Page 97 of Alec’s Dream

“Where’s Chasin?”

“I don’t know. Downstairs somewhere. Joss and I are upstairs. We were making your bed when Josh called. I called you first.”

I called you first.

Fuck, he wanted to feel that, she was giving him everything he wanted—her trust. But he couldn’t push the biting terror aside.

“I got Chasin on the line,” Weston announced.

“Malone’s location pinged when he made the call,” Nixon told the room. “McKenna’s got a lock on him. Let’s roll out.”

“Babe, Chasin’s being briefed. You’re safe there. The kids are safe. It’s all good. I gotta go, we found him.”

“Please be safe, Alec.”

“Will do.”

“Alec?”

“Right here, baby, but make it quick, I gotta roll.”

“I’m not gonna talk you out of doing what you need to do and I don’t care what kind of person that makes me. Just please make my family safe. But while you’re doing that, have a mind to coming home to us in one piece.”

Fuck, but he felt that. He’d been wrong, her trust meant the world to him, but her plea for him to come home to her, Jocelyn, Aurora, and Caleb—that meant everything.

That fed his soul.

Macy thought she was weak, but she was far from it. Doug Spencer didn’t have her cowed, she’s simply allowed her love for her children to cloud what she should’ve done. She’d allowed that too, knowing what needed to be done would end her kids’ relationship with their father—even if that was absolutely the right thing, it would still sting. And Macy was all about cushioning any and all hurt that could possibly touch Caleb and Aurora.

There was nothing weak about his woman. She’d got the hell knocked out of her on a Thursday. Her house destroyed, her children shot at on a Sunday, yet there she was, holding it together even after she was just threatened.

“Be home soon, baby.”

“How fucking long are we gonna sit here?” Alec ground out.

“Until he runs out of ammo,” Weston muttered disgruntledly, repeating what the county sheriff had proposed.

Fuck that noise. He was done waiting.

“It’s been twenty minutes. And I gotta say, sitting on my goddamn hands while taking fire is not something I’m willing to do much longer.”

“I hear that,” Nixon grumbled, not happy about the state of play any more than Alec was. “Jonny asked us to stand down while he had a word with Sheriff Baker.”

Alec glanced around the scene. Pissed way the hell off. Jonny had called in Malone’s location with the specific instructions to hold fast until they could go in soft. An overzealous rookie town cop had fucked their chance of going in and taking Malone by surprise. The cop had gone in hot, lights and sirens. His cruiser was now riddled with bullet holes and he was lucky he hadn’t bought it.

Now blue and red lights flashing from a dozen official vehicles surrounded a one-story farmhouse—albeit from a distance.

Josh Malone was in the house taking pot shots out the window. Stupid fuck. But they didn’t have the green light to enter the house.

Red tape had them sitting there twiddling their thumbs. One of the many reasons Alec had resigned from Homeland. They sat on their asses when they should’ve been moving but couldn’t until some idiot with no tactical knowledge dissected operation reports.

Just like now, his team should be moving around back while Malone was busy shooting at cops from the front.

But that’s not what they were doing.

They were hogtied and he was over it.

“I’m hittin’ the tree line,” Alec informed Weston, Nixon, and Holden. “I’ll follow it around back.”