Chapter 23
Twenty-three
Sunlight was gone. Not faded—but gone. Swallowed by the escarpment and the creeping hush of the outback after dusk. The perfect cover for Finn and Amara as they moved low along the fence line, boots soft in the dirt, the air thick with the scents of diesel, dry grass, and cattle.
Stone’s chopper was using the shadows of the night sky to hide, but Romy’s drone would be close.
The clearing ahead revealed a small set of portable stockyards with galvanised panels, freshly welded. The area was so new the wet season rust or cobwebs hadn’t had a chance to settle in yet.
A water trough sat at one end, along with a fresh scatter of hay, its scent clinging to the breeze, where cattle shifted inside like calm shadows.
Finn stepped in close, careful not to startle them, and used his phone to take flash-less photos of their flanks—each marked with brands that he was pretty sure wouldn’t match the paperwork, let alone their ear tags.
He zoomed in, snapped another grainy shot. He wasn’t after quality like Romy’s imagery, he just needed the basic outline.
One brand he recognised, belonging to a station three hundred kilometres east. More interestingly, several wore the Tinderflats Station brand. He tapped his mic. ‘Amara. The cattle are tagged. Stolen stock confirmed. Got my images?’
‘Yes, sir. We have enough to bust them, if we deny the camera’s existence and just say it was a tip-off,’ she murmured from the shadows.
‘But we won’t. Not yet.’ Finn wasn’t here for small wins—he was after the one who signed the cheques. The ghost behind the cattle-dust curtain who never got their hands dirty.
Finn scanned the clearing beyond the trucks, and that’s when he saw it. Just past the fence line, a slight shimmer warped on the horizon where the last of the day’s heat rose finely over a flat, cleared airstrip.
On the other side, a demountable. A simple box with a door and a tin roof. No lights. But an antenna jutted from the flat roof.
This wasn’t some simple bush loading point. It was a depot that made up a big part of the supply chain. And with the Stock Squad setting up their stealth surveillance, it didn’t feel like he was breaking the rules to do it.
‘Camera check, Romy?’ Finn asked.
‘Umm…’ Romy meditated like some monk over the airwaves, where Finn was expecting some gong to go off. Fully aware Romy was still learning the radio lingo.
Stone’s voice came over faintly in the background. ‘Not a yoga class, hon, just say the thing and get off the air.’
‘Right. Yeah, sorry. Um—Camera one, live… Two, live. Three and four… standby—okay, now they’re live. Six to nine…’ Romy sighed with relief. ‘All cameras are operational.’
‘Copy that,’ Finn said. ‘Can you give a count of how many vehicles and work crews? Someone must be babysitting this livestock.’
Again, Romy’s voice came softly in the earpiece. ‘Two livestock trucks. Six trailers. One single-cab LandCruiser ute. Besides the livestock, and you lot, the thermals are picking up on someone inside that demountable.’
Finn signalled to Amara, and they split.
He took the larger truck, moving like a shadow across the clearing. Amara curved toward the second trailer, her silhouette vanishing behind it.
Click.
The first tracker was set in place. He then peeled back the manifest folder tied to the frame and flipped through it.
A lot of it was blank. Or worse—deliberately vague.
He took a video of it from his phone. Then tapped his mic. ‘Truck one’s tagged. Manifest is dodgy.’
‘Same here,’ Amara whispered. ‘Generic descriptions. No brand IDs. Not even a receiving station listed. You want me to tag the ute?’
‘Do it. Then we pull out.’
‘Aw hell. Bossman?’ Stone’s voice crackled over the comms, tight with tension. ‘You’ve got a vehicle inbound. Moving fast. They just flicked on their headlights. They must’ve been running dark up the fence line. Bugger, I missed it.’
‘It’d be doing that to avoid detection,’ Finn muttered. ‘Pull back, Constable. Now.’
‘Too late,’ came Amara’s voice. ‘I’ve got a visual. Headlights inbound.’
Romy’s voice chimed in, quieter but urgent. ‘How the hell did we miss that? We’ve got eyes on everything—’
‘Not everything,’ Stone’s frustration bled through. ‘They used the ridgeline. But you’re right, I should’ve caught it.’ And normally, he would’ve. Stone could spot a camouflaged crocodile in a swamp without blinking. He’d stew on this one for a while.
Finn didn’t hand out praise, and he didn’t do mollycoddling or back pats, but if Taryn were here, she’d say something like: Even snipers blink, Stone.
He muttered, almost an echo of her, ‘It happens.’
Just enough for the team to take a breath without the fuss.
That woman was rubbing off on him.
But he shouldn’t even be thinking about her, not as he got low behind the trailer, to watch a dual-cab LandCruiser rolling in. With a set of the mismatched tail-lights, it was far too clean for a station vehicle.
The engine cut. The driver’s door opened.
It was Red. ‘Bob, you in?’ He pressed on the car’s horn to shatter the silence.
The demountable door swung open, spilling yellow light across the blackness as more spotlights lit up the scene. A second man, lean and fit, wearing a battered stockman’s hat, and a loose, long-sleeved stockman’s shirt, trotted down the steps in well-worn boots.
Bob.
He was younger than expected. Dirt under the nails, sliding a pack of rollies into the back pocket of his dusty jeans.
His eyes were sharp as he glanced over the yarded cattle as he strode casually across the compound.
But there was nothing casual about it at all, it was the look of a well-trained stockman who’d effortlessly read the shift in the herd just by the lean of the shadows.
Finn got down low and barely murmured over the mic, ‘Hold position. And listen in.’
Amara ghosted into the shadows of the rear tyre of the last trailer. And Stone was radio silent, no doubt leaning over Romy’s shoulder to watch from one of her many cameras.
Red’s voice barked in the night air. ‘You said the switch was clean. You said no delays.’
Bob shrugged, hooking his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans.
‘What do you want me to do? The truck is gone. The switch was made perfectly. Only a few minutes late, but it went down like clockwork. And we’ve got all those fresh beasts catching a snooze before we draft them.
Besides, didn’t you always say to be ready for losses? So, no biggie.’
‘It’s sloppy. And if this brings heat on me—’
‘Heat’s already on you, mate. They arrested Tooley. I warned you not to be near any changeovers with the drivers around.’
‘Dammit.’ Red dropped his head, his wide-brimmed hat casting shadows over his face, leaving only the long red bushman’s beard visible. ‘They gave him bail?’
‘Yes,’ Bob answered.
‘Did we?’ Amara murmured over the airwaves, watching from the shadows.
Finn confirmed. ‘To make Red panic.’ Bailing out Tooley hadn’t been kindness, it had been bait. A way to make Red show up hot, to forget his carefully curated cover as a respected stock agent, to hopefully spill like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
And Red was fuming now—pacing, swearing, showing his cards. Exactly what Finn wanted.
Red stepped in closer to Bob. ‘Does Tooley know this place?’
‘No,’ Bob said, steady. ‘Just you and me, mate. We’re the only locals who do. And the only others are Clancy and the pilot who fly in, load, and leave fast coz Clancy hates the heat. Come on, it’s why we chose the quarry in the first place. No one comes out here.’
‘Next time, no mistakes. Or I’ll find someone who can follow instructions.’
‘You reckon you’ve got that kind of pull?’ Bob let out a chuckle. ‘You’re not running the show, mate. You’re just another hand in the mob, same as me.’
Red’s jaw clenched.
There it was. Red wasn’t the top dog. He was just another one on the leash, like the others, and didn’t like it. Finn hoped Romy got all that on her drone somewhere above them.
‘Here’s the paperwork. I want no mistakes, so check it now.’ Red tugged the paperwork free from his ute and headed across the clearing, still arguing with Bob. Their voices fading as they stepped inside the demountable with the door open.
Finn shifted fast.
He could barely make out their faint voices through the thin tin walls and what floated out through the open door.
‘Draft the cattle tomorrow,’ ordered Red. ‘Find another driver, someone clean. Then have the cryogenic canisters ready for the plane to do a quick land and go. And that’ll be it for a bit.’
There it was. Their exit plan. Cattle and canisters. Freight and flight. The fallback route in case things got ugly. All the points Finn needed to work on to cut them off.
Bob dropped the paperwork on a desk by the door, near a simple camp bed set-up. ‘Are you saying we’re shutting up shop?’
Red trotted back down the stairs. ‘They have our truck!’
‘Yeah, so?’ Bob followed him. ‘Tooley won’t say anything.’
‘Of course he will. That’s how he got bail. Finn Wilde would never have let Tooley walk unless it was bait.’ Red started pacing. One hand wiped over his thick red beard, as if he could wipe away the mess.
‘But Tooley doesn’t know this depot exists. He’s never been to the quarry, so we’re safe—’
‘But it’s still exposure!’ Red’s voice cracked across the yard like a whip, silencing the low cattle murmurs.
Bob didn’t flinch, but he took a wary step back.
With his eyes wild, chest heaving, mouth drawn tight, Red was unravelling, slamming his hand against the side of the ute. The sound rang out like gunfire in the stillness.
‘Easy now…’ Bob murmured, taking another step back as if dealing with a feral scrub bull.
‘Dammit!’ Red jabbed a finger toward the open yard.
‘Finn’s done this to me too many times now!
Only now he’s rattling the entire chain above me.
’ Red prowled in a tight circle, like a caged dog, hands on hips one second, tugging at his collar the next.
His thoughts must have been in such a violent storm that his body couldn’t contain them.
But then he stopped pacing. ‘It was never meant to get this big. It was meant to…’ Red trailed off, wiping down his beard as if to compose himself. ‘We were particular about what we took. Just skim off the top and no one would notice. But they’re noticing it now…’
Red started pacing again, batting at the bugs attracted to the spotlights that shone down upon them like some outback theatre, where Finn and Amara had ringside seats in the shadows, right alongside the cattle.
‘Now I’ve got my name on the paperwork that is linked to that truck.’ Red broke off, rubbing his forehead as if preparing for the mother of all migraines. ‘She doesn’t know. She can’t know…’
There it was. That raw edge of fear surfacing beneath Red’s fury. More worried about Lydia finding out what he had been doing than Finn catching him. Just as Taryn and Finn had explained to Lydia earlier, how that mix of shame and fear was a potent combination if left uncontrolled.
Red spun around again, his voice full of authority, as if fighting for self-control. ‘We move what we’ve got out of this yard. Then we shut it down.’
‘Another panic shutdown?’ Bob scoffed. ‘Aw, come on.’
‘Orders from above. That new fed’s heading back to Canberra soon. Then we’ve got a month, max, to wait it out.’
Finn scowled with heat.
Were they talking about Taryn?
‘Same as the banteng and horses, same as the crocs that the Stock Squad recovered,’ snapped out Red. ‘We lie low for a bit. Only this time we wait until that fed goes home and does up her report, and we get the all clear.’
‘Pfft, you’re just panicking.’ Bob’s laugh echoed into the night air.
Red spun around and took a step closer.
And another.
Stalking straight up to Bob to get right in his face. ‘You think this is a joke?’ Red’s voice was low and barely restrained. ‘You think I want to shut it down? Do you think I enjoy cleaning up after every stuff-up, every near miss, and every bloody delay?’
Bob held his ground—but his chin dipped as if a small retreat.
‘You laugh again, and I swear I’ll bury you in this quarry like you were nothing but dirt under my boots. You know what I’m capable of. You saw what I did to your cousin—and the dumb cops still haven’t figured that one out.’
Finn froze, as his mind rushed. Who was Bob’s cousin? And had Red just confessed to something like murder?
Then Red stepped back, his hands flexing like he wanted to hit something but didn’t.
Finn held his breath behind the truck. Now he saw it. Not just panic or shame, but the deadly kind of violence that filled prison cells.
But then a thought whispered effectively capturing Finn’s attention, enough to make his heart squeeze…
They didn’t just know Taryn was going back to Canberra—Red and his crew were counting on it!
Her presence, or exit, was now part of their plan. The excuse to pause their smuggling operation, just long enough for Taryn to report to Canberra on the job she’d been sent here to do—to assess the Stock Squad and decide in a month whether it stayed or shut down.
The same timeframe Red had just told Bob to stand down for.
No more Stock Squad. No more Finn.
The realisation hit like a fist to the ribs, leaving something hollow and sick in its place.
He’d been so focused on baiting Red, on making him crack by using Tooley as the tool, Finn hadn’t seen the bigger play where he himself had been used as the bait.
He’d been fighting against Taryn from the start, guarding the squad, while treating her like a threat. All while Red and his master just stood back as Finn bulldozed through everything, like they knew he would.
They’d expected him to ignore the Fed, to never answer her questions, to piss her off so completely that of course she’d file a report that would bury the Stock Squad for good. Which is exactly what they wanted.
Finn clenched his jaw, the taste of bile and shame thick in his throat.
They’d played him like a green recruit.
And now they had a month to vanish, while Finn stood in the wreckage, looking like the fool who had helped shut down his own squad.
Had Taryn known?
Or had they played her, too?
That thought hit harder than the rest.
The man who’d spent most of his time avoiding her questions, was now itching to ask her the one question that could change everything: Who sent you?