Chapter 14
Fourteen
Inside the troopy, Taryn’s jaw was clenched so tight her molars ached, as she glared through the windscreen.
The silence between her and Finn was thick enough to bottle. She’d pushed him too far this time, but dammit, she was here for answers, and if Craig had already filled him in, then there was no point beating around the bush. It’s why she’d gotten on this hell ride.
She glanced around the interior of the rugged, boxy wagon that could easily seat eight adults.
Rugged enough to go anywhere in this county, its immense interior space had plenty of room to hold a rolled swag, a battered gas cooker wedged between a jerry can and a tangled camp chair, with an esky tucked into the corner beside a duffel bag.
It wasn’t tidy, but it was efficient and prepped to disappear at a moment’s notice.
He still didn’t look at her. Just shifted gears and took some back track, with tyres crunching over sunbaked gravel. A small church stood on the hill on one side, with the stockyards taking up space on the other, when his phone buzzed on the dash.
He glanced at it, and something in his posture changed. ‘We’re taking a detour. I’ve got to meet someone. Keep your mouth shut.’
‘That’s charming.’
‘Wouldn’t take you if it wasn’t urgent,’ he muttered. ‘Or I could sit you under a tree—’
‘Are you meeting an informant?’
He gave a grunt. ‘Something like that.’
‘I get it. I’ll play nice.’ Taking a stranger to meet an informant was an enormous risk, and she knew enough to not interfere. But it also cleared the air to form a truce.
The troopy veered off the main road, and down a narrow track, where the land became a complex sprawl of timber rails and iron gates.
It was the backdoor to the stockyards.
The heavy aroma of cattle manure, blended with rusted metal and diesel oil coming from an outgoing beastly road train, churning up the dry soil with a roar.
Red dust clung to everything. The sides of sheds that hoarded hay, and wooden posts sagging under the weight of time and too many seasons.
And the cattle—hundreds of them—were putting on a full vocal performance.
One let out a deep, throaty bellow.
Another joined in from somewhere across the yards, slightly off-key.
Then a third chimed in, and suddenly it was all happening, sounding like a choir rehearsal on the wrong end of a pub night—all full of baritone bravado and no conductor.
She stared out the window, lips twitching despite herself. Half of her brain still bristled with anger. The other half?
Well, that part was waiting to see if Mr Personality beside her would suddenly break into some gruff stockman’s solo.
The thought was so absurd it made her grin flicker.
Finn shot her a sideways glance. ‘What’s your problem?’
‘I was just wondering,’ she said, oh so innocently, ‘do stockmen really sing lullabies to settle the cattle? Or is that only on special occasions?’
His look was pure stone.
‘Riiight… So, what’s your go-to? Bit of Slim Dusty? Or are you more of a Dolly man?’
He said nothing. Naturally.
‘So,’ she said, resting her elbow against the passenger window. ‘Do you do music?’
He still didn’t answer.
‘Or do you just sit in silence while the show tunes play in your head?’
That earned her the smallest twitch of his mouth. Not a smile—never a smile—but something.
They pulled up behind a rusting fence panel that blocked them from the yards, as a shadow darted from the edge of a shed. It was a teenager, tall, with wiry limbs, running straight to Finn’s open window.
‘Hey, Brodie. What’s up?’
The boy paused spotting Taryn.
‘Ignore her. I do.’
Charming. Not. But she’d promised to behave, even biting her tongue to stop the backchat.
‘Yeah, okay…’ The boy wiped the sweat and dirt from his face with the sleeve of his even dirtier shirt. ‘Red’s sniffing around and I mean bad.’
‘How bad?’
‘He’s checkin’ Lydia’s phone, Finn. Like all the time.’ The boy’s voice was filled with worry, as if he was talking about his mother. ‘I heard them arguing in the office just before. I don’t think she’s safe.’
Taryn leaned slightly forward to get a good look at Brodie. He was thin and covered in dust, like it was part of his skin and suntan. But there were burn marks—pale scars that barely blended against tanned skin. Some on his neck, too.
Her stomach twisted as she recognised them. Cigarette burns.
Finn’s voice, which always had that hard edge, had softened. ‘You did the right thing telling me, Brodie.’ He even tapped the boy’s shoulder in reassurance. ‘I won’t let anything happen to her. Not on my watch.’
Even though the boy nodded, he still looked worried.
Hold on. Why was a kid, this young, Finn’s informant?
Especially when he barely looked old enough to drive, let alone be dragged into a backdoor op for the Stock Squad. Sure, teens gave statements all the time—but this wasn’t a witness. This was a source. And Finn was treating him like a seasoned CI.
Finn shifted in his seat, effectively blocking her view. ‘Look, I’ve told Lydia that if she needs an out, or if she’s worried about anything, she can come to my place or the station. I mean it. Lydia knows this already.’
Brodie’s shoulders eased a fraction, as he took a deep breath.
‘You don’t need to do this, Brodie. I won’t risk you or Lydia. That was the deal.’ She could tell from his voice that Finn didn’t just say that to cover his arse because Taryn was in the car, he meant it.
Who was this man?
Not the prick she’d been sparring with since the day she’d landed, but someone who also had a backbone and was full of quiet loyalty. It was unexpected.
‘Yeah, I know. But what they’re doing is wrong.
’ Brodie’s spine straightened as if filling with courage as he leaned in closer, so much surer of himself.
‘But the reason I called you is that I’d just overheard Red talking on the phone about the trucks.
SW trucks. He mentioned Billycan Corner. You know it?’
SW—SW Rural Contracting? She squeezed the file Finn had slapped on her desk, as her mind rushed to fill in the blanks on this conversation.
Finn gave a single nod. ‘Yeah. I know it.’
‘They’ve got a truck coming in. Early hours, I reckon. To meet the train.’ Brodie tapped the side of his temple. ‘I know their pattern now.’
‘What’s that?’
‘They come in on the rush, when the last trucks race to get loaded to meet the train.’
‘Hoping you’ll be too busy to notice the switch.’
‘Yeah… It’s that or early dawn, hoping we’re too wrecked from pulling an all-nighter unloading and feeding cattle, because we all know the train’s deadline and it waits for no man on Train Day.’ The kid jerked his chin back over his shoulder.
Taryn twisted in her seat. Train Day.
She’d heard that somehow Train Day made this sleepy outback town come alive. Billy, from the pub, had warned her when he’d escorted her across the road for breakfast at the food van: ‘Hope you’re not expecting any sleep the next two nights, luv. It’s Train Day tomorrow.’
Now she understood why…
A line of road trains—massive, rumbling beasts—snaked around the edge of the yards, stretching along the highway like a steel-backed convoy. Some were parked, others were crawling in, with stock mewling from inside the double-decked trailers, as dust curled through the air like smoke.
But it wasn’t just trucks and cattle.
There were horses tied up under lean-tos, along with cattle dogs ready to muster, as drovers passed around battered mugs, and kids darted between the rails under their watchful eyes.
Retired stockmen sat along the fence line in wheelchairs or walkers, wearing their old stockman hats and sun-faded shirts, watching the action like it was a footy final. Some shouted advice. Others just smiled and nodded at an old mate or two.
Much younger men and women moved through the yards, some nervous, while they were being guided by quiet murmurs and sharp whistles from the older hands.
Altogether, there was a rhythm to it—even if it was rough, dust-choked, and loud, it still held an unspoken elegance to it, like a song every person here knew by heart.
Taryn had never expected this. Not the scale. Or the chaos.
Most of all, not the heart.
It was as if the town itself was breathing, and the lungs of it were right here, in these stockyards on Train Day.
Now she understood why they defended it so fiercely. Why Finn was fighting so hard. And why a kid like Brodie would risk himself to protect it.
She just wasn’t sure who they were defending it from.
‘They’ll be flat out until midnight,’ Brodie told Finn. ‘I’ll be up all night, for sure.’
She glanced at Brodie—so young, so tired, like he’d already lived three lives.
Then her gaze shifted to Finn, who hadn’t said a word.
But she could feel it now, the weight of what they were all about, and what they were trying to stop. Because in all this dust and movement and noise… no one would notice the switch of one single cow or twenty, where each beast easily came in at two grand a head.
Finn patted the kid’s shoulder not just like a mate, but more like a big brother. ‘You’ve done good, mate. Now keep your head down and call me if there’s any trouble. If you can’t reach me, hide at my place or go straight to the station. Got it.’
‘She’ll be right, mate.’ Brodie grinned so wide his teeth were a bright white against the dirt.
‘Just tell me you’ve got it, Brodie. Or you’ll be giving me ulcers.’
‘Yeah, yeah. A man your age, that’s bound to happen.’ The boy chuckled before slipping back into the stockyards like a ghost in dirt, dust and denim.
Taryn watched him go, as the questions built in her chest. ‘Who was—’
‘Not now.’ Finn shot off a text to his team, catching the words: ...timeline moved forward. We’re a go. He then tossed his phone on the dash, shifted gears and steered them back onto the road.
There wasn’t any anger in his voice. But something in the way he gripped the steering wheel told her he wasn’t shutting her out—he was holding himself in. He was worried for the boy, and this other woman, Lydia.
Taryn sat back, her pulse thudding annoyingly out of sync, like a warning she should’ve listened to.
But she ignored it, as she’d just seen something she wasn’t meant to—a glimpse of who the real Finn Wilde was behind the scowl.
And that, somehow, made detaching herself from this case so much harder.