up on his phone in the last ten minutes. "Yes. You were."
Josh shrugged again. He wasn't giving anything away.
"Yet you are aiming for a post-grad in criminology and not computer security."
"Are you going to let me out of here?"
