Carpathian 23 - Dark Storm

then his chest, murmuring obscenities. “You threw it overboard, you big
     bastard, after you used the last of it.”
    Shelton was a little friendlier than the other two engineers and not quite as obnoxious
     as Weston, but instead of making Riley feel safer, his proximity actually made her
     skin prickle. Maybe that was because his smile never reached his eyes. And because
     he watched everything and everyone on board. Riley had the feeling Weston vastly underestimated
     the other man. Clearly Weston thought himself in charge of their mining expedition,
     but no one was bossing Shelton.
    “We should never have thrown in with them,” Riley murmured to her mother, keeping
     her voice low. Normally, Riley and her mother made the trip to the volcano alone,
     but when they’d arrived at the village, they found their regular guide too sick to
     travel. Alone in the middle of the Amazon, without a guide to accompany them to their
     destination, she and her mother decided to team up with three other groups traveling
     upriver.
    Weston and his two fellow mining engineers had been in the village prepping a trip
     to the edge of the Andes in Peru, in search of potential new mines for the corporation
     they worked for. Two men researching a supposedly extinct plant had arrived from Europe
     seeking a guide to go up a mountain in the Andes as well. An archaeologist and his
     two grad students were heading to the Andes looking for a rumored lost city of the
     Cloud People—the Chachapoyas. All of them had decided to pool their resources and
     travel upriver together. The idea seemed logical at the time, but now, a week into
     the journey, Riley heartily regretted the decision.
    Two of the guides, the archaeologist and his students and three porters were in the
     lead boat just ahead of them with a good deal of the supplies. Annabel, Riley, the
     researchers and the three mining engineers were in the second boat with one of their
     guides, Pedro, and two porters, Capa and Raul.
    Trapped on the boat with eight strangers, Riley didn’t feel safe. She wished they
     were already halfway up the mountain, where the plan was to go their separate ways,
     each with their own guide.
    Annabel shrugged. “It’s a little too late for second thoughts. We made the decision
     to travel together and we’re stuck with these people. We’ll make the best of it.”
    That was her mother, always calm in the face of a brewing storm. Riley was no psychic,
     but it didn’t take one to predict trouble was coming. That feeling was growing with
     every passing hour. She glanced at her mother. As usual, she appeared serene. Riley
     felt a little silly saying she was worried when Annabel had so many other things on
     her mind.
    Still bickering about the discarded bug spray, Weston flipped Shelton the finger.
     “The can was empty. There must be more.”
    “It wasn’t empty,” Shelton corrected, disgust in his voice. “You just wanted to chuck
     something at that caiman.”
    “And your aim was as bad as your mouth,” the third engineer, Ben Charger, chimed in.
    Ben was the quietest of the bunch. He never stopped looking around with restless eyes.
     Riley hadn’t quite made up her mind about him. He was the most ordinary looking of
     the three engineers. He was average height, average weight, a face no one would notice.
     He blended, and maybe that made her uncomfortable. Nothing about him stood out. He
     moved quietly and seemed to simply appear out of nowhere, and he watched everything
     and everyone as if he were expecting trouble. She didn’t believe he was a partner
     with Weston and Shelton. The other two stuck together and obviously had known one
     another for some time. Charger appeared to be a loner. Riley wasn’t even certain he
     liked either of the other two men.
    Off to the left shore, her eye picked up a white cloud, moving fast, sometimes iridescent,
     sometimes a pearly color as the cloud twisted together, forming a blanket of living
     insects.
    “Fuck you, Charger,” Weston snapped.
    “Watch your mouth,” Charger advised, his voice very low.
    Weston actually stepped back, his face paling a little. He glanced around the boat,
     his gaze settling on Riley, whom he caught looking at him. “Why don’t you come over
     here, or better yet, Mommy come here and lick the sweat off me? Maybe that will help.”
     He extended his tongue toward her, probably hoping to look sexy, but he got a mouthful
     of bugs and ended up coughing