‘Shame makes people do stupid things.’He’d seen it before.In the prison yards, where men circled like well-behaved dogs, with their heads down and their rage tucked behind their teeth.Shame took the wheel, until fear took over to drive them somewhere they never thought they’d go.
‘And fear’s the worst of the lot,’ he hissed.‘It doesn’t stop until there’s no way back from the brink.Only the fall.’And Finn was gunning for Red’s arrest to ensure he’d fall.Families had been hurt, and people had died under Red’s command as the thieving Stock Agent.
Lydia stiffened her posture, the shade darkening the rings under her eyes.‘No.He’s not like that.He’s not.’
Denial.
Finn felt that old splinter under the skin.
The way his mother used to say everything’s fine, while the bruises faded, and the excuses stacked up.How his father sat on the porch cradling his whisky like silence was a virtue.Both parents, grown-ups, living with a lie.Pretending a man—or men—weren’t capable of something terrible, especially when you loved them.
Denial… It was just the devil dressed in a Sunday hat.
Taryn pushed the slip of paper closer to Lydia.‘Still, if Red crosses a line, even just with words, you call me.You don’t have to carry this alone.Not anymore.’
Lydia slipped the note into her pocket, then fiddled with the wedding ring on her finger as if contemplating her next move.The silence didn’t last long.‘He’s back on the road.Said he had to follow up on a missing trailer with Bob, or Rob, or something.’
Bob.The man with the burner phone.The lead from Tooley.
Finn stood.‘Time to meet up with Stone and Romy.House is yours, Fed.’
Taryn frowned at him.‘You haven’t checked in with them yet?’
‘Of course I have.’He frowned at her for butting in.As if he’d leave his team out on surveillance without checking on their welfare.‘Besides, Stone knows to call if it turns sideways.’They all did.That’s why he’d chosen them as his team because he didn’t need to babysit them to do the job they all loved.
‘I’ll walk Lydia out.’Taryn then passed him a brown paper bag.‘Your dinner.’She gave a small shrug.‘It’s okay, I’m used to eating alone.’
Like he was.
Strangely, he’d been looking forward to sharing a meal with her.Not because he was lonely, as he’d long made peace with solitude, but because he wanted to hear her thoughts over the Gaps File and this case.
He’d also wanted to simply sit across from her and share that space and not have to explain a damn thing.
But she’d gone back to the dining room, and the silence filled in behind her like it always did.And he had a job to do.
Twenty-two
Finn sat in the troopy with the driver’s door open, scoffing down the last of the dinner Taryn had brought, which tasted better than anything he’d cooked in months.Pity he didn’t get to share it with her.
Forking in another bite, he kept his eyes on the scrublands filled with burnt gold and growing shadows as the sun began to dip.
Porter had named this place Campdog’s Scratch.With a sandstone rise that stood just off the floodplain, it was flat enough for a chopper, and too remote for tourists or phone towers.Making it a decent meeting point that you’d only find if someone showed you how to get here.Perfect as that place between somewhere and nowhere, while he went over his plan, again…
While Taryn had snooped around his house earlier, Finn had let Tooley out on bail as bait.On the condition Tooley make a phone call and told Bob he’d been busted.Which he did, right in front of Finn.
And with Lydia showing up, telling him Red was on the road, it confirmed the plan was working.
The bonus was figuring out Red’s motivation, thanks to Taryn.It hadn’t been as straightforward as Finn had first thought.
Red wasn’t just a stock agent, when he came from a line of blokes who’d learned the trade the old way.Not in a classroom, but out in the yards, apprenticed under a man who’d learned the same way before him.It was a job passed down like a saddle or a name, where you earned your stripes through hard muster seasons, while forging long-term relationships.
Now all of that was being replaced by technology.Along with the rules that were constantly changing, as the industry kept shifting, that somewhere in that shuffle Red had lost his grip on the status he’d spent a lifetime earning.
So Red did what bitter men, overstuffed with pride, often did when the system no longer made room for them—he’d found a way to milk it.
The real kicker?
Finn, who’d come from that same world, saw the irony for what it was.Red, who’d regularly rage against progress in the pub like it was a personal insult, was now using it to steal from the industry he’d once protected.Doing it through genetic smuggling techniques to create a modern version of cattle theft.
