"I need a gun."
Jubal's eyes met hers. She refused to look away. She needed that weapon and she wasn't going to back down or be intimidated into backtracking. He was not going to get to look at her as a hysterical woman, because she wasn't hysterical. She was absolutely serious.
Jubal's eyebrow shot up. "Have you ever fired a gun?"
"Yes. I'm quite a good shot. My father's best friend was a police officer, and he took me to the shooting range when I was ten and I've been shooting ever since."
"Shooting a human being isn't so easy, Riley. If you hesitate ..."
"I would have tried to kill Raul with my knife last night," she said, meaning it. "And I wouldn't have hesitated, not with my mother's life at stake. I won't hesitate if I need to protect her," she assured.
"What if you need to protect yourself?"
Her chin went up. She refused to look away, holding her gaze steady on his. "I'm not a shrinking violet, Jubal. If I need to defend my life, I'll do it vigorously. And no one is going to harm my mother, not if I can help it. Will you lend me a gun?"
Jubal frowned and pulled a pistol from inside his light jacket. "Tell me what this is."
She knew he thought she'd lied to him about knowing how to fire a gun. She sent him a sweet smile. "You're holding a Glock 30 SF, 45 auto, a powerful, excellent weapon. My godfather gave one to me on my sixteenth birthday. It has a smaller grip, and I have small hands so it suits me quite well."
Jubal sighed. "Whatever is up there, Riley, this isn't going to stop it."
"It will stop anyone traveling with us from trying to kill my mother."
Jubal handed her the Glock. Her hand closed around the grip, taking it slowly. She checked the magazine to make certain it was full. He handed her a second magazine, which she slipped into her pocket and zipped the flap closed.
"Riley!"
Riley spun around to see her mother rushing toward her. Annabel's face was white, her eyes wide with terror. Behind her, the ground had come to life-large, almost dinner-plate-sized tarantulas scuttling in the vegetation, coming down from the trees and looking very focused as they shuffled relentlessly forward.
Riley rushed to intercept Annabel before she could flee into the rain forest. "A tarantula bite isn't fatal, Mom. Calm down. Irritation from their hair is sometimes worse than the bite."
"They're chasing me," Annabel gasped, gripping Riley hard. She lowered her voice, hissing between her teeth, her eyes wild, hair disheveled. She looked nearly demonic. "They're chasing me, Riley, can't you see that? They want to kill me."
Riley didn't know what multiple bites from the large tarantulas could actually do, nor did she want to take any chances. She caught her mother's wrist and pulled her toward Gary Sanders, who was closest to the small ribbon of a stream. Surely the spiders wouldn't follow them into the water.
Annabel choked back a sob. "I can't do this anymore, Riley. You have to go on without me. I just can't ..."
"Stop it," Riley snapped as she pulled her mother over a series of stones and ferns to get to the stream. "We can do anything we have to do. You were the one who taught me that."
She glanced behind her. Jubal, Gary and Ben formed a line of defense against the crawling spiders. She stopped her mother's forward momentum before she could step into the stream.
"Let me take a look, Mom," she cautioned. Piranha wouldn't be in that tiny stream, but with all the strange attacks from insects and animals, she didn't want to chance missing anything. "We'll step in only if they get past everyone."
Gary pulled a hose over his shoulder and stepped forward. The moment a spout of fire gushed from the flamethrower, the rest of the camp became aware something was wrong. Heads turned, one by one. Riley was glad she and Annabel were in the shadow of the trees. It looked as if the three men were being attacked, not the women. They were a good distance away. She added to the illusion by sitting on a rock beside the stream and drawing her mother down to sit beside her as if they'd been resting there in the shade.
Weston and Shelton predictably made a huge fuss, Weston actually running away from the spiders. Not only were they not close to him, but the migration was moving away from him. It didn't matter. He berated the guides.
"You chose a rest stop right in the middle of killer spider territory. Are you trying to do us all in? I'm reporting you, and you'll never get another guide job again," he snapped.
Riley rolled her eyes. The guides ignored him, rushing to help the three men. The porters grouped together in a tight circle, watching. The archaeologist and his students stared at one another with shocked, almost comical expressions, as if they couldn't quite understand what was happening. The three just stood there, openmouthed, while the ground came to life with large hairy spiders crawling through the vegetation. Her idea of archaeologists admittedly had been formed by the action-hero Indiana Jones movies, but Dr. Patton and his students were fast putting that fantasy to rest.
She could actually hear the spiders scuttling through the debris as they advanced, but the smell and sound of Gary's flamethrower began to quickly drown out every other noise. Annabel covered her face with her hands and rocked back and forth. Riley put her arm around her mother to comfort her.
Annabel moaned softly. "It's so late, Riley. In a couple of hours the sun will go down."
"We'll leave in a few minutes," she assured. "The guides will take us up the mountain and this will be over. We're so close now."
Annabel continued to rock back and forth, Riley's arm around her shoulders for comfort, but all the while, Riley studied the members of their traveling group, trying to discern who she might be able to count on if things went wrong. The shivering in the ground told her bad things were bound to happen. All three guides had rushed to help the three men with the spiders. They didn't appear to be afraid of them at all. In fact, they picked some of them up very gently and turned them around.
She found the way the three natives handled the tarantulas fascinating. They clearly wanted to save them, not destroy them. The tarantulas seemed confused, turning in circles, avoiding the hot flames. Gary switched off the very efficient flamethrower and, like Riley, watched the guides gently managing the spiders away from everyone and back into the rain forest.
Not one of the porters had helped, Riley noted. They huddled close together, whispering. Her heart sank. They would need a couple of porters going up the mountain and at least two would accompany Gary and Jubal with their guide.