Isha glanced at the plastic box I’d deposited onto his back seat, clearly imagining exactly how big an animal would have to be to not fit inside.
I laughed. “Dude, relax. It might not even be a snake. I got called out to a pair of crocodile skin trousers once.”
“For real?”
“For real. I gave them to my mum.”
Isha started to smile, but it stopped before it warmed his face. “I can never tell if you’re joking or not.”
“I’m not joking. If you haven’t realised already, I’m not that funny.”
“I never said you were funny, mate.”
Touché.
Isha exited the dual carriageway. The superstore was a mile up the next road. I craned my neck and saw blue lights in the distance. “Jesus. You’d think a flipping lion had escaped the zoo.”
“Didn’t that happen around here once? At the safari park in Bedford?”
“It was Woburn, and it wasn’t a lion. It was a monkey, and they found it eating plums in someone’s back garden.”
Isha chuckled. “I’d rather find a monkey in my garden than a snake.”
“Then you’re a fool. A monkey is far more likely to attack you than a snake is.”
“I’ll take your word for that.”
A loaded reply danced on my tongue, but I swallowed it down as Isha pulled into the supermarket car park. I had work to do.
* * *
“It looks radioactive.”
I laughed and held the brightly patterned snake up to the sunlight. “Relax. It’s a tiny milk snake, and it’s so cold it can barely move.”
“Your perception of size worries me.”
“Your tendency to be a drama queen worries me.”
It didn’t. Somehow, our random rescue mission had been lighter than our usual encounters. The ever present tension was still there, but with an animal to rescue, it was easier to ignore.
I placed the tiny milk snake into the plastic box. “You don’t have to drive me home if you have somewhere to be. I was gonna get a cab anyway.”
“I have to be where you are.”
“Huh?”
“I’m due back on site at ten, so I’m going your way.”
Oh. For a split second, I thought he’d meant…fuck, I didn’t even want to go there. And I was an idiot. He’d gone out of his way to bring me here in the first place. It made sense that he was heading back to Thorston. “You’ll be okay with the giant reptile on the back seat?”
“Get in the car, Jude.”
I shivered. At some point, I’d have to ban him from saying my name.
With the milk snake safely on the back seat, I slid into Isha’s car. It was immaculately tidy, save a fluffy pink hair bobble in the footwell. I snagged it and held it up. “Delilah’s?”
“No, it’s mine,” Isha deadpanned.
