Chapter 6. Home

1888 Kalgoorlie Goldfields, Australia

"Fuck you George." Innis said, "I thought I was done with

all this shit."

George lay sprawled face down in a growing pool of blood

that spilled from where Innis had stabbed him.

"Doesn't look like you are." Eurides said.

Innis wiped the blood off his knife on the dying man's shirt.

"I gave him and that idiot oversized brother of his a job,

and this is how they repay me."

"The fault lies not in the stars dear Brutus." Eurides said.

"No it does not." Innis muttered. He picked up the gun where

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George had dropped it and walked back to the mine office.

Standing outside Innis could hear laughing.

Through a window he saw two men sitting at a table drinking.

George's brother Rudi was the larger of the pair.

Innis opened the door, stepped inside and shot him in the face.

The bottle the big man was drinking from exploded into glass

shards. The second man, who Innis didn't know fell backwards

in his chair in fright.

Innis stood over him and looked around the room.

"What is your name?"

"Jonas. My name is Jonas."

"Jonas, this is your one and only chance - who hired you?"

Jonas balked.

Rudi was still sitting upright in his chair, he groaned and fell

forward onto the table. Innis placed the gun against the big

man's temple and pulled the trigger. Blood and brain flecked

across Jonas’s face.

"It was Fields your partner." he spluttered.

"He paid us half up front and said he’d pay us the rest when

the job was done."

"When the job was done." Innis said slowly. "Is that your bag

by the door Jonas?"

"Wait!" Jonas said holding a hand in front of his face.

"What for? " Innis said, and shot him twice in the chest.

"What for indeed." Eurides said.

Innis finished a drink on the table. "Tomorrow, my business

partner Mr. Maurice Fields will be joining his hired help at the

bottom of the mineshaft where an unfortunate mishap with

explosives is going to bring the roof down on all of them."

"What about you?" Eurides asked.

"Me?" Innis thought for a moment.

"After the dust settles, I'm going to sell up. There's always

plenty of buyers for a successful mine - even a collapsed one."

"That’s not what I meant." Eurides said.

She wet a cloth with whiskey from an upturned bottle

and gently wiped blood from his face.

"You're still floating along wherever the current takes you.

If you really have had of enough of all of this. Find a home

and put down some roots."

"Home." Innis said, then he said the word again.

He'd almost forgotten what it meant.

*