Page 21 of The Foreman (Cowboys of Silver Spur Security #6)

MACY

T he SUV’s rumble beneath her felt more like a heartbeat than an engine. Macy snuggled against Trace's side, his arm wrapped protectively around her. She watched as the countryside blurred past in ribbons of neon and shadow.

Trace sat beside her, silent and rigid, hugging her close.

The memory of Haines’s venom still hung over her like a shroud, as heavy as the gun smoke that had lingered in the depot long after the gunfire had stopped.

Macy let her lips curve into a faint smile.

She had stood toe to toe with monsters and walked away.

For the first time since this nightmare began, she felt less like prey and more like hunter.

She wasn't sure what would come next, but she knew the fight wasn't over. The arrest of the senator and the evidence she had supplied would clear her name, but someone was pulling the senator's strings. It was the puppet master they wanted, not the puppet.

The Iron Spur’s underground garage swallowed them in muted light, steel doors sealing shut behind the convoy.

As the engines died, silence pressed in, broken only by the tick of cooling metal.

Reed was first out, weapon still in hand as he scanned the shadows.

Hawke followed, muttering about tequila and trigger discipline in the same breath.

Gavin’s voice carried from the lead SUV, already barking orders to secure the perimeter and prep the feeds.

The whole team moved with purpose, but Macy felt Trace’s focus on her alone, the weight of it almost heavier than the rifle slung across his back.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, low and firm, thumb brushing the scrape at her temple.

“It’s just a scratch,” she countered, arching a brow. “You should see the other guys.”

He didn’t smile. He simply pulled her closer, his mouth a whisper against her ear. “Stay alert. Tonight isn’t over.”

Her pulse quickened, not just from his words but from the promise woven in his tone. He wasn’t coddling her, not anymore. He was warning her like he would any of the men, and that meant he finally saw her as part of the fight.

Hours later, the war room pulsed with light and noise.

Screens streamed data, encrypted feeds flickered with evidence, and the Silver Spur team carved through layers of Meridian’s shell corporations with ruthless precision.

Every falsified log, every wire transfer, every buried email would be dragged into daylight by Jesse’s steady hands and a team of techs who didn’t blink at the weight of treason.

Macy sat at the center table, laptop open, her fingers flying across the keys as she steered them through Nexus’s back channels.

The systems were as familiar to her as old scars, every quirk and blind spot etched into memory from three years of navigating them.

Tonight she used that hard-earned knowledge not to keep her head above water, but to strike back and win.

Trace hovered behind her, his presence a wall of heat and focus.

She felt his gaze track every move she made, not with doubt but with fierce protectiveness that vibrated through the air between them.

She could sense every instinct in Trace urging him to pull her out of the storm, but she also felt his restraint.

He let her keep her place at the table, and in that choice she knew he recognized her role as vital to the team.

“Got something,” she announced, pulling up a ledger marked with Meridian’s seal.

Her heart hammered as the numbers unfolded across the screen—millions funneled, contracts diverted, signatures forged.

“This ties the Senator and Meridian’s CEO, Dorian Kells, together.

He isn’t just complicit—he’s orchestrating the whole thing. It’s the nail in their coffin.”

Reed gave a low whistle. “That’s enough to bury them deep.”

“Question is,” Hawke said, arms crossed, “do we bury them quietly, or do we light them up in public?”

Macy’s lips curved into a sharp grin. “Why not both?”

The meeting was staged at a Meridian-controlled high-rise, its glass walls gleaming like teeth.

The trap had been laid with quiet precision: a conference room infiltrated earlier by a Silver Spur tech posing as building maintenance, the space now wired and transmitting on secure frequencies Jesse had synced to federal servers.

Silver Spur’s team waited in the wings, feeds live and watching. All that remained was the bait.

Once again, that would be her.

Macy noticed the way Trace adjusted the strap of his rifle and glowered at her outfit. She grinned, knowing the sleek black blouse and tailored pants looked professional enough for a corporate negotiation. She felt the way his stare made her aware of how exposed she seemed beneath the role.

“You hate it,” she said, grinning at his scowl.

“I hate that you’re walking in there without armor.” His voice was a growl. “You should be wrapped in Kevlar.”

She tugged at the protective vest hidden beneath the blouse and winked. “If you had your way I'd be wrapped in Kevlar and bubble-wrapped. Besides, who says I'm not?”

Trace’s jaw ticked. He bent close, lips brushing her temple, voice raw. “I swear, Macy, if anything happens to you...”

She cut him off with a kiss, quick and fierce. “Then you can spank the hell out of me. But, when I pull this off, I expect a reward.”

"What kind of reward?" he asked suspiciously.

"I'm not telling. I need both of us to be focused on the job at hand."

"You two do realize everything you're saying to each other is being broadcast over the comms, right?" Gavin's voice broke in. "Stay sharp, and let's get this done."

The elevator inside the high-rise hummed as it climbed, each floor another drumbeat in Macy’s chest. Trace stood at her side, silent, weapon concealed but close.

Their reflection glinted back at them in polished steel, his body taut with control and hers thrumming with defiance.

She reached out, lacing her fingers through his. He didn’t pull away.

When the doors slid open, Meridian’s CEO stood waiting in the hallway, posture relaxed yet menacing, as if he had known all along they would come straight to him.

Dorian Kells was taller than she remembered from the dossiers, his suit tailored to a lethal edge and his smile curling with predatory amusement. Two guards bracketed him on either side, their holstered weapons displayed like warnings rather than hidden threats.

“Macy Dane,” he drawled, like her name amused him. “The infamous scapegoat.”

Her smile was pure venom. “Better infamous than irrelevant.”

Kells chuckled. “You walked right back into the fire. Very brave, or very, very foolish.”

“Funny,” she said, stepping forward with a tilt of her head, “people keep confusing survival with stupidity. I’ve made a career out of proving them wrong, and you’re about to learn that the hard way.”

Trace’s hand twitched near his Glock, the urge to draw sharp in his veins, but he forced himself to hold back. He let Macy speak, let her own the space, his restraint a dangerous act of trust.

The negotiation that followed was anything but civil.

Every exchange cut sharper than steel, words turned into weapons as Kells tried to dominate the room.

His arrogance bled through with every sneer, and in his hunger to boast he revealed more than he should have.

The feeds captured it all: contracts siphoned off, agents bought with dirty money, assassins dispatched in the dark.

Each slip was another chain tightening around his throat, another nail sealing his fate.

But predators never fall without a fight, and Kells was the kind who would bare his teeth and strike until the very last breath.

The first shot blew out the window in a spray of glittering shards, the round burning past Macy’s ear close enough to stir her hair. The room erupted in violence, glass raining down as Trace yanked her to the floor and covered her with his body.

The room shook with gunfire and the shriek of tearing metal.

Hawke’s rifle cracked from his perch, each shot echoing like a hammer strike, while Reed slammed through the doorway with the force of a charging bull.

Jesse’s clipped commands snapped through the comms, crisp against the chaos.

Silver Spur’s trap closed with brutal precision, but Meridian’s mercenaries poured in wave after wave, their weapons flashing, intent on drowning the room in blood.

Macy dove behind the conference table, lungs burning, adrenaline hammering through her veins until the roar in her ears drowned out everything else.

Splinters stung her palms as she braced against the floor.

Trace dropped to cover her body with his own.

His eyes were hard with lethal focus, every line of his body radiating controlled violence. “You good?”

She grinned through ragged breaths, forcing lightness into her tone. “Still breathing, and you?”

He crushed his mouth to hers in a hard, savage kiss that stole her breath, then tore away and drew his Glock. His eyes blazed with promise and fury as he said, “Stay low. We finish this together.”

The battle raged through shattered glass and twisted steel.

Bullets ripped through the air, ricocheting off walls, while bodies slammed against desks and blood streaked the floor.

The stench of cordite and copper clung to the back of Macy’s throat, every breath raw with smoke.

She moved with Trace, instincts sharpened by fear and determination, her muscles taut with the certainty that hesitation meant death.

When a merc lunged from Trace’s blind side, weapon raised, Macy’s pulse spiked but her hands were steady.

She yanked Trace's backup Glock from the holster at his hip.

Front sight. Cut the noise. Elbows in. Press.

Reset. Press. She leaned over his back, and squeezed the trigger, the recoil jolting up her arm as the weapon thundered.

The crack of the shot rattled through her bones as the man pitched forward in a brutal collapse.

Trace spun toward her, eyes wide, and for the first time she saw something brighter than his instinct to shield her—pride, raw and consuming, etched into every hard line of his face.

“Don’t look at me like I guessed,” she said, breath steadying. “Center mass is what I do at the range.”

When the smoke finally thinned, Kells sagged to his knees, wrists lashed tight, the damning evidence streaming live across secured feeds.

The shattered conspiracy lay exposed at their feet, every lie dragged into the light.

Macy’s name was no longer a stain but a banner reclaimed, her life pulled back from the edge.

But victory carried its own price. Reed was bleeding from a graze along his ribs, Hawke hobbled with a bruised leg, and Trace had been grazed high in the shoulder when he shoved her out of the path of a second shot.

She pressed her hands against the wound, anger and terror twisting together in her chest.

“Don’t you dare leave me,” she hissed.

His grin was weak but defiant. “Not a chance. You’d never let me rest in peace.”

She kissed him, fierce and unrelenting, her tears hot against his cheek. “Damn right.”

Later, in their secure room at the club, when the adrenaline ebbed and silence replaced chaos, Macy tended his wound herself.

The intimacy of it broke something open between them.

He let her undress him, let her clean and wrap the injury, let her hands linger not just in care but in claim.

When he finally pulled her against him, it wasn’t dominance that guided him but devotion.

“I failed someone once,” he said, voice low. “I keep waiting for that day to circle back. It will not be you.”

Their lovemaking was slow and reverent, every touch steeped in heat and fragility, the kind that blurred the edges between triumph and surrender.

Trace’s hands quivered as he whispered her name against her throat, the sound raw with need.

Macy’s voice broke on a whisper of love, her own fingers trembling as they traced the lines of his back.

They clung to each other with desperate urgency, bodies pressed tight as if the room itself might shatter around them and only their embrace could keep the world from breaking apart.

When sleep finally came, Macy’s last thought was not of fear but of triumph.

She had walked through fire, faced monsters, and saved the man she loved.

She was no pawn. She was his lover, his submissive, but also his equal and together they had burned Meridian’s empire to the ground.

.. with a little help from their friends.

But deep down, she wondered if Haines’s warning had been more than venom. Was there someone even bigger than Kells who was still pulling the strings?

The debrief ran until dawn. Macy sat across from Reed and Jesse in the Iron Spur conference room while Trace hovered behind her chair, one hand at the back of her neck, quiet and steady.

She walked them through the final minutes with Kells, the ledger pulls, and the shots that turned negotiation into war.

Every detail mattered now. Every word would be weighed in courtrooms and committee rooms.

When it ended, Reed slid a folder across the table. “You want a clean start,” he said. “Start here. Office manager at Silver Spur isn’t a consolation prize. It is the hinge on the whole door.”

Macy lifted a brow. “Flattery?”

“Logistics,” Reed said. “You keep this place honest.”

She glanced back at Trace. He didn’t speak, but his thumb stroked lightly at the base of her skull, a single, private yes.

“Fine,” she said, voice rough but sure. “I’ll take the job. And I’ll take breakfast. In that order.”

Hawke opened the door with two paper cups and the look of a man who had slept for thirty minutes too few. “Good. Because I already told payroll.”

Macy laughed, tired and fierce all at once. For the first time, the future didn’t look like an empty hallway. It looked like a door she could kick open.