Chapter 16
Sixteen
Taryn stared down at the Gaps File. A file with no colour-coded tabs or index. Just page after page of rough notes, brand sketches, names half-scribbled in the margins, and arrows looping between export laws and real-world logistics, like Finn had been trying to map chaos itself.
And somehow, it made sense.
This wasn’t just data. It was insight full of uncomfortable truths. Collected by someone who understood the land, who listened to the people, and gave a damn—all in brutal black ink.
She flicked through pages of hand-drawn maps of interstate stockyards, trucking routes, rail hubs. Dates. Times. Company names. Stock route patterns. Everything from feedstock to fencing wire. Nationwide.
She gave him a side glance. Silently driving, with that jaw set like he’d rather chew gravel than ask if she understood what he’d handed her.
He didn’t ask her questions, as if he knew she was still sorting through the colossal mess of fragments, trying to force them into a timeline that made logical sense.
She wanted answers, and he’d delivered—just not how she’d expected it.
What she’d give for a whiteboard, a stack of markers and a jug of coffee, with a big do-not-disturb sign on the office door.
Given her current transit status of red dirt and a sunset stretching across the sky, give her a patch of flat ground and a few decent rocks, just enough to pin the puzzle into place would be a start.
She glanced over. ‘You logged all this by yourself?’
Finn’s eyes didn’t leave the road. ‘Didn’t have much of a team back then. Amara—'
‘The Tiny Titan,’ Taryn muttered.
Finn paused. ‘Hmph…’ He even gave a slight nod.
‘Yeah. I can see her running the show one day. Romy’s brilliant with her drones and camerawork, perfect for surveillance, and she’s learning comms. Craig and Stone have their individual skills that are a big help, while avoiding paperwork like the plague. ’
She huffed. Typical.
‘Porter helps when he can. He knows all the backroads better than most, and I fully trust him to handle himself… He’s not on the books—but I’ve asked.
Reckons he likes doing his Territory patrols, as a revhead, but he still shows up as part of the team in all the ways that matter.
And Izzy, she’s our legal counsel when I need it, of the best kind. ’
‘I imagine she would be.’ But together, his team of misfits, with their unique blend of qualifications, had worked wonders on the many cases they’d had, so far.
The official files told her a story, the paint-by-numbers kind she’d read a thousand times in every other crime report.
But what she held in her hands now? She’d never fully understood the full weight of their work—until now.
As the tyres hummed, her side mirror caught the thick plume of red dust behind them, curling in the wind like ghouls over a graveyard, trying to rebury the secrets of the outback. And how the landscape stretched on, sunburnt and blistered from baking under that sun for a millennium.
Yet even in its harshness, there was a wild beauty to it all…
She sighed at the distance, where the land rose in folds and rolled like waves.
A land dotted with pale ghost gums, that arched like dancers frozen in mid-twirl, their white trunks such a stark contrast against the ochre dust. Spinifex clustered like messy curls, catching specks of gold in the sunlight.
While termite mounds stood tall and defiant, like something ancient guarding secrets she hadn’t yet earned the right to know.
Here, the road unravelled like a red ribbon, its heat shimmer dancing towards a horizon they always seemed to be chasing. And above them, that colossally big sky that was so impossibly beautiful, it felt like the ocean had tipped the world on its head.
Altogether, it was like driving through a painting that hadn’t quite dried yet. With its colours too loud, seeping into everything like it owned the horizon and everything in between.
She hadn’t expected to feel so drawn to the dust and harsh sunshine, as if daring her to look deeper. To see what lay beneath the legends, the stories, and the whispers taunting her to find her own path.
And how loud that emptiness became when all you had were your own thoughts that were suddenly so clear to find the answers.
‘These patterns you found,’ she said, ‘you were hunting something.’
His hands tightened on the wheel. ‘I was hunting for answers. Didn’t realise how close I got until it was too late.’
‘How so?’
‘I thought I had time with Dane Carter, who’d first mentioned the Stock Agent. But they got to him first. Renzo admitted to Izzy that he worked for Everlight, but didn’t name names.’
‘Renzo was the one who murdered Meghan?’ Her cousin.
Saying it out loud, hearing it bounce off the Troopy’s windscreen, hit her differently.
But his pause... that only made it worse, like he knew how personal it was for her.
‘And?’ She pushed for more. She had to.
‘You already know Izzy saw it happen right in front of her.’ He gritted his teeth, steering them along a road of hazy heat.
Filled with so much tension it practically rolled across his heavily inked knuckles as he gripped the steering wheel.
‘Renzo could’ve killed Izzy, instead he kidnapped her to find out what she knew about Everlight. ’
‘Everlight is the key…’ But she still didn’t have that file copy from Izzy, and with Finn’s angry protectiveness over Izzy, this Gaps File might just be the compromise.
But if he kept this much paperwork…
Maybe she’d been asking the wrong person the right questions.
Turning back to the file, she dragged out her notebook, and started cross-referencing dates, the connections he hadn’t known he’d made, and the doors he’d unknowingly opened.
‘Let me get this straight… The Rough Stock case. Your team’s first case. That was all about genetics, DNA, sperm, embryos. Cryogenics. All done on prized rodeo stock. With two suspects dead. And on Everlight property.’
Finn nodded and kept driving in silence.
She then read on, digesting his notes, as the fragments from her interviews with his team helped fill in the puzzle.
‘Then, between all of the other jobs, a few months later you have the Cold Stock case. Stolen crocodiles, where you find the mystery vet-technician who took the DNA, sperm, and eggs from the Rough Stock case. Only, Bastion chose to die in fear of his life.’
Again, he nodded.
And she took more notes.
‘Then the Wild Stock case.’ With her notebook balanced against her belly, she flicked through his extensive file of notes, wishing she had a desk, or even a slab of wood, to work off.
But she pushed through, digging for information to form some sort of preliminary conclusion.
‘The deserted cattle station, Dixby Downs, was illegally being used as a way station?’
‘Stockmen call them spelling yards,’ Finn cut in. ‘Somewhere to rest the mob, swap ’em out, feed ’em up before they disappear again.’
‘So the perfect place to switch prime stock,’ she said. ‘And to collect and store genetic material—sperm, embryos, DNA—harvested from stolen polo and equestrian champions.’
‘That bust included wild buffalo and a mob of banteng that are on the endangered list,’ he piped in, resting his wrist on top of the steering wheel, somewhat relaxing, while she felt the strain deepen across her shoulders, the more she dug into the Gaps File.
It was certainly living up to its name, filling in the gaps of what she’d learned in conversation, interviews, and research.
‘The missing overseer—Seery, Sawyer Dixby—revealed the identity of the mysterious Stock Agent, as Red…’ She dug through the paperwork.
‘Grady Red Galloway. He’s married to Lydia, who manages the stockyards.’
‘And she’s your informant, along with young Brodie.’
He nodded.
Great, now she was getting somewhere. ‘According to your notes, Sawyer told you that someone else was behind it. Someone above Red?’
‘Has to be,’ Finn replied. ‘We thought SW Rural Contracting was Sawyer’s company. But Red’s still swapping out prime stock, and signing off on the paperwork, right beside SW.’
‘SW Rural Contracting.’ Taryn’s gaze sharpened.
‘Which is why you want me to look into this company?’ She gathered it all together and rested the file and her notebook on her lap.
‘You’re hoping it connects to Everlight?
’ The company that had her cousin murdered, Izzy kidnapped, and stole millions in government grants.
‘I know it does. I just don’t know how.’
She looked at the man who’d finally stopped avoiding her to share some answers. Only now they were both chasing the same company, just from different angles, and for different reasons. She might not fully trust him, but she did say, with clear conviction, ‘I believe you.’