‘I need answers, too.’She walked around the desk, with fire in her eyes.‘I see what you’re doing.You’ve been ghosting me in some lame attempt to avoid my questions.’
He narrowed his eyes at her.‘You’re the one who came into this town swinging an axe, and now you’re surprised no one’s rolling out the welcome mat?’
‘I’m not here to be liked.I’m here to do my job.And now you’re expecting me to follow your lead?I’m not your lapdog, Sergeant.’She crossed her arms in defiance.‘If you want me to dig, you have to give me something first.’
‘Thisisme giving you something,’ he growled, tapping the file.‘Don’t mistake cooperation for consent to my intel, not when you’re walking through my team, making my people question me.’
‘Am I?Or have they always been questioning you?Maybe I’m just the one who’s game enough to say it out loud.’
Didn’t that hit like a fist to the guts.
‘So, what’s it gonna be?’Taryn stood toe to toe with him.‘Are you going to answer my questions, or keep on avoiding me?’
Careful what you wish for, sweetheart.
‘You want answers?Fine.Grab your workbag and get in the troopy.And no complaints.’He stormed down the corridor and back out into the heat before he changed his mind.
Sliding into the driver’s seat, slipping on the seatbelt, he had the engine idling as his fingers drummed with impatience on the steering wheel.He’d give her two minutes and then he’d leave.
But then Taryn walked out of the station, her bulky workbag over her shoulder, gripping that notebook like it held state secrets.He definitely wanted to read it now.
She might think this exhibition was all about giving her answers, but his plan was all about keeping his enemy closer, to find out why someone like her was out here.And that file he’d thrown at her was a test, not just of her skill for finding information either, but how good she was at reading between the lines.
But her expression caught him off guard, and how her jaw was set to war mode.This time, there was no skirt to hitch as she climbed inside.Just boots, jeans, and a takeaway coffee cup she held with her teeth, slamming the car door, to sit there pretty as could be.
She clicked on her seatbelt.‘Where are we going?’
Finn put the troopy in gear, and with his eyes on the horizon he said, ‘The Spinifex Highway.’
Fourteen
Inside the troopy, Taryn’s jaw was clenched so tight her molars ached, as she glared through the windscreen.
The silence between her and Finn was thick enough to bottle.She’d pushed him too far this time, but dammit, she was here for answers, and if Craig had already filled him in, then there was no point beating around the bush.It’s why she’d gotten on this hell ride.
She glanced around the interior of the rugged, boxy wagon that could easily seat eight adults.Rugged enough to go anywhere in this county, its immense interior space had plenty of room to hold a rolled swag, a battered gas cooker wedged between a jerry can and a tangled camp chair, with an esky tucked into the corner beside a duffel bag.It wasn’t tidy, but it was efficient and prepped to disappear at a moment’s notice.
He still didn’t look at her.Just shifted gears and took some back track, with tyres crunching over sunbaked gravel.A small church stood on the hill on one side, with the stockyards taking up space on the other, when his phone buzzed on the dash.
He glanced at it, and something in his posture changed.‘We’re taking a detour.I’ve got to meet someone.Keep your mouth shut.’
‘That’s charming.’
‘Wouldn’t take you if it wasn’t urgent,’ he muttered.‘Or I could sit you under a tree—’
‘Are you meeting an informant?’
He gave a grunt.‘Something like that.’
‘I get it.I’ll play nice.’Taking a stranger to meet an informant was an enormous risk, and she knew enough to not interfere.But it also cleared the air to form a truce.
The troopy veered off the main road, and down a narrow track, where the land became a complex sprawl of timber rails and iron gates.
It was the backdoor to the stockyards.
The heavy aroma of cattle manure, blended with rusted metal and diesel oil coming from an outgoing beastly road train, churning up the dry soil with a roar.
Red dust clung to everything.The sides of sheds that hoarded hay, and wooden posts sagging under the weight of time and too many seasons.
