Chapter 30
Thirty
Finn sat on a low stool in his living room, with hands smeared with oil as he worked on the vintage Harley frame spread out before him. It was a stripped-down rebuild and something to keep his hands busy when his head wouldn’t shut up.
The stereo played an old Springsteen track, the vinyl crackling like campfire wood. The needle skipped. But he didn’t fix it.
Taryn hadn’t called. Not that she was supposed to. And not that he could have called her if he wanted to.
But still…
One month and only a couple of short text messages.
And, yeah, he missed her.
Didn’t mean anything. When it should have meant nothing. Come on, it was only three days after weeks of bickering with each other.
It just meant the house was quieter. The beer went untouched. And the shadows didn’t talk back.
He reached for a wrench, twisted it down, listening to the click of steel on steel. The bike didn’t complain. Unlike the paperwork piling up in his inbox back in the Batcave.
The quarry had stayed quiet with the one-month shutdown, and the illegal surveillance still ongoing. Stone had even bought extra cameras for Romy to continue filming her documentary.
There’d been three smaller busts: branded calves moved on false tags. One rogue contractor in Katherine skimming the sales. And another stock agent trying to retire early by accepting kickbacks for allowing a lesser grade of stock to pass through.
But the big one? The operation behind the operation?
That was hibernating like a grizzly bear, waiting for spring to come before that beast started stealing stock again. Only this time, his team was ready to pounce.
Finn wiped his hands on an old rag and stood, stretching his back. He reached for a soda from the fridge and was halfway to cracking the can open when he heard an engine. Too fast, and unfamiliar.
He dumped the can on the kitchen bench, grabbed the shotgun from behind the fridge, and slipped into his boots by the back door.
He took the long way round, cutting behind the water tank, hugging the shadows, with his eyes locked on the erratic swing of headlights cutting across his front yard.
Sliding on the gravel it was enough to spot the mismatched tail-light.
It was Red’s ute.
Grady Red Galloway, the elusive Stock Agent he’d been chasing for a year. It had taken over eight months just to put a face to the title, that was linked to three deaths and millions of dollars in stolen livestock.
So why the hell would that red-bearded bastard be barrelling onto Finn’s property in the dark?
Through the long grass, he held his shotgun raised and ready. If Red was stupid enough to come here, he’d get a very different kind of welcome.
‘Finn!’ It was Brodie.
Finn lowered his shotgun as he stepped into the light. ‘What’s wrong?’
Brodie turned.
Finn stopped cold.
The kid was covered in blood. Limping, with his left arm hanging uselessly at his side, the shoulder lower than it should be as if dislocated, with blood dripping from his fingertips.
‘Help!’ Brodie gasped, a fragile kid with chest heaving, and eyes wide with terror, stumbled towards him. ‘It’s Lydia—she’s dying!’
Through the open driver’s door he spotted a body slumped on the passenger side.
Finn cut across the bonnet, his boots kicking up gravel. Blood slicked the door handle, his grip slipping as he opened the door.
The smell hit first.
Blood and diesel, with the tick of the engine the only sound.
Lydia was half-sprawled across the passenger seat. Blood soaked her shirt, matted in her hair, and pooled into the footwell. It was too much blood.
Her chest barely rose, with shallow, stuttering gasps, like each one might be her last.
Finn checked her pulse. ‘Brodie. Open the back of the troopy. Now.’
Finn slid an arm under Lydia’s legs and lifted her off the seat. She was limp as if boneless.
‘Clear out the ropes, unroll that spare swag in the back for me to lay Lydia down,’ he barked out to Brodie. ‘Then grab the towels off the line. We need to slow down the bleeding.’
Brodie limped into motion, wrenching open the troopy’s rear door with his good arm. He half-fell into the back, dragging the ropes aside and unrolling the mattress, to limp away for the threadbare towels waving from the verandah.
Finn laid Lydia down in the back. ‘Hang in there, Lydia. It’s going to be okay.’
She let out a small, pitiful sound like a whimper that didn’t reach her throat.
Brodie returned, clutching a bundle of old towels. ‘Here, Finn.’ The wince on his face gave him away. His left arm hung low, while more blood trickled steadily from a gash at his temple. The kid was barely on his feet, but he was still trying.
Finn didn’t waste time in the race against the clock as each pump of Lydia’s heartbeat was slowing down.
‘Get in. Keep pressure here.’ He guided Brodie’s trembling hand over the worst of Lydia’s wounds, just below her ribs that had to be broken, with signs of internal bleeding. ‘Don’t let go, you hear me? You let go, she bleeds out.’
Brodie’s eyes widened as tears and sweat streaked through the dirt and blood covering his face.
Finn ripped another towel into strips and wrapped a strip tight around Brodie’s head to stem the bleeding from the deep gash. He then fashioned a makeshift sling for that wrecked arm.
The kid cried out, biting down hard on the pain as Finn secured his arm.
‘I’m so sorry, Finn. It—’
‘Mate, tell me on the way. Just get in, hold onto her tightly, and both of you stay with me.’ He slammed the back door shut, leapt into the driver’s seat, and gunned the engine before peeling off in a cloud of red dust.
The troopy tore down the dirt road, gravel spraying out from behind the tyres, as the engine howled through every gear.
Finn flicked on the radio sitting on his dashboard and barked into the mic. ‘This is Sergeant Wilde on route to Elsie Creek Hospital. Two patients—one critical. ETA ten minutes. Have a trauma team on standby. Over.’
Comms got the message.
He tossed the radio aside, then slapped the magnet-mounted LED light onto the roof—red and blue strobes bright enough to scatter kangaroos for miles.
The siren was already screaming under the dash, just a few short bursts to clear any other critters thinking about crossing the road, because this was an express ride to town.
He glanced in the rear-view mirror. ‘What the hell happened, Brodie? You should’ve gone to the hospital.’
‘I wanted to. I was going to—’
‘It was my idea.’ Lydia’s voice was barely more than a breath.
Finn almost missed it and turned off the siren. But he left the red and blue strobe lights flashing against the gum trees, painting twisted trunks in bursts of colour, casting long, jumping shadows across the dirt. On a deserted outback road, it looked like the bush itself was pulsing with alarm.
Again, he checked the mirror.
Lydia was staring up at the troopy ceiling, her mouth moving with effort. ‘I was giving Brodie a driving lesson.’
Brodie was barely sixteen and had yet to get his driver’s permit.
‘Where?’
‘Back road. Doing a fence check,’ answered Brodie. ‘That’s when we saw them loading cattle.’
‘Who?’
Brodie swallowed hard, glancing down at Lydia with tears in his old eyes.
It was Lydia who spoke. ‘Red and Two-bob Bob. But Red had told me earlier he was going to be away for a few days, last-minute job…’
Brodie jumped in, voice cracking. ‘Red saw us. He came after us. We tried to get away, but I’m not good at driving, I—’
‘RED RAMMED US!’ Lydia bellowed, using whatever energy she had to say it loud and clear.
‘Red’s ute hit the side of my car while trying to make us stop.
He hit us so hard we rolled into the gully.
’ She whimpered, the tears trickling down her cheeks to mix with the blood matted in her hair. ‘Brodie hit his head.’
‘I’m okay. I’m just worried about you.’ But even Brodie’s voice was cracking from the fear and the pain.
Finn’s hands gripped the wheel tighter. ‘Where?’ he snapped. ‘What road? What paddock?’
Brodie seemed somewhat dazed, the blood now seeping through the bandage on his head.
‘Don’t faint on me now, kid. Keep talking to me, Brodie. I need you both to stay awake, so talk to me. Where did this happen? Where did Red run you off the road?’
‘Um…’ The kid thumped his bad arm, to wake himself up. He shut his eyes to not scream, but when he opened them, they were clear.
The ballsy little bastard.
‘It was just this side of Boab’s Bend,’ Brodie said, his voice clear now. ‘Along the far southern paddock of Warraga Downs. We were checking their back border fence because Lydia said the owners were away on some last-minute holiday in Darwin.’
‘What was Red doing out there? And why would he chase you?’
‘Red was there,’ she said in between pants for breath, that Finn strained to hear her. ‘With Two-bob Bob. They had a—had a—’
‘A truck,’ butted in Brodie, hiding his pain as he spoke.
‘What kind of truck?’
‘A big one. Not a road train. But it was a livestock truck. Dusty green, canvas tarp over the back. They’d already corralled the cattle and were ready to load. The fence was cut, too. And they were on the wrong side of the fence, Finn,’ pleaded Brodie. ‘They were stealing cattle. Plain as day.’
Finn’s grip on the wheel went white-knuckled. The quarry. The freight. It was happening again.
Had Taryn released her report? Giving Bob and Red the go-ahead to start lifting stock again?
Or was it just an opportunistic theft based on dumb luck and an open gate while the owners were away?
‘How did you end up with Red’s ute?’ Finn asked.
‘I took it, after I hit him… I think I killed him,’ confessed Brodie, as his head heavily dropped to his chest.
‘What?’
‘Red pulled Lydia out of the car, and he was screaming at her. I had to drag myself out through the passenger side. I could hear Lydia’s screams and Red’s shouts, so I grabbed the first thing I could find. A stick. And I hit him.’
‘Did you see him get back up?’
Brodie shook his head. ‘I thought he was going to kill Lydia, Finn. I couldn’t let him hurt her. I had to do something.’
Aw, hell. ‘What was Red saying to you, Lydia?’
‘I told him I knew… That I was talking to the police and knew he was stealing livestock. I saw him stealing those cattle at Warraga Downs. Red-handed.’
The betrayal must have been the final straw for Red to lose it like that.
‘I thought Red was going to kill you, Lydia.’ The kid clung to the only person in the world who had ever loved him.
The woman who’d stood beside him in court and fought to get him out of his parent’s house.
She’d helped cover the cigarette burns on his arms and gave him a job, clothes, and a purpose while teaching him how to read and write.
And now she was bleeding out in the back of Finn’s troopy, and there was nothing poor Brodie or Finn could do to stop it.
Still, she lifted a shaking hand to cradle his cheek. Just like a mother would. ‘It’s okay,’ she murmured. ‘You did good, Brodie. Finn’s taking us to the hospital. He’ll look after you now.’
She turned her head slightly, catching Finn’s eye in the mirror. ‘It was self-defence, Finn. Brodie only did it to protect me.’
‘I’m sorry, Lydia,’ Brodie whispered. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. He was going to hurt you—’ His voice hitched. ‘I killed Red. I stole his ute. I should’ve—’
The kid looked like his universe was caving in.
And maybe it was.
‘You did the right thing.’ But Finn’s words felt hollow.
He saw it now.
This—all of this—was his fault.
Again, her eyes found his in the rear-view mirror, glassy and full of something deeper than pain. ‘You’ll watch over him, won’t you? No matter what happens next, you’ll stand by my boy?’
Finn couldn’t speak.
Brodie was looking at a manslaughter charge.
Car theft. And who knows what other charges would show once the dust had settled—but right now they were both in trouble.
Even though Lydia was bleeding out in the back of his troopy, she was still trying to protect the boy like she always did.
Trying to make Finn keep his word, as if making it her last handover.
It only made Finn press the accelerator harder, forcing the troopy to roar through the night. She was not dying in the back of his car.
Brodie sat beside her, trembling with adrenaline now, struggling to keep his hand pressed against her wound. How cruel was this world for a boy who’d finally found a life filled with hope, and now it was about to be snatched away from him.
‘Trust in Finn.’ Her voice was paper-thin. ‘You’re safe with him. Always were.’ Again, she glanced up at Finn.
Finn didn’t answer, he just nodded once and made that silent promise.
When the floodlights of Elsie Creek Hospital snapped into view.
Thank God.
By the main doors, the hospital staff stood with a stretcher, ready to move.
Finn braked hard, yanking the troopy to a stop just shy of the front doors, and jumped out. ‘We’ve got a critical bleed on the female, Lydia Galloway, aged 51. And a secondary concussion with a shoulder trauma on Brodie Cross, minor, 16 and under my care!’
He threw open the back doors.
The nurses and the doctor moved fast—three around Lydia, one helping Brodie.
As they lifted her onto the stretcher, Lydia reached out blindly with her fingers, grasping for Brodie.
She found his hand and gripped it tight as if scared of letting go. ‘You’re safe now, sweetheart. You’re no longer that boy anymore, but a man I’m so proud of. You’re a good man and don’t you ever forget that, no matter what happens.’
Brodie broke into full sobs as the nurses pulled him back.
But Finn was there, holding the kid upright as Lydia was wheeled inside, and the emergency doors closed behind her.