The Windorah Job

By Katherine Franks

Beneath the Red Dust takes you to the remote outback of Australia where the heat is unforgiving, the people are tough and the land is brutal. Jenny Tyler grew up here, and returns after a decade to a country that, while familiar, is full of secrets. What is the mystery that an unknown organisation is trying to unearth? Who are the men who have protected the mystery for generations? And why does Jenny find herself in the middle of it all?

Jenny Tyler has not been back to the Australian Outback since her father died in what the Coroner called ‘a tragic accident’. Unable to face the large cattle station which had been her home for seventeen years, Jenny left the wide open spaces of her youth for the city. Following a short career in the military Jenny begins work in a firm run by an old friend of her fathers. Carrying out contracts all over Australia and the Pacific, Jenny is rarely in one place long enough to unpack her suitcase, let alone make a home.

In Part One of Beneath the Red Dust, ‘The Windorah Job’ takes Jenny back to a place she thought she had left behind, but as she soon discovers, it is still a part of her. Beneath the endless blue sky, she finds a peace that has been out of her reach in the busy city streets. She explores the red earth around Windorah, kept company only by the enveloping heat and predators hoping for the weak to show themselves.

Jenny has been hired to find a man who has been missing for two years and bring him to account for his actions. Grabbing a lift from the airport to the pub with the local bar manager, she realises she may have found him. But for Jenny Tyler the Windorah Job is not as straight forward as it first seems. What does Pete Crow, a wizened old local, know about why Jenny is there – and what lengths will he stop at to ensure his own secret is not discovered?

Stay tuned for 'The Cunnamulla Job', where Jenny will discover more about the hidden secrets buried deep beneath the red dust of the Australian Outback.

The Windorah Job is a novella, the first part of ‘Beneath the Red Dust’.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Feb 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781925219760

Katherine Franks

Katherine Franks is an author with an affinity for the Australian Outback and a passion for writing. She is well travelled, having lived in many cities and towns throughout Australia before moving to the Blue Mountains to raise her family.In the Outback Katherine found an array of exceptional people and communities living in a wild and beautiful landscape. She wants to bring that rugged beauty to the reader—wherever they are—while demonstrating the complexity of human nature with strong yet flawed characters.Katherine is a strong believer in such clichés as ‘Life is short’, ‘Life is not a draft’ and ‘Be the change you want to see’. Katherine works hard to live life as the adventure it is, while laying a strong foundation for the next generation.

Book preview

The Windorah Job

by

Katherine Franks

Part One of

Beneath the Red Dust

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO BOX 147

Hazelbrook NSW 2779

http://www.indiemosh.com.au/

Copyright 2015 © Katherine Franks

All rights reserved

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Chapter one

The window shade was open to endless red earth as the small plane began its turbulent descent. The landscape was spotted in places with what could be small trees, not quite big enough to make the landscape seem less alien. As the plane continued its swaying trip downward, trees gathered together in lines running north to south like tear tracks along dusty cheeks. They must be the channels making their way to the Diamantina River, Jenny thought to herself. The plane’s overachieving propeller engines were so noisy, the air hostesses had handed out ear plugs at Brisbane, and they only got noisier as they cut through the warm shimmering air closer to the ground. Try as she might, Jenny could not find the small town of Windorah through the window, but then, she hadn’t really expected to. Windorah was home to a grand total of one hundred residents and a few large cattle stations nearby.

The plane bumped its way onto the tarmac at Windorah airport and Jenny centred herself while she remembered why she was here. One job, which could be classed as unusual in her line of work, but the purpose was close to her heart and it was for someone who had become a very dear friend. While she hadn’t before worked in the outback of Queensland, for this job, she would have travelled anywhere. When she found out what had occurred four years prior, she offered her services for free. The friend of a friend had still paid; she had an advance in an offshore bank account already and, on completion, she would receive the balance. Jenny pondered donating it to charity. She usually charged a premium for her services, as she was very good at what she did, but she hadn’t accepted her full payment this time. What good would the money be anyway? She already had everything she needed. The person she was working for didn’t though.

The engines began winding down as the air hostess announced they had landed in Windorah, apologising for the turbulence and informing the twelve passengers that in the current early afternoon the temperature outside was thirty-four degrees Celsius. Jenny looked down at her blue jeans and white short sleeved blouse and knew she would need to change soon. She took a hair band from her bag and tied her long brown hair in a bun at the back of her neck, adjusted the laces in her Converse and stood behind the passenger in front. One job, a return flight in three days to Brisbane, and she would be done with this. She would make it clean and professional, not get involved in the complexities of ‘he said, she said’, or the justifications. They always justified what they did when she came for them. What she had to do crossed ethical and legal boundaries, which made it trickier, but no less right.

Chapter two

Jack stood in the terminal at Windorah airport and again thought how ironic the name ‘terminal’ was, considering it was not much more than a room with some toilets attached to the side. It had air-conditioning though, which was a relief after being in the pub for the last week, where the air-conditioning had stopped working. He was waiting for a condenser to come off the plane that just arrived from Brisbane, having ordered it six days ago to fix