Chapter 32
Thirty-two
Daylight was only a slither of soft mushroom pink stretching over the horizon as the jet touched down with a low hum. Dust kicked up in spirals across the simple airstrip, settling against the wire fence, before the jet had come to a stop.
Taryn greeted the dawn as she descended the jet’s stairs, only this time in her jeans and T-shirt, not a pencil skirt and suit.
Waiting at the bottom, arms crossed like a border guard who’d been cheated out of a sleep-in, stood Mickey in his grease-stained grey coveralls. Squinting at her like an aged Popeye, swatting at a fly with his matching grey hand towel.
‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered. ‘What is it with you friggin’ Feds, always gotta land before coffee hour?’
Taryn offered him a smile. ‘Morning, Mickey. So it’s common to have jets land at this airstrip, huh?’
‘Nah…’ He narrowed his eyes at the sleek high-powered jet.
‘The last time one of you lot landed in one of these things was maybe a year back?’ Mickey scratched behind his ear.
‘Round the same time that there Stock Squad made their first case, like it was official, or somethin’.
That Commissioner fella—yeah? The one Stone called Big Daddy something or other. Him. He came in one of these things.’
‘The Federal Agricultural Commissioner, Drew Bannon?’ She stood dead still.
‘Yeah, him. Flew in like he owned the place. Handin’ out police badges and slappin’ backs of the Stock Squad at the end of the tarmac, by the cop shop there. Only thing missin’ was a bunch of babies for him to kiss.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Helping his snooty assistant load boxes onto the jet.’
‘What boxes?’
‘Y’know?’
‘No.’
‘Look, lady, I’m not your tour guide here to share the gossip-what-not, either. What’s with the twenty questions?’
‘I need to know.’
‘Yeah, like I need to know how to get you gone so I can get goin’ with my day.’
‘I’ll buy you a beer, like I do for your brother, Billy.’
‘Well, then…’ He sniffed, wiping down the front of his grey coveralls as if wearing a tie.
‘What did those boxes look like?’
‘Y’know, simple brown ones. Same size as them nappy boxes we send up to the communities—only colder.’
‘Colder?’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘Like they’d been sittin’ next to an aircon all day. But they weren’t, which was odd, y’know.’
‘If it was a year ago, how come you remember them now?’
‘Coz they were labelled as conference packs for NT Tourism or some rubbish. All of ‘em had these little flags on the side that said they were brochures for some conference. How the heck they got out here, I dunno.’ Mickey gave a snort of disapproval. ‘If it’s one thing we don’t need is more flamin’ tourists makin’ a mess of everythin’. ’
‘So, you don’t like strangers.’
‘Tourists, holiday-makers, camera-clacking yahoos with their caravans blocking the roads and parking spaces.’
‘I’m not a tourist.’
‘Whatever. I didn’t want them near the place.
And that’s why I remember them boxes and that jet.
It was real sleek, with two normal commercial pilots.
Not military, like you’ve got there.’ Mickey squinted at the jet on the runway, the crew doing ground checks in military uniform, preparing to leave.
‘I believe you. But are you sure it was the Commissioner?’
‘I may be old, but I got a memory on me like an elephant—even for junk I don’t wanna remember.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I remember coz that bloke came off that jet wearing a full flamin’ suit. You know the whole jacket and tie thingy. Do you know how rare it is to see a necktie round ‘ere.’
‘I’d imagine so.’ It was a culture shock going from the land of boots, jeans and long-sleeved shirts and hats to a city full of men in suits with hands softer than hers.
‘I asked his assistant who the suit was, and he told me he was some commissioner for agriculture. Made sense he’d come out here. Thought it was election time meself, it’s the only time them pollies do a drive through, y’know.’
‘So, what else do you remember? About the boxes?’
‘Well… Then me and his snobby assistant—who couldn’t read right—he asked for the boxes.’
‘He’s an assistant to the Commissioner. I’m sure he could read.’
‘Nah, I meant he had trouble pronouncing the name.’ Mickey paused to scratch the back of his head. ‘Come to think of it, we both did.’
Her pulse skipped.
Plain boxes. Cold to the touch. Labelled with flags.
Taryn also had a copy of the Commissioner’s travel entries. All his dates and logs of every visit, every flight he’d ever made these past three years. And not once, anywhere, did it say that the Federal Agricultural Commissioner had ever physically visited Elsie Creek!
All his calendar meetings for the Stock Squad had been done by pre-booked video link. Even the ones he’d secretly held with Amara were noted.
‘Mickey, mate, do you think you’d have the paperwork somewhere?’
Mickey jutted out his ruddy jaw. ‘It’ll cost ya another beer to look at a man’s privates, y’know? I don’t show my books to just anyone. Specially an auditor, like you.’
From her workbag, she dragged out her badge to order him, but changed her mind, slipping her federal badge into the back pocket of her jeans instead.
Billy, Porter, and even Cowboy Craig had told her how best to handle the grouch.
As the common enemy she shared with Stone, the more you pushed someone like Mickey, the more likely he’d tell her to get nicked.
‘Tell you what, how about a flick through your folders, and a lift to the pub in that nifty buggy of yours that you use to tow planes around, and I’ll pay you a carton of beer for your troubles?
’ She’d seen Mickey zipping into town and back on it, even waving at her once on her way to work.
Big smiles, laughing at his joke of making her walk the long paddock the first time she’d arrived, just over six weeks ago.
‘You’re on.’ Mickey opened the door to his office, with a wall of folders along one side and a service counter running down the centre. He pulled a bulky binder from the shelf. ‘You flick through that lot, while I make sure that jet of yours has finished messin’ up my airstrip.’
‘Done.’ She dumped her bag on the floor inside Mickey’s office. ‘Hey, Mickey?’
‘What?’ He caught the door and scowled at her, either from the light, the need for glasses, her, or it was just his personality. She suspected it was the latter.
‘How come you don’t let Stone land his helicopter here? He does have a badge.’
Mickey gave a gruff chuckle. ‘Because if I did, I’d have every bloody muster chopper turning this airstrip into a dust bowl.
That’s why the publican, God, bought that paddock out the back of the pub.
Coz most of them station choppers only come into town for a grog run at the pub.
If it’s an emergency, they’ll head to the hospital. ’
He jabbed a finger toward the far end of the tarmac, where the red cross glowed brightly on the roof from the spotlights. Just like Strong Arm of the Law, the retro mural painted on the roof of the police station, lit up by the floodlights still blazing.
It was that early.
Taryn ducked back into Mickey’s office. The folder he’d pulled out, sat fat and overstuffed on the long counter, with a whopping big radio set up at the end, beside a half-drunk coffee and a wooden stool.
She flipped open the binder and began digging through handwritten logs and carbon copy dockets, trying to remember the exact timeline from her own notes.
The Rough Stock case…
That was it, their first case.
She dragged out her notebook and flicked back over her notes to the first interview and her finger paused on a diary scan of Amara’s notes: Morning tea with the Commissioner – buy new shirt for Stone!
She’d missed it.
But it had a date!
Flicking through Mickey’s folder again, there it was…
Same date. Same week.
A delivery docket in Mickey’s folder:
Delivered by Temp Roicks Pty Ltd.
Signed by SW.
Booked through Merc Topski Inc.
Well audit me sideways!
It was two names from her list of ghost companies.
Temp Roicks Pty Ltd held the quarry, where they’d set up holding yards with access to the airstrip. But according to the date on Mickey’s docket, they hadn’t officially secured the quarry land at that stage.
But the one booking flights in and out of the country through backwater airstrips was Merc Topski, a registered international livestock exporter.
Only now, she had a direct link between the two fake companies, with the Commissioner on board, passing through this small outback town.
Was Drew really that much of a bastard? Shaking hands with Finn and his team, congratulating them for their first win as the newly formed Stock Squad—while literally loading stolen livestock genetic material onto a flight right in front of them?
Arsehole.
The jet roared back to life, powering through its take-off, making the office windows shake.
Soon after, Mickey came back inside, grinning like a kid. ‘That’ll wake the dead.’
‘Mickey, have you still got the flight records from this date?’ She held up the folder.
He squinted at the page. ‘Yeah…’ He groaned as he bent down to rummage through the bottom cupboards.
Taryn snapped a photo of the docket, her lips pressing into a thin line to stop herself from laughing like a loon, or hopping on one leg with hope.
But, come on. This was it.
Proof.
It was worthy of that dorky dance. Because she had a stack of witnesses who could testify that Commissioner Andrew Bannon was in Elsie Creek, shaking hands with the Stock Squad, using a jet booked by an illegal company.
Taryn also had enough paperwork to recognise Drew’s assistant’s signature, who probably had no idea what his boss was up to.
It was so typical of a career bureaucrat like Drew to not get his hands dirty, letting other people collect parcels and pilfer livestock.
But she needed to play this right, and deliver all this news straight to the Stock Squad without tipping off a single soul.
Its why stealth had been paramount these past two days, using her two-day travel time as Taryn’s excuse to vanish off-grid from Canberra like a departmental ninja.
Instead, she drove straight to her parents house.
There, it’d been a two-day tag-team with her father at her side, as they rifled through files, shell companies, financial reports and falsified permits.
Honestly? It was the best daddy-daughter bonding time they’d had in years. Nothing said I love you Dad, like co-authoring a take-down of federal-level corruption over coffee, and some criminally good cookies, to build the bones of a genuine case.
And when her mum came home and spotted the manic gleam in both their eyes, she cracked open the emergency champagne and practically demanded a victory speech.
Taryn gave them one—just not the one she’d planned.
Mid-toast, mid-sobbing ugly cry, she blurted out: I’m pregnant.
Her mum froze mid-pour, corked the bottle, and set it aside without a word while her dad pulled her into a hug and handed her a box of tissues. Both offering to support her. Whatever she chose.
As a kid, moving all the time, she didn’t have close friends.
She’d only had her parents. When her mum offered nappy-changing duties and full coverage of school holidays, then her dad promised summer beach trips, awkwardly muttering something about building sandcastles and learning to surf, it had her blubbering about how scared she was, and all the stuff they never really got to do with her—all the things she’d secretly wished for as a kid but never said aloud.
But now, she got it.
They hadn’t been absent to be cruel. They were working their arses off, not just to provide her with a good education, but the best damn life lessons a kid could absorb. And honestly, what kid gets to see three presidents, a sultan or two, and the Queen before she’s had her braces removed?
They hadn’t just worked for their careers. They loved their jobs. And Taryn knew that, because she loved her job, too.
Well, at least, she used to…
After sitting back in Canberra this past month, buried in policy, while dodging office politics, water-cooler gossip, and second-guessing her life choices, it had her wondering.
But these last two days—working with her dad, building something real, getting justice for her family and for the Stock Squad, it reminded her that this work could make a difference.
She understood now what Finn was doing. What it cost him, and why he kept going. And she was going to do her best to help him, too.
She just didn’t quite know how to tell him about the other part yet. Because Hey Finn, quick sidebar—you knocked up the auditor and here’s my PowerPoint presentation probably wasn’t the most professional way to start a debrief.
Honestly, if she could write it on a sticky note and slap it to his troopy’s dash, then run, she would. Which might suit someone like Finn Wilde. The most emotionally repressed man north of Alice Springs. You know, classic romance vibes.
Which was wild, considering she first came to Elsie Creek with a five-step plan for dismantling the Stock Squad—and somehow ended up emotionally free-falling for one of its most damaged members.
She had a plan for confronting Finn about the job. She had bullet points, strategy, and a tight little speech in her audit folder.
But this other thing?
She was absolutely, terrifyingly, winging it.
And she hated winging it.
Taryn shook her head like she could physically rattle the feelings loose. She straightened her jacket, mentally filing her baby-daddy dilemma under panic later.
Because right now? Drew Bannon was on top of the pile, to finally give her cousin the justice she deserved.
And she had a plan.
Step one: grab a room at the pub. Dump her gear. Pay Mickey his beer—if you could buy beer this early in the morning.
Step two: grab coffee and carbs from the food van by the train station. A decaf for herself, and a double shot for Finn, because he liked to drink mud. And enough sausage rolls, savoury pastries and sprinkle-topped cakes to feed a hungry police station.
Step three: say hello to Cecil the water buffalo on her way to waltzing into the police station with a smile, some sugar, and a stack of files.
And the cutest stash of cat toys she’d ever laid eyes on.
Feathers, glitter, tiny plush cactuses that squeaked when you poked them, all for Tanisha’s felines.
Honestly, Taryn should have known she was pregnant the second she started going full Aunt of the Year over cat accessories. She’d practically cooed at a damn feather on a stick.
Hormones.
Yes, the struggle was real.
And so too was walking into the Batcave like it was any other day.
Because the one thing no one expected this morning was her.
What she didn’t expect?
Was how fast that plan was about to fall apart.