Chapter 31
Thirty-one
Finn sat in the chair by the window with his elbows resting on his knees, the silent radio clipped to his police vest. The curtain on the window was half drawn, giving him an outside slice of the night sky—deep, black, and wide as the land itself.
The last time he’d been in this room, it had been to see Bree. She’d just had a baby girl. Little Charlie Riggs, who had hair like her mother.
It was supposed to have been a good day. But all it’d done was remind him of everything he’d lost. Of Liam. A child he never got to watch grow into a man.
And now here he was again. Same hospital. Same ache in his chest. Different kid.
Finn’s fingers curled tight around the cup of coffee he couldn’t drink as he watched over Brodie just lying there, stitched up, bandaged, and drugged into silence, where he hoped the nightmares would never find him.
Yet Finn sat. And waited, watching over the boy.
Because once upon a time, someone had sat like this for him.
Back when the hours stretched longer than they should, between midnight and dawn—when the world got too quiet and the weight of everything got louder and he was a kid who’d run out of luck.
Wearing cuts and bruises that did little to hide his scars, you needed someone watching over you in times like that. He knew that.
Back then, it was Drew.
Not Commissioner Bannon. Just a cop named Constable Andrew Bannon, who didn’t know one end of a horse from the other, wearing city boots that got stuck in the mud.
He’d sat by Finn’s bed after that mustering accident, asking the dumbest questions, while spending half his downtime scribbling in one of those dog-eared, mail-order word puzzle books, like he was cracking codes instead of killing time.
And yet… he’d stayed. Watching over a kid in a hospital bed. More than once.
Finn had never said thank you to Drew. Not for the pardon.
Not for the second chance. Not for just being there when a sixteen-year-old boy didn’t have anyone else.
But for making a dumb deal that Finn would teach Drew how to spot the signs of a good steer in exchange for helping out the local troublemaker.
That stupid deal had saved his life.
And now?
Now he was watching over a kid the same age he’d been. A kid also with cigarette burns on his arms—just like the ones Finn had hidden beneath the complex ink that covered his arms and chest that hid his history. But it didn’t erase it.
From the moment they’d met, Finn had recognised the same haunted look in Brodie’s aged eyes. He got it.
Finn also knew that Brodie would wake up soon. And when he did, the kid would swing one of two ways—he would fall apart, or get angry.
Finn knew that fork in the road. Hell, he’d taken both paths, and still ended up in prison.
So what made Finn think he was the right man to keep this kid on the rails?
But he’d promised Lydia. And promises meant something to a man trying to outrun the wreckage of his own life.
Brodie needed someone. They’d knocked him out just to reset his shoulder, and now he had an IV in one arm, the other strapped tight in a sling.
The tough little bastard had driven with a dislocated shoulder. Bleeding. Scared out of his mind, just to get to Finn. And even then, not once had he complained. All he’d cared about was Lydia. Getting her help. Keeping her alive.
That took guts most grown men never had.
Sadly, he hadn’t said a word since.
But Finn hadn’t moved either and wasn’t planning on it. Not when the nurse checked Brodie’s vitals. Or when Marcus radioed in with updates from the crime scene at Boab’s Bend. He didn’t even move when the doctor finally came and told him Lydia was critical, but stable. For now.
Red had disappeared. Two-bob Bob as well. Which meant, at least, that Brodie hadn’t killed Red.
According to Amara and Porter, who were first onsite, the blood found at the crime scene had been a mess. Lydia’s ute had rolled a few times to stop, face down behind a tree in an old irrigation ditch.
As for the alleged stock theft?
Well, they’d made it look like it hadn’t happened. Yet, when Cowboy Craig showed up, he’d found the tracks back to where the fence had been neatly patched, with tyre tracks leading away from the gully, as a mob of cattle casually stood around chewing their cud, while watching the show.
But Finn knew better.
Come daylight, the brand checks would start. And the property owner, rushing back from Darwin, would know exactly what was missing. Because prime stock didn’t just wander off in the dark. Everyone knew that.
In the meantime, Marcus had set up roadblocks across the southern and northern highway corridor. While Craig and Porter were in the Hellhound checking back trails. They were casting the net wide—but it might not be wide enough.
Finn knew Bob had Red, who’d be crippled with guilt… or stuck with a blinding headache. Holed up somewhere close, licking his wounds, buying time, waiting to hear if Lydia survived.
And in this town?
News never stayed quiet for long.
Not when Finn had stormed into the hospital with Brodie and Lydia’s blood on his shirt, barking into his radio and phone like a one-man taskforce to get everyone on the job.
Half the other rooms were filled with patients, locals who’d peered out into the corridor to see what was going on. People who knew someone… who knew everyone. It wouldn’t take long, and word would fly across that invisible outback telegraph line, where Red would wait for word before his next move.
But where would the bastard go?
The roads to Katherine and Darwin were boxed in. The small bush hospital was the only one within cooee. And if Red’s wounds were bad enough, he would’ve been kicked out the front door in a drive-by of the hospital, because no one wanted to be associated with a stock thief in cattle country.
No, if Red needed patching up, Bob would take him somewhere quiet.
Hidden.
And there was only one place left that made sense…
The quarry.
The same bloody quarry they’d had under surveillance this past month. The one Stone and Romy swore hadn’t seen movement in days.
And the kicker?
Their trucks were still there. Tagged and being watched—thanks to the tracking units Amara and Finn had tucked behind wheel wells and under the chassis lines.
But the truck they’d used tonight? That one wasn’t even on their radar.
As to how the crime of stock theft happened. Hmm…
Lydia, being the neighbourly person, had said the owner was out of town, and she’d swing past the southern paddock to check the back fence during Brodie’s driving lesson.
And Red? He must have overheard Lydia on the phone about the owner being out of town—but not all of her plans. Or Red asked her what was new in town. Something so simple that maybe even Lydia hadn’t realised what she’d said.
It wasn’t hard to picture the rest of the story…
Bob the ringer, showing up with Red, handing out business cards under the banner of SW Rural Contracting. Asking if they needed any fencing or mustering done, to scope out the place under the guise of needing a gig.
Only this time, they didn’t find a new client to rip off later.
They’d found payday. An empty station, with a livestock truck sitting in the shed with the keys tucked behind the visor—like they always were.
Along with a fence line that backed straight onto a dirt road with cattle nosing through the gaps, reaching for the tall weeds on the roadside.
Easy pickings.
They just hadn’t expected Lydia to be out there with Brodie behind the wheel.
Finn rubbed a hand over his jaw. He wasn’t letting them go that easy.
No way in hell was he done with Red and Bob.
Who were still out there, starting from the wrong side of the highway.
Hours away from the quarry. But both fugitives were locals, they’d know how to cut through the scrub, using the dark to their advantage.
But prepping his team to storm the quarry in the dark?
Suicide.
Just the mere mention of the quarry over the radios could also blow their cover.
Finn and his team had told no one. They didn’t even have it on paper, because as Finn had explained to his team, their surveillance was illegal.
Inadmissible in court. And Izzy had warned them it was enough to have their entire case thrown out should they dare to make an arrest.
No, what Finn needed were his maps. The old kind.
The ones that showed every bore trail, river cut, cattle path and gully.
All the information he’d collected from Bree, Cowboy Craig, Stone, even Porter, and lots of other cattlemen, hunters, and stockmen who’d shared with Finn.
He could then see their escape plan, and all the other paths that’d lead to one place…
The quarry.
What he’d kill for his maps and—
Click.
The door that led to the corridor eased open with a whoosh.
Tanisha stood there with hair wrapped high in a satin scarf, wearing silky pyjamas covered in bright pink flamingos, holding a thermal coffee jug in one hand and his old canvas bag he kept in the office in the other.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘would you look at this place?’
Finn just stared at a lot of silky, loud, pink pyjamas. She was even wearing a matching pink coat, sprinkled with cat fur, and green cactus-shaped slippers peeking out from under the hem.
A far cry from the woman who usually wore the Territory’s navy-blue police uniform.
With one generous hip, Tanisha pushed the door closed and sashayed inside with all that silk whispering against silk, as her cactus slippers slapped softly against the lino.
She was the loudest and brightest thing in the quietest room.
‘Don’t start,’ she smirked, setting down the bag with a thud. ‘It was this or the matching unicorn set. But the glitter has gotten into the seams making it too itchy to wear to bed, although it’s great for cocktail hour.’
Her eyes landed on Brodie and softened. ‘Aw, poor baby. Curled up like a little kitten.’
She glanced at Finn again and held out the cup. ‘Amara called. Said you might need a coffee, and every map you had lying around in the Batcave.’ She nodded at the bag on the floor.
‘Thank you.’ Finn took the cup, the rich coffee aroma warming.
Tanisha raised her chin. ‘Now, mister. Marcus said you’ll have a plan, and I quote, to box those bastards in.’