Chapter 40
Forty
‘Andrew Bannon.’ Finn stepped in closer with his cuffs clenched so tight in his fist his knuckles had gone bone white. Now beyond angry, his every breath was an inner fight to not snap and dish out the punishment this bastard deserved.
And yet…
Just her presence. Taryn’s. Steady and silent beside him, was enough to calm him some.
Didn’t stop his voice from sounding loaded with lethal heat. ‘You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder and livestock fraud, illegally trafficking in biological specimens, obstruction of justice, fraud, and the unlawful use of Commonwealth funds.’
He caught Drew’s wrist, and locked on the first cuff. Cold and clean. In the front purely for transport. If he had his way, he’d cuff him in the back.
‘You do not have to say or do anything—’
‘Finn—’
‘Don’t.’
The second cuff snapped into place.
‘—but anything you say or do may be used as evidence. Do you understand?’
‘I gave you that badge,’ Drew sneered. ‘I gave you a second chance. You think they’ll listen to you over me?’
Finn cinched the cuffs tighter.
‘You’re making a terrible mistake.’ Drew looked at Taryn, desperate now. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing—’
‘Actually,’ she said, flipping her phone around to show him she was recording, ‘we know exactly what we’re doing. But do keep talking. It’s great for evidence.’
‘How?’ Drew barked, eyes flicking around the cabin. ‘How the hell did you get on this jet?’
Finn gave a grim smile. Not that he felt like smiling.
Between him and Taryn, they’d built the plan in the kind of shorthand where he’d start a thought, and she’d finish it, leaving the rest of the team scratching their heads.
But they understood each other enough to know this plan would work—even if he hadn’t had a second to wrap his mind around their other issue. Let alone talk in private.
Not when he didn’t do speeches.
So he nodded at Taryn, the lady who enjoyed having the last word, to lead this conversation.
‘You were expecting product, not people,’ Taryn said, with that wicked little grin of hers.
‘Clancy gave us just enough. And the pilot? He spilled the rest of the story. I told Finn he could pass as Clancy, with his build—which he did. Obviously.’ She rolled her eyes for a dramatic pause.
‘All I did was swap shirts and cap with the Darwin ground crew. Who, by the way, were all local Territory and Federal Police helping us load your precious cargo. And the man flying this jet?’ She pointed to the closed door of the cockpit.
‘Also, a Fed. And the one who flew the jet in from the quarry? That was our guy, Stone. You remember him? The Stock Squad’s part-time pilot and crocodile wrangler. The one who calls you Big Daddy.’
Drew’s eyes flicked from Taryn to the cockpit’s closed door, then back to Finn, as his mind tried to comprehend the impossible. ‘You don’t have a warrant for this jet.’
‘But we do. It was Finn who cracked the code on the naming pattern for your shell companies.’ She patted Finn’s shoulder like he was the hero of the day.
But he didn’t feel like a hero.
‘Prime stock,’ Finn growled with his brow low. The fury still simmered beneath the surface and pressed against his rib cage, looking for an escape.
But she did it again. That simple pat on his shoulder, just in time to tame the beast within.
Drew turned to Finn. ‘You worked it out… You always did like those word puzzles.’
Finn’s hand flexed at his side. ‘Yeah, they were finally good for something. I passed one down to this broken kid, only this morning at the hospital. Same age as I was when you gave me one of those books. Pretending that being a mentor meant something, when it was only a cover to recruit pawns.’
Drew’s mouth curled into a sneer. ‘You don’t have jurisdiction here. We’re already in international airspace.’
‘Oh, boy.’ Taryn shook her head, grinning like she was about to teach a toddler how magnets worked.
‘Isn’t your compass way off. And I thought men knew directions.
’ She nodded towards the small window. ‘We’re still in Australian airspace, piloted by Federal Police who’d make sure we were.
And we’re still technically on your property, which was legally listed on the arrest warrants—so says our legal consultant, Izzy, who you tried to have killed. ’
She then held up her phone again and leaned in closer to Drew. ‘Also, thanks for opening a box on camera. Already in the cloud.’ She smiled brightly up at her phone. ‘Now, smile for the selfie, Drew. My dad’s gonna love this one.’
Click.
Drew flinched at the camera flash.
‘Sit down, Drew.’ Finn remained gruff, even as he tried not to smirk.
‘I made you,’ Drew hissed with desperation, as he was shoved back into his seat. ‘I built this team.’
Finn leaned in. Clicked in the seatbelt, then tugged it real tight. His face was close enough for Drew to feel the heat behind the words. ‘Yeah… And then we rebuilt it—without you.’ He glared at the snake in a suit. ‘Get comfortable. We’re going home.’
Drew shifted in his seat. Buckled in, cuffed. Still smug. Still breathing. Both optional if Taryn left them alone for a second.
Finn dropped into the seat opposite the man who’d once handed him a pardon and a badge. He stared at Drew with everything he wanted to say, as the level of heated betrayal knotted behind his ribs. ‘You used me. You—’
‘Finn.’ Taryn’s voice, soft but firm, came from just behind Drew’s shoulder. ‘Careful… Less said, the better.’
She was right.
He exhaled heavily, and looked away.
She was already on her laptop, legs crossed like she was sitting in a cafe, and not a prisoner transport.
She winked when she caught him watching, then went back to work.
Finn ran a hand down his face. They hadn’t had a single moment. Not once since the quarry sting where the truth detonated between them. And now, there was still no room to breathe.
He was emotionally landlocked, trapped in a jet, cuffed to the past—while the future was growing in the seat behind Drew.
Already this flight home felt long.
Finn couldn’t sit. Not with Drew. Not this time.
He stood, leaning against the cabin’s bulkhead, arms crossed. Silently watching his prisoner.
He’d stood like this once before…
Back in prison, where he’d been the prisoner, staring down at Drew who’d laid out a pardon like bait.
Finn hadn’t sat then. Didn’t feel like he’d earned it.
Again, he’d stood in the Batcave, when Taryn’s PowerPoint presentation showed his betrayal. He couldn’t sit at the table, not with his own crew—not when he was the fool who’d brought Drew into their world.
But this was different.
Now he stood because Drew didn’t deserve to share that space. Because the man who had once loomed over him figuratively, now sat, literally cuffed and cornered.
Taryn sat behind Drew, laptop open, already working through the paperwork they’d need by touchdown.
Only then he’d realised her silence was deliberate.
With her phone balanced on the armrest beside her, it was still recording. Strategically placed just out of Drew’s line of sight.
Damn, she’s good.
Because she knew Finn didn’t do interrogation rooms.
Not after prison. Not after being the one cuffed, stared at and judged.
He preferred crime scenes, paddocks, the back of a ute, and places where he could breathe away from four brick walls, a door, and a ticking clock.
And she got that. Without the need to push or suggest a formal statement. She just set it up. Quietly. For him. Once he’d calmed down, of course.
Again, there was that shorthand they’d built across dust, road maps, and close calls.
But there was another question that needed to be asked. The one that twisted low in his guts: Was he good enough for her?
Finn honestly didn’t know if he deserved her, either.
Taryn had come back for justice, not for him, but for her family, who had bled because of what Drew had had done to her cousin, Meghan.
And now? With everything shifting beneath their boots: a baby, his team on trial, and his boss in handcuffs—what kind of future could he even promise Taryn, when he didn’t even know if he still had a job?
After a long stretch of silence, Finn spoke the one question that had never stopped circling… ‘Why?’
Drew sat back, staring past Finn, like it was all playing out on a screen only he could see.
‘I was the Federal Agricultural Commissioner. I read the reports. Took the calls. Saw the families sinking under the red tape. Being forced to complete mandatory carbon reports while they battle floods, drought, and fires—with the banks breathing down their necks setting crippling mortgage rates, and the creation of new taxes, while livestock is dying or drowning in paddocks. And they get no support. Only more paperwork and empty promises from the government that had been elected to help them.’
Drew sighed, all dramatic flair, and kept talking.
‘I’ve watched foreign investors gut this country.
They mine our minerals, take our resources, and walk away without paying a cent in taxes.
They’re not buying cattle or sheep stations to run stock.
They’re tearing up prime farmland for failed solar schemes and carbon offset credits.
And there are now more foreign investors who own our precious water resources than actual farmers, and most of it goes straight into fracking for overseas companies.
Prime grazing land is being sacrificed so the cities can keep their smart homes lit, while forgetting who the hell feeds them.
And our government? Doesn’t lift a finger—except to vote in another pay rise and now, backflip on a promise to block American beef imports.
Imports! Into the second-largest beef exporter on the damn planet.
And you want to paint me as the villain? ’
He didn’t say it in anger. Not even bitterness.
And that was the worst part—because every damn word of it was real. The country was being gutted while the government smiled for the cameras.