Chapter 29 #2
Not when the whole damn house of cards was ready to fall.
So she squared her shoulders, tied her hair into a no-nonsense knot, and turned back to the files. Her personal crisis could wait, because she had work to do.
She scrolled through the draft report on her screen for the umpteenth time, only this time the numbers seemed sharper against her headache.
Performance metrics. Compliance charts. Live export impacts. And the model for the Northern Territory Federal Stock Squad that Finn had been trialling.
The one that shouldn’t have worked.
Only—it had.
Brilliantly.
In just under twelve months, while based out of Elsie Creek Police Station, the Stock Squad’s case load had recovered over $16.4 million in stolen livestock and rural assets.
If it were a business, the cost-to-recovery profit ratio would’ve sent shareholders into a frenzy.
Yet this wasn’t a business. This was a federal department.
And that was just part of the bigger picture…
Especially when some bureaucrat—who’d never left their air-conditioned office—had decided the Northern Territory Police could reduce their entire Stock Squad to, literally, a generic email address on a website.
That’s it.
No team. No boots on the ground. Just an inbox somewhere in Darwin, collecting dust.
Not that she blamed the cops out there. After having spent time inside the Elsie Creek police station, Taryn could see they were pulling off miracles on a shoestring budget.
These officers weren’t underperforming. They were badly under-resourced, while trying to do a job in a sprawling playing field, so unique to the Northern Territory, it was incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t live and breathe it.
Before the Stock Squad had set up camp in the Batcave, over 92% of reported stock thefts went nowhere. They became cold cases, scattered across the outback like cow-shaped tumbleweeds.
Now? They were closing nearly 70% of those cases, most within weeks, not years.
Stock theft reports across the Territory had jumped—not because livestock theft was suddenly trending, but because, for the first time in years, graziers were actually reporting thefts, because they believed someone might do something about it.
It was the kind of turnaround that made other departments twitchy. And made career bureaucrats whisper words like unsustainable and disruptive, like the nerdy kid in the playground whining because someone else figured out how to win their game.
The Northern Territory Government had ignored the problem for so long, they’d stopped even pretending to care. Which, considering how much the cattle industry propped up the Territory’s economy, was either criminally negligent or impressively stupid.
Possibly both.
But what she did know was that Finn cared. Deeply. And that care had shaped the squad’s focus into a design that was working.
And here was the kicker…
Even if she’d disliked him—bashing against his bullish, grumpy ass from day one—and even if they’d never kissed, or had never spent those three long, unforgettable days buried in files with shared silence and sizzling sex, she still would’ve come to the same conclusion, because the data didn’t lie.
The Stock Squad was working.
Taryn leaned back in her chair, with the hum from the office lights suddenly too sharp. Three days. That’s all it had been. Working side by side, sleeping within arm’s reach. No arguments, no tension. Just ease. Like it had always been that way.
She wasn’t ready to admit what that meant.
But her chest ached, like her heart already knew how much she missed him.
Focus, buttons.
Grinning to herself, she scrolled again, crosschecking the data. The NT had green ticks across the board. The other states had livestock losses. Big ones, too.
Her stomach tightened as town after town were listed in recently filed stock theft cases.
The names, however, rang a bell. Not because she’d worked them, but because she’d seen them on Finn’s wall, and in a file. They’d been scribbled on butcher’s paper, pinned beside freight routes and brand registers and even on the odd napkin or five.
They were straight from the Gaps File.
Had to be. Somehow?
She dug deeper through freight logs, ag reports, and obscure internal folders. Using the same instincts her father had taught her: go where no one else bothers to look.
And then she found it.
A memo. Buried in an archived state audit report on rural transport risk assessments. Nothing dramatic. Just a footnote, referencing a background source from a federal funding proposal: Operational_Gaps_v2_bby_final.docx.
That was Finn’s file. The very first draft version. Meant only as context.
Finn had handed it over to Drew eighteen months ago. And Drew had used it, by the book, in his submission, to get funding for the trial.
Taryn had followed that paper trail herself. Tracking every step of the funding process, just like her job demanded on how the squad got their money, how they spent it, and whether it stacked up.
And it had.
The right departments, the right memos, the right signatures.
To Drew and Finn’s credit, they’d followed the protocols perfectly.
There was no corruption. Just a desperate team trying to fix a broken system, which made this even more chilling.
Yet, someone else, somewhere along the long, bloated conga line of departments, policy units, funding panels, advisory boards, and god-knows-how-many think tanks that lacked actual brains, had taken Finn’s roughly written draft of the Gaps File and twisted it into a goddamn playbook for organised theft!
Her chest locked. Her throat burned. As all the pieces clicked into place.
They’d used it, but not to fix the system. Based purely on the list of current interstate police reports of stolen stock, they’d taken Finn’s file, and all his research, to exploit the system to escalate stock theft.
Her chest went still.
The nausea returned—not morning sickness this time, but the bitter, sharp edge of betrayal.
The data didn’t lie.
She looked up when a voice carried down the corridor, and through her open office doorway.
It wasn’t loud, but she’d heard it once in Elsie Creek police station. All smooth and polite while talking to Amara about Finn in the Batcave by video link.
Drew Bannon.
The Federal Agricultural Commissioner was in the building.
She sat higher and peered through the glass windows.
It was him. Drew. The one Stone called Big Daddy.
The Commissioner was a formidable figure, dressed in a tailored suit that fitted his tall frame perfectly. His sharp gaze assessed the surroundings with practised ease before glancing at his wristwatch while talking with her director, Russ Colgrave.
Why was Drew here?
She sat back, pressing two fingers to her temple. The lights felt brighter now.
Her boss walked in a minute later, oblivious to the storm still spinning behind her eyes.
‘Taryn. Your draft’s raised a few flags. It’s been suggested it implies a lack of oversight. Commissioner Bannon wasn’t exactly thrilled with the tone.’ Russ flicked through a few pages of the report itself.
‘The Federal Agricultural Commissioner read my preliminary report?’ Of course, Drew would show an interest. After all, he was the one who’d backed the Stock Squad’s creation to get the funding for this test case. On paper, he had every reason to watch the data roll in, waiting for proof it worked.
And now that she’d delivered exactly that, she had to ask, ‘Was there a problem?’
Russ dropped onto her couch, like he did every time he came into her office.
‘I think he was expecting something else. Is it because you only had six weeks? I know that’s a hell of a turnaround—not the usual three months.
Maybe something slipped? But then I thought, hey, I sent in a pit bull when a shih tzu would’ve done the trick. ’
‘Hold on…’ She sat higher in her chair. ‘Are you saying the Commissioner was the one who requested I be sent out there—knowing exactly what I do?’
She’d never have questioned it, not until Finn asked her to find out who’d sent her.
And now, after a month of chasing dead ends and clean paperwork, did she have her answer?
Russ gave a curt nod. ‘Drew thought the NT would fold, as they had no infrastructure to carry them, and figured you’d come back with a list of failures.’ He paused. ‘Instead, you’ve given him a blueprint for the squad’s permanency and expansion.’
Drew sent her to Elsie Creek? To tear down his own trial program, when it was working. That made no sense.
From his spot on the couch, Russ flipped through the folder.
‘I think it’s brilliant work, for what it’s worth.
What you’ve presented and what they’ve done up there?
Solid. Smart. Field-ready.’ He gave her a half-smile.
‘And that’s the reason why I keep saying you should take the promotion.
You’ve got the receipts to show for it—same as this Stock Squad does. And the numbers don’t lie.’
‘Um, thanks, but I’m still considering it.’ Taryn nodded slowly, as her mind ran at warp speed. What was the Commissioner doing, sending her in to shut down his beloved Stock Squad? And why?
O-oh…
‘Did you do any fishing while you were up there, in the Territory?’
‘No. Sorry.’ She glanced at her department-issued PC screen with its cursor blinking. Her fingers pushed the mouse to hover over the search bar, just beckoning her to type in those two words: Andrew Bannon.
But she knew better.
Drew had started his career as a cop to become a master government manipulator.
A public official with the power of a politician, but without the inconvenience of needing votes to keep his job.
Which meant if she typed his name on her office PC, there was a 99% chance it would trigger some internal flag—maybe even an automated alert that’d go straight to him.
That’s how Meghan got caught.
And why Izzy almost didn’t make it out alive.