Manny Sullivan is the backbone of Sanctuary. He has his fingers in every pie and when he spots Josh Headley where he shouldn't be, it is Manny who goes in and rescues him.
Josh is in Sanctuary witness protection after his dad turns on the Bullens. Not only is his dad a murderer but his ex is a liar who was using him for information. With his skill in information retrieval, he hopes to make a contribution to the solution.
What started with the death of Elisabeth Costain is drawing to a close and Josh and Manny are in the middle of it all.
When Manny risks his life could it finally be time for Josh to risk his heart?
*****
Reviews for Full Circle
MM Good Book Reviews I highly recommend this if you like intrigue, a touch of action, adrenalin rushes, some really hot sex, guns, computers and a happy ending.
Dark Divas Reviews Once again, Ms. Scott has another winner to add to her ever-growing list of accomplished works. Full Circle does not disappoint; with suspense, intrigue, as always, great sex, and a very interesting twist at the end of the story. Of course this twist leaves the door wide open for more of this hit series.
*****
Excerpt
Manny Sullivan was way past pissed and straight on down the road to furious. Sean freaking Hanson had infected the system, sent a worm digging around in Manny's protected-to-hell private files.
"What did it do?" Jake asked. He was watching as Manny stripped the viral attack from file after file. Leaning against the desk next to Manny, his expression still held that disbelief that was all pervasive in the office at the moment.
No one had ever managed to get close enough to the hub and ops to actually get inside Sanctuary files. Considering it was Manny who was in charge of security and that what he didn't know about the Sanctuary system wasn't worth knowing, the attack had been one huge clusterfuck.
"I'll give Sean fucking Hanson this," he said grudgingly. "It's damn good coding. Gave him back door access to lower-level stuff. It's odd though..." Manny paused and peered at the screen closest to him.
"What's weird?"
"It could have been so much worse. Whoever created the code knows their stuff. The infection itself is clever and Sean could have taken so much more than he did. Instead he's left a trail here like a pair of size tens in fresh concrete."
"Which means what?" Jake leaned even farther in, his gaze flicking from screen to notes and back again.
Manny laughed inwardly. Millionaire owner and creator of Sanctuary, Jake Callahan was a lot of things. Computer programmer wasn't one of them. To Jake the code scrolling on the screen would look like something out of The Matrix. Manny checked the percentage done, nearing seventy-two percent and painfully slow. He had an awful lot of sitting around time watching the clearance programs run and thinking on why Sean had left such an easy to follow audit trail to locate the infection. The suspicious side of Manny immediately assumed the worst. That the easy stuff had been telegraphed to find so that anything deeper down would be ignored. Thing is, he had completed an incredibly deep clean and there was nothing untoward other than this shit curling and edging its way into comms. He wasn't normally hesitant to bring his thoughts to Jake's attention but he was honest enough to admit to himself that he was suffering from acute embarrassment that Sean had even gotten this close to Manny's baby.
Jake had said nothing. Accused Manny of nothing. But Manny's pride was dented.
Manny pressed the escape button to halt the scrolling and pointed at the screen. "Look," he said. "This part here is almost as if the interruption to comms was simply designed to hide what happened at the cabin. Then it began to self-delete. As if it had a sell-by date."
"Just to cover Sean killing Adam and Lee?" Jake leaned back and away and the familiar bitterness laced his voice. He hadn't been the same since Sean had exposed himself as the FBI mole, working for Alastair and Greg Bullen. Sean was now in Federal interrogation. He hadn't put up much of a fight when Adam and Lee had confronted him but in an ensuing altercation between two other gunmen accompanying Sean, Lee had been shot. Sean and Jake hadn't exactly been friends but Manny had seen a defrosting in the iciness caused by Jake having to accept an FBI rep trailing his every move. Jake had given in to the request that Sanctuary and the Bureau should have close ties. That went well, considering Sean turned out to be one of the bad guys.
Manny shrugged. "I wish I knew. All I do know is it was easy to find once the event happened. Markers showed up on every part of my system. Inconsistencies and warnings. As it was, comms were down for little more than ten minutes."
"That was enough though. To ensure Adam and Lee were dead."
Manny looked up at Jake. His boss looked exhausted. Pale and with dark rings around his eyes, he was rough around his normally very straight edges. He'd taken Sean fucking them all over very hard. He hadn't had much choice in having a Fed liaison mirroring his every move and auditing procedures but he still blamed himself for letting Sean anywhere near operations.
"From the reports he wasn't exactly going in guns blazing to take our guys out. Also, a trail in the computer still doesn't tell us why he was involved with the Bullens or with Headley."
"He's still not giving the Feds anything." Jake yawned widely behind his hand. "At least nothing they are sharing with us."
Sean Hanson had been secreted away by the FBI and was currently being, in their words, vigorously debriefed. They were as stunned as Sanctuary that one of their own had turned quite so spectacularly. Information was not being streamed to Sanctuary. So much for cooperation.
"And still no chance of us having a chat?" Manny had been all for getting up in Sean's face with a well-thought-out 'what the fuck?' Jake had shot that one down instantly.
"It's not our remit," he commented softly. Repeating what he had said before was more telling than he realized. The first time Jake had said it had been full of anger. This time there was only sadness and resignation.
"I'll keep going with the digging," Manny offered. He had to say something to break the tension. "Maybe he'll show up on some surveillance feed. Do we really not know anything of what the Feds have on him yet?" Manny huffed a laugh. The FBI putting barriers up and not sharing was so not going to be a problem to Manny. "You want me to hack into their systems?"
Jake laughed. "Not today. I'll let you know when."
Jake pushed himself up and away from the desk. "Do we have any reports back on the Headleys?" he asked. The Headleys were the wife and son of the guy who started this whole mess. The cop who had shot Elisabeth Costain in an alley. Only because Sanctuary offered them safety away from FBI involvement did Gareth Headley finally agree to turn state's evidence on Gregory Bullen.
"Jennifer reported in a few hours back. Everything's clear but Josh Headley is getting antsy."
Josh Headley was a really bright guy--some kind of genius-level criminology student with an added layer of brilliance in computers, apparently. Although Manny doubted the guy's expertise was at his own level it was an interesting fact about an otherwise on the surface boring kind of guy. Good-looking. Tall. Dark-haired. Green-eyed. Gay. But the son of a murderer and likely to be disappearing off into witness protection sometime soon.
"We need to get them moved on," Jake said absently. He was gazing into the distance with a thoughtful look on his face. He was probably contemplating what Sanctuary could finance and where would be best. Sanctuary wasn't just a foundation to Jake. It was his life.
"You should go home, boss," Manny said firmly. "Make decisions tomorrow."
"Says the guy who may as well pitch a tent in the corner of the comms room."
*****
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