Page 54 of The Unlikely Spare

Bloody hell. My skin prickles with sudden awareness, every nerve ending firing simultaneously. I’m caught betweenconflicting urges to cover myself more thoroughly and to stand taller under his scrutiny.

“Christ,” O’Connell mutters, attention jerking back to the trapped spider. Then his expression goes tense. “Actually, this may be a funnel-web spider.”

“And that’s…bad?” I prompt, though the answer is written all over his face.

“Potentially lethal,” he says grimly. “Their bite can cause unconsciousness within minutes. Death within hours if untreated.”

It seems I wasn’t being as melodramatic as he initially thought.

“Let’s get you out of the bathroom.” He’s suddenly all business again. “Now.”

He sets the glass down carefully on the marble counter, keeping it well away from both of us.

His hand comes to my bare shoulder, his palm warm against my skin, and I’m mortifyingly aware of how I lean into his touch.

He keeps his hand on my shoulder while talking into his wrist mic. “We have a potential Code Seven in the royal suite. Need immediate containment and medical on standby.”

“I need to get dressed,” I manage to say.

“I’ll wait outside your bedroom door,” he replies, his voice rougher than usual.

“Very well,” I reply, trying not to look like I’m fleeing him as I move to my bedroom.

I throw on clothes quickly, hyperaware of O’Connell standing just outside my door. My skin still tingles where his hand touched my shoulder.

When I open the door, I find not just O’Connell but also Malcolm and Cavendish in my suite’s sitting room. O’Connell is still holding the trapped spider in one hand. Meanwhile,Malcolm is pulling up comparison photos on his tablet with the intensity of someone defending a doctoral thesis.

“Absolutely positive,” he’s saying. “Look at the shape of the cephalothorax and the spinnerets. Textbook funnel-web.”

Cavendish glances up as I enter. “Your Royal Highness. Bit of a situation with your eight-legged visitor.”

“So I gather. Is it really that dangerous?”

“One of the deadliest spiders in Australia,” Cavendish confirms. “And, according to Officer Malcolm’s research, they shouldn’t be found in this region at all.”

That pulls me up short. “I’m sorry, what?”

Malcolm shows me a color-coded map covered in red zones on his tablet.

“I’ve cataloged every venomous species within five hundred kilometers of each tour stop,” he says.

His map is definitely evidence for the idea that Australia is just an elaborate prank by Mother Nature, titled:Let’s Put All the Deadly Things on One Island and See if Humans are Stupid Enough to Live There.

Spoiler alert: they are.

“Funnel-web spiders are native to eastern Australia, sir. New South Wales and parts of Queensland. Nowhere near Alice Springs or the Northern Territory,” Malcolm continues.

“So our friend here is on holiday like me?” I attempt to joke.

No one laughs.

“Sir, we believe this spider didn’t arrive in your bathroom by accident,” Cavendish says carefully.

The implication lands like a stone in my stomach. “You think someone put it there deliberately?”

“It’s a possibility we can’t ignore.” O’Connell’s eyes meet mine, and I can see the tension in his jaw.

“Well,” I say, aiming for nonchalance and missing by several miles, “I suppose one must appreciate their creativity.Assassination by spider would certainly make for unusual headlines.”