But would she see it?
So, he drove and waited.Hating how Taryn’s opinion mattered.Because if she didn’t see something in it, if she thought it was useless, then maybe he’d just spent the last two years chasing ghosts.
Taryn flicked through the last few pages of the bulky file.‘You’ve mapped out a field manual of every flaw in the livestock industry’s supply chain—from farm gate to freight terminal.’She then held up a crumpled napkin, covered in Finn’s rough scrawl.‘Even if some of it’s written on pub napkins.’
Finn grunted.‘Was the only thing I had on hand.’
She shook her head with the faintest curve on her lips.Just enough to show she wasn’t laughing at him, but more as an acceptance of his methods.
Then her expression shifted as she slowly flipped the paperwork back to the beginning again, then smoothed a hand over the coffee-stained, dog-eared cover.
‘You didn’t just find the cracks,’ she said.‘You saw where the system fails.Where oversight becomes an opportunity for the wrong people.’She paused, with only the engine humming to fill the silence.‘What matters, Finn, is that you saw what no one else was willing to face.That it was broken.And more importantly,whythat matters.’
It was the first time anyone had said it like that.How she had seen it, not as a list of failures, but as something that mattered.And coming from the woman sent to shut him down—that meant more than he cared to admit.
Sixteen
Taryn stared down at the Gaps File.A file with no colour-coded tabs or index.Just page after page of rough notes, brand sketches, names half-scribbled in the margins, and arrows looping between export laws and real-world logistics, like Finn had been trying to map chaos itself.
And somehow, it made sense.
This wasn’t just data.It was insight full of uncomfortable truths.Collected by someone who understood the land, who listened to the people, and gave a damn—all in brutal black ink.
She flicked through pages of hand-drawn maps of interstate stockyards, trucking routes, rail hubs.Dates.Times.Company names.Stock route patterns.Everything from feedstock to fencing wire.Nationwide.
She gave him a side glance.Silently driving, with that jaw set like he’d rather chew gravel than ask if she understood what he’d handed her.
He didn’t ask her questions, as if he knew she was still sorting through the colossal mess of fragments, trying to force them into a timeline that made logical sense.
She wanted answers, and he’d delivered—just not how she’d expected it.
What she’d give for a whiteboard, a stack of markers and a jug of coffee, with a big do-not-disturb sign on the office door.Given her current transit status of red dirt and a sunset stretching across the sky, give her a patch of flat ground and a few decent rocks, just enough to pin the puzzle into place would be a start.
She glanced over.‘You logged all this by yourself?’
Finn’s eyes didn’t leave the road.‘Didn’t have much of a team back then.Amara—'
‘The Tiny Titan,’ Taryn muttered.
Finn paused.‘Hmph…’ He even gave a slight nod.‘Yeah.I can see her running the show one day.Romy’s brilliant with her drones and camerawork, perfect for surveillance, and she’s learning comms.Craig and Stone have their individual skills that are a big help, while avoiding paperwork like the plague.’
She huffed.Typical.
‘Porter helps when he can.He knows all the backroads better than most, and I fully trust him to handle himself… He’s not on the books—but I’ve asked.Reckons he likes doing his Territory patrols, as a revhead, but he still shows up as part of the team in all the ways that matter.And Izzy, she’s our legal counsel when I need it, of the best kind.’
‘I imagine she would be.’But together, his team of misfits, with their unique blend of qualifications, had worked wonders on the many cases they’d had, so far.The official files told her a story, the paint-by-numbers kind she’d read a thousand times in every other crime report.But what she held in her hands now?She’d never fully understood the full weight of their work—until now.
As the tyres hummed, her side mirror caught the thick plume of red dust behind them, curling in the wind like ghouls over a graveyard, trying to rebury the secrets of the outback.And how the landscape stretched on, sunburnt and blistered from baking under that sun for a millennium.
Yet even in its harshness, there was a wild beauty to it all…
She sighed at the distance, where the land rose in folds and rolled like waves.A land dotted with pale ghost gums, that arched like dancers frozen in mid-twirl, their white trunks such a stark contrast against the ochre dust.Spinifex clustered like messy curls, catching specks of gold in the sunlight.While termite mounds stood tall and defiant, like something ancient guarding secrets she hadn’t yet earned the right to know.
Here, the road unravelled like a red ribbon, its heat shimmer dancing towards a horizon they always seemed to be chasing.And above them, that colossally big sky that was so impossibly beautiful, it felt like the ocean had tipped the world on its head.
Altogether, it was like driving through a painting that hadn’t quite dried yet.With its colours too loud, seeping into everything like it owned the horizon and everything in between.
She hadn’t expected to feel so drawn to the dust and harsh sunshine, as if daring her to look deeper.To see what lay beneath the legends, the stories, and the whispers taunting her to find her own path.
