Alert the fun-police, Finn Wilde was grinning now.Gone was the usual grim set to his jaw, instead something wild and alive shifted the corners of his mouth.Helovedthis part, she could feel it in the way he drove.Controlled chaos, weaponised with loads of confidence.It was hot.
And… yeah.Shelovedit too.Not him.
No, pfft.
The rush.The maddening pace of running in blind behind a massive beast of metal, churning up the countryside.
What didthatsay about her?
Probably nothing good.
Except maybe… she’d just met her match in the ink-covered muscular male with a bad attitude, who was absolutely nothing like she’d wished for—yet somehow, was exactly what she needed.
Not that she would ever admit that to herself.
The truck was massive up close.A steel leviathan on wheels, belching heat and rolling thunder like drums of war, as blinding swirls of dust spiralled in its wake.Her eyes were glued to the tablet’s screen, just to see where they were going.
But Finn pushed the troopy, building speed until they burst through the thick wall of red dust—and finally, the back trailer came into view.That’s when he pulled out to overtake, the engine roaring as stones and grit kicked up like the troopy was stuck in a hailstorm.
‘Got a plan for this Sunday drive?’she called over the engine.
‘The driver will either ignore us… or he already knows.’Finn’s jaw flexed, his grip tightening on the wheel as the troopy, which didn’t even look like a cop car, tore through the dust with its headlights on.
But they were closing in on Billycan Corner.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’Taryn shot back, likeshewas in charge now.
‘Bugger it.’Finn slapped a blue light onto the roof.
‘He knows now,’ Taryn muttered, lips curling into a grin.
He flicked the siren on.
And just for a moment, he glanced at her, dust in his hair, adrenaline in his veins.Their eyes met.
‘Game on.’Finn then hit the radio.‘GO!’he barked out to his team.
The radio crackled, followed by a harsh male voice, loaded with panic.‘I’ve got company—cop lights at Billycan Corner.’
What made it worse was the truck revved louder as if changing into higher gears.
‘He’s not stopping.’
‘Romy?’Finn snapped out over the radio, ‘you jamming?’
‘The UHF band, but for only a kilometre,’ she said.‘They’ll think it’s a drop-out or a dead zone.But we can’t hold it long.’
The land around Billycan Corner opened up with sirens wailing.Amara hit the lights on the police wagon right at the intersection just as the road train bore down.
The shock enough for the truck to jerk hard—too fast.
Finn punched the accelerator, and the troopy launched forward.‘Porter, cut east!’
‘Already on it!’ The roar came as the Hellhound launched over the ridge with dirt flying, engine snarling, blue lights blazing from the roll bar sitting above his gun rack, looking like something out of a Mad Max fever dream.
Taryn blinked at the small tablet screen.That was a cop car?
Porter, in full NT Police uniform, was behind the wheel, calm as anything, like flanking a runaway road train on a bush highway was just another Tuesday patrol.
