Chapter 36
Thirty-six
Finn stood at the back of the room. Didn’t feel like he had the right to sit at the table—not anymore.
He’d done that before. Right at the very start of all this. Back when Drew had walked into prison wearing that suit and a smug smile, laying down a federal pardon in front of Finn, who’d been chained up like a dog.
Should’ve known it came with a price.
Nothing’s free, mate.
Especially when you give an ex-con a badge and a budget.
Taryn stood at the front now, where he used to stand. Badge clipped, files in hand. Facing his team, with the glow from the widescreen shining like a halo around her.
They were all there, Craig and Izzy, Romy and Stone, Amara and Porter, taking up space at the round table that held his maps, sipping coffee and spreading pastry crumbs. While Finn held up the back wall, not because they’d pushed him there, but because he didn’t feel he deserved a seat anymore.
‘Everlight Energy Solutions was the start of everything…’ Taryn was finally giving that PowerPoint presentation she’d once threatened him with as a joke, only now each dot point was just another nail sticking into his spine.
‘Everlight bought land, all strategically set in places that were high value areas for livestock across the country. They installed a few solar panels and cleverly collected federal grants. And as we all know, there was no energy being generated. It was a front that Izzy figured out.’ She nodded to Izzy seated at the table beside her husband, Cowboy Craig.
‘And it’s what got Meghan Forrester killed.
’ Taryn’s voice faltered for the first time as she announced, ‘Meghan was my cousin.’
A heavy quietness settled across the room on that revelation that Finn had never shared with the team.
Stone sat back, wiping his mouth, to stop speaking. Amara blinked, then gave a sympathetic look to Izzy and then to Taryn. Craig slid his arm around his wife’s shoulders and whispered something, but Izzy didn’t flinch. But her knuckles whitened around the coffee cup in her hands.
Finn saw it.
Saw the tight line of Izzy’s jaw, where the pain was buried deep, but not forgotten.
Meghan Forrester’s murder may have been solved in the eyes of the law. Renzo had done it. Izzy had seen it.
But Renzo had died before he could stand trial.
And Finn knew without a doubt just from Taryn’s stance, that she had worked out the connection—because that woman only came to this town to seek justice for her cousin.
And with no fanfare, Taryn announced, ‘The guy behind it all is the Federal Agricultural Commissioner, Andrew Bannon. He’s the man who wrote the grant applications and is the face behind Everlight Energy Solutions.’
It was like someone had pulled the plug on the entire room. Even the air felt stunned.
‘Big Daddy is the bad guy?’ Stone let out a low whistle.
Taryn nodded.
Craig just muttered, ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’
Finn knew it’d hit Amara the hardest. She’d backed this squad like gospel, believing in Drew, the job, the badge—him.
And now?
Amara sat frozen, eyes fixed on the table, her thoughts probably spiralling, trying to retrace every conversation she’d ever had with Drew.
All those so-called secret check-ins, all those quiet meetings she thought were routine.
When she finally told him—only after Taryn caught it—and told her to report it to the correct chain of command.
Only now, Finn could see the truth dawning in her eyes… Drew hadn’t been guiding her, he’d been recruiting Amara, to wedge her out from under Finn’s shadow without her even realising it.
Slowly, Amara turned to face Finn. Guilt and a raw, wordless apology filled her eyes, that gutted him more than anything Taryn had said.
Finn held her gaze from across the room and gave the smallest shake of his head—No. You didn’t do this.
And in that moment, he knew she understood.
he bad part was that Amara now knew the sting of being betrayed by someone you trusted.
Beside her, Porter squeezed her hand, while murmuring something only she could hear. Whatever it was, it worked. Her jaw loosened. Her shoulders came down. And for the first time since Taryn had dropped the bomb, Amara breathed.
Thank you, Porter.
‘How did you work that out?’ Izzy asked, shifting in her seat.
‘It started when I found a sealed juvenile file that linked Drew directly to Renzo,’ started Taryn. ‘Drew had buried Renzo’s charges when he was fifteen and brought him into a so-called rural mentor program.’
Aw hell no! Finn’s gut clenched at the word: Mentor.
‘From our research, we found Drew used Renzo to do his dirty work. Paid him for it, too. And I’ve got the bank trail to prove it.’ Taryn clicked through an assortment of images, early criminal photos of Renzo, the juvenile file, and Renzo’s bank account, one they didn’t know about—but Taryn did.
She clicked to another screen and up came another face they all knew.
‘Renzo’s co-offender in Izzy’s kidnapping, Dane DC Carter, was killed in Darwin prison last year while on remand. His killer?’
Finn had been hedging his bets it was Red who’d arranged that one.
‘Another one of Drew’s boys. Another juvenile from that same mentor program.’ Again, Taryn showed pictures of a prisoner, from a juvenile to an adult with files linked to Drew’s name.
‘The money?’ Izzy asked.
‘Was paid to his mother’s account, who is raising his son.’ And she showed bank accounts, and surveillance photos of a boy and his grandmother.
‘And Renzo?’ Izzy’s eyes widened as if watching a horror movie. ‘What about the car accident that killed Renzo?’
‘The driver, who smashed into that prisoner transport, killing Renzo and those two prison guards, was also part of Drew’s mentor program.
But this one,’ Taryn said, clicking to another set of images of a stranger, from his juvie record to a man.
‘He had terminal cancer. Drew gave his family a payout, claiming it was from some bogus insurance company. They had no idea. But it clearly demonstrates a pattern. With Renzo and Dane Carter’s deaths, they were just pawns in Drew’s game, and he likes to clear his board of any loose ends. ’
Dead men don’t talk, they all knew that. Finn especially.
Taryn then looked at the team. ‘Drew kept up the juvenile mentor program because it made the perfect recruitment pool, but he tailored it to their individual needs, as if preying on their weak spots. Playing the long game, better than any chess master to build his own crew on call. He’d pay their debts.
Buy their loyalty. And erase their records.
Only to call in those favours when he needed to. ’
The words hit Finn like a steel boot to the ribs, making his heart drop hard, turning it into something ugly.
He’d fought his way out of hell more than once—only to find the devil wore a badge, offering him a hangman’s rope and calling it a pardon.
And the worst part?
Finn wasn’t the first. But he also wasn’t just a pawn who’d helped Drew build that playing board—he’d become the poster boy for a federal con job.
Taryn clicked to the next slide. ‘When the Stock Squad shut down Everlight, Drew didn’t fight it, because he didn’t need it anymore.
He had the money. So he stopped, blocked, and deleted all connections to Everlight.
And then went about setting up a different kind of operation, doing the same thing that Finn suspected with Everlight, creating way stations, like they have at the quarry. ’
She circled a logo on the screen—Stokemir PC Inc. ‘This is an international export company. It’s new and looks clean on the surface. But that’s where all the funds stolen by Everlight Energy Solutions went.’
Izzy murmured. ‘All of it?’
‘Yep. It’s where Drew laundered the money to fund his entire operation—the planes, leases, transport, even bribes.’ Taryn clicked the remote again. A new slide appeared: company logos, email headers, wire transfers. There were so many of them, it was doing Finn’s head in.
‘But how did it all work?’ asked Romy.
‘Red did the scouting, targeting the bloodlines, looking for prime herds and exotic species that would fetch top dollar on the international markets. Red would also take Bob with him, as if recommending him as a contractor for these cattle stations. Bob told people he had a vet technician on call, and someone to manage the logistics.’
Which just confirmed Finn’s suspicions of how Red and Bob had tried to steal stock at Warraga Downs last night.
‘That tech guy,’ Taryn added, tapping the screen, ‘was Bastion. And the reason I know this is that the emails all go through one company M.T. Spiker Co. It’s registered to an empty shed just outside Dublin, South Australia—home to one of the country’s busiest saleyards, where stock rolls through by the thousands.
Making it the perfect place to hide in plain sight. ’
Taryn clicked to the next slide. ‘Officially, M.T. Spiker Co. sells fencing gear, vet supplies, stockfeed… real salt-of-the-earth feed store kind of vibe. Only the website’s full of stock photos.
The phone rings out to a cheerful robot, and the shed is so empty it echoes.
But the email? That’s definitely manned. ’
Izzy raised an eyebrow. ‘Let me guess—payments in split invoices, off-brand suppliers with government-sounding names? Like Everlight’s paperwork.’
‘Bingo. And half the ABNs link back to shell companies all headquartered at other strategic stock centres across the country.’ Taryn tapped on the table where his team sat.
‘Sounds like the livestock industry’s version of Monopoly,’ muttered Stone without any of the smart-arse humour he was known for.
‘Except the only thing that gets passed around is stolen genetic material and fake waybills.’