Chapter 17
Seventeen
Finn pulled up to the ridge, with the engine low. Among the open scrub, with a skyline smeared with a deep burnt gold, as the Spinifex Highway stretched like a scar across the earth.
It wasn’t a real highway. Hell, it wasn’t even on any map.
But out here?
It was a wild vein of lawlessness that ran straight through the heart of the outback, which only the locals used. A simple dirt track, that was the road you took when you didn’t want questions asked.
It was the road to take when your truck was too heavy and your paperwork was too light, and the weighbridge too close for comfort. Or when you had one too many at the pub and needed to avoid the police, to get back to the station before sun-up.
First created by the cameleers as an outback supply route, the infamous Spinifex Highway was where things fell off the back of one truck and into the tray of another. Where cash changed hands without receipts, and a handshake sealed the kind of deal that never made it to a ledger.
It was a place where a circle of utes lit up bare-knuckle brawls between stockmen, drawing a crowd, while in the car park, there was a roaring trade of bootlegged gear like some outlaw outback bazaar.
And Finn had been watching it for days, with the Gaps File in his lap.
But today he no longer held the Gaps File, Taryn Hayes did. Gripping onto it like it was a newborn as she climbed out of his passenger seat.
She stared at his set-up—two chairs, an old gas cooker, the battered esky—and gave him a look like he’d just offered her a bed of nails.
‘You didn’t say we were camping,’ she said, dragging out her hefty workbag.
‘Can’t you see this is rural hospitality at its finest?’ He dusted off the chairs, ready to watch another sunset bleed out across the scrub while watching over that red dirt road below.
The plan was to listen for the hum of engines beneath the wind, with eyes scanning for dust plumes rising like smoke signals.
SW Contracting’s shipment was due to roll through soon—but from which station? And when?
He glanced at his watch. The team were due within the hour.
Then he turned his gaze to the land that stretched wide, free from the world of concrete boxes and artificial light. Just saltbush and shadows that grew, as the scent of dry spinifex cooled beneath a sky so wide it felt like the heavens were just in reach.
He still loved that. The taste of freedom. The silence. With the sun on his skin and no one else around—and knew how rare it was.
But now Taryn was here, gripping onto the Gaps File like she owned it, which meant she was about to do his head in with questions.
Surprisingly, she didn’t speak. Just dropped into the nearest camp chair and dragged over his esky like she was setting up shop. No thanks. No pleasantries. Just a whack of the file on the esky lid and the soft flick of paper, along with the scratch of her pen.
He fiddled at the back of his troopy, waiting, hoping her questions were smart enough to create new leads.
Izzy said Taryn had the kind of mind that could see things others missed, like a crocodile overlooked in floodwaters. Smart. Patient. With the kind of bite that didn’t need to show their teeth until it was far too late.
But trusting her? That was a whole other thing.
Taryn flipped through the pages and started sorting the paperwork into neat piles across the esky lid like it was a table. Then she found a few flat rocks, a bare patch of dirt and laid out the rest like she was building a damn war map.
Finn wasn’t sure whether to feel violated or impressed. It was like inviting someone over for a visit, only for the woman to suddenly decide to move in and rearrange his bloody house.
‘Are you planning to interrogate me, or just rearrange my notes?’ He was hoping for something out of her, not this silence.
She flicked him a look over the top of a printout. ‘That depends. Are you planning on answering anything? Or are you going to just glare at me like I’ve touched your laundry?’
Finn huffed. ‘You’re the one nesting.’
‘Organisation is not nesting. And this isn’t a filing system, it’s a scrapbook of conflicting witness statements, with chicken scratches in the margins, and pick-the-date roulette.
You’ve got three versions of the same report, with six different times.
If this goes to court, it’ll burn on contact, or make my stapler run screaming into witness protection. ’
He watched her for a moment longer. Sharp eyes and steady hands with the kind of brain that didn’t need noise to function—just patterns.
Damn Izzy for being right. Again. Because Taryn held the power to shut him down. Not just the squad—but him.
Finn grabbed his billy. He needed to do something while Taryn continued to tear through the Gaps File, sorting papers into neat little piles held under more rocks.
He could offer to help or give her a tarp to lay over the dirt, but her focus told him to not interfere. So, instead, he lit his single-flame burner—an old tin thing that had seen more country than most blokes in the burbs.
Beside it, his dented thermos sat like an old soldier. He’d hurled it at a runaway thief once, outside a roadhouse, and cracked the bastard clean in the temple. Still kept it, even with the dent, because it’d hold heat for days.
The water hissed and steam curled up as he emptied the coffee grounds into the billy. The stuff was so strong it looked like floor shavings mixed with gunpowder, set to brew a round of bullets. They’d need it if they were going to pull an all-nighter.
Finn put the coffee down for her. He’d actually made someone a coffee. And that never happened. ‘You’re welcome, by the way,’ he muttered.
‘For what?’
‘The hill. The view. The coffee. The tactical genius system in my folder of—’
‘Sticky notes, highlighters and the odd roadhouse napkin or five, do not make a system.’ She took a sip.
Then peered inside her cup with a wince.
‘Sheesh! This coffee tastes like a sour pool of poor life choices.’ She gave him a sideways look.
‘What’d you brew this with? Floor shavings and a dash of vintage gunpowder?
You know, it should come with a warning label: Do not ingest if you ever want to sleep again. ’
‘Just drink it. Builds character.’
She grinned, with a sweet spark lighting up her eyes, as she took another sip, and put her cup down on the ground beside her chair. ‘But I will thank you for the hill.’
‘Huh?’
‘I know what a good stake-out spot looks like.’ She nodded at their view. ‘High ground, clear view, with fallback options and only two entry points. It’s almost charming.’
He grunted. ‘Charming. Right.’
She smirked. ‘What, you want praise? A round of applause? Wait, I can download something off the internet. Put it on a loop, to really boost morale.’
‘I wanted quiet.’
‘And yet, here we are.’ She took another sip of coffee, tucking a stray strand of hair behind one dainty ear, and leaned closer to the pile of paperwork now surrounding the esky.
But the way the sunset cast a fine shade of gold across her face, did wonders in highlighting her smooth skin.
Her sleeves were rolled up, with a pen gently held between her slender fingers, belonging to a woman with brains and the nerve to sit in his space like it was hers.
It should’ve ticked him off more.
But it didn’t.
Which wasn’t right.
‘You could’ve stayed in the office,’ he said finally. ‘No one forced you out here.’
She met his stare with steady eyes. ‘Says the man who’s been avoiding me for days to sneak off to solve the world’s problems with a deck chair and a billy can.’
‘It’s a camp chair,’ he muttered.
‘It’s a habit,’ she shot back. ‘You, playing the lone wolf all the time.’
He gave a huff as he dropped heavily into his own camp chair. ‘Are you always this bossy in other people’s camps?’
‘You always this territorial over your paperwork?’ The paperwork she was busily cross-referencing like she’d been doing it for years, as if his operation now belonged to her, pinning each pile with a rock for a paperweight.
He frowned over the lip of his cup. Her comebacks, her insistence on having the last word, were doing his head in.
‘You don’t play well with others, do you?’
‘I play just fine. I just don’t like being handled.’ He sipped his coffee. It was bitter, rough, but also too strong, too hot. Just like her.
‘Who said you were being handled? When I’m just reorganising your intelligence.’
He huffed again. Not a laugh. Not a growl. Just something caught between the two. ‘Do you always have to have the last word?’
‘Only when I’m right.’
They shared a smirk.
Damn.
What followed was the bliss of silence as they sipped their coffee, watching the last of the sun’s globe slip off the edge and bleed into the big blue to look like it had caught on fire.
The hum of cicadas picked up. A few crickets and other critters began their night song, as the breeze stirred across the open plains, cool enough to make the coffee worth it.
And still—he felt her beside him. Too close. But the thing is, she wasn’t just seeing his world, she was starting to understand it, too.
He cleared his throat. ‘So go on then. Ask your questions.’
She sighed, with her coffee mug balanced on her knee. ‘Alright… What aren’t you telling me, Finn?’
He held her gaze for a beat. The dying light had dipped low enough to throw something of a soft spotlight across her face. It’d be gorgeous if she didn’t look at him like a suspect.
‘You want answers? Start with the questions that don’t come from some auditor’s template.’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘Then give me the right ones.’
‘You think that’s how this works?’ He barked a humourless laugh. ‘You walk in, grab the files, sort through my stuff like you’ve got clearance to my head, and I’m just gonna hand it all over?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she snapped, putting her coffee mug down. ‘I’m not interested in your head. I’m interested in the truth.’