Hector
Iris was too damn cute.
I wasn’t sure why I enjoyed watching her friends embarrass her. Likely it was because they were all awkwardly bad at trying to set us up on a date.
She seemed a bit more relaxed once we came outside, but not by much.
We had just looked over the camera setup for the front and left sides of their building, which also covered their parking lot.
“Around back, we have two extra cameras because we often come out this door to do weather balloon launches,” Iris added, pointing to a small shed out back, which I assumed was where they had their balloon equipment.
“How often do you come out to do those?” I asked her.
“Oh, I don’t usually do balloon launches unless we are short-staffed for the day or it’s a very windy day and they need an extra set of hands to control the balloon,” she explained. “But we typically do two balloon launches a day. Unless there’s bad weather, and then we do more.”
“You said two extras, but I see three cameras,” I told her after spotting one on the far-left side.
“That one is broken, but they left it there to make people think it still works,” she answered. “If you look under the gutter, you can see the back part snapped off.”
She walked closer to lean in, pointing at some cords in the back. As I took a few steps closer to get a closer look, she screamed.
“Snake! Holy crap! Big snake! Oh, my God!”
She tried to take a step away from the supposed snake but tripped and fell backward into me. My arm circled around her waist, holding her upright so she didn’t fall on the ground. That just made it worse, because now her plush ass was nestled right up against my upper thighs.
She squirmed, trying to back both of us up, so I turned to my right side and pulled her with me. I was about to release my arm from her to go see if there was, indeed, a snake. However, she pulled away first. She whipped around, stared at me with a frightened look on her face, and began to apologize.
“Sorry…umm, jeez. I’m sorry,” she said, looking to the ground and shaking her head.
I wasn’t sure if she was still nervous about the snake or if it was me she was nervous about.
I hadn’t seen anything at first, but after looking closer, I found the snake coiled up against the building. The camera she had pointed at was positioned above three small sagebrush bushes—making a nice spot for the snake to hide.
“It’s all good,” I told her after seeing it. “It’s a Great Basin Gopher Snake. They’re nonvenomous.”
“Umm…no. That thing definitely hissed and rattled,” she argued back.
“Gopher snakes can mimic the sounds rattlesnakes make, but unlike rattles, these guys are harmless,” I informed her.
“I’ll just take your word for it and stay back here,awayfrom the snake,” she said as she did a whole-body shiver.
I smirked. I had two sisters and a mother who were all petrified of snakes, so I knew when to let it go.
“Well, that completes our tour of embarrassment today,” she muttered, but I still heard her.
“Thanks for showing me around,” I told her. “Again, the odds of someone nefarious coming onto the property are extremely low, but I’d just like to be sure.”
She nodded at me as we walked back around to the front of the building.
“I’ll get this letter over to the ISB,” I said. “Reach out if you get anything else.”
“Okay,” she said, not really making eye contact with me. “Have a good day, Hector.”
I told her to do the same, though I wasn’t sure if she heard me, since she practically bolted into the building.
I spent most of the car ride back to the office thinking about the case and the letter since Jennings brought it up as soon as we drove off.
That was a lie.
