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“I’ve volunteered.” I nodded.
Jesus, this thing could go fast. I gripped a handlebar above me and steadied myself as Ty raced up the street and made a sharp turn.
The excitement kept building, and I took a deep breath and had to make a conscious effort to keep my shit-eating grin at bay.
“Do you have any reptiles yourself?” he asked next.
“Yes, Sir. Five rescue snakes.”
He side-eyed me. “You don’t have to call me Sir. I’m not like the other Tops here.”
Oh. All right. “Okay.”
He faced forward again and raked his teeth over his bottom lip. “Have we met before? You look familiar.”
Just like that, the excitement flew out the…side of the golf cart and was replaced by dread. Heavy dread that tied a noose around my throat.
Lie or fess up?
“Uh…not…not that I know of.” I cleared my throat. Lying, it was. A blatant lie.
“Hm.” He made another turn, and the subject died there. Hopefully. Now he was focused on our task. “If it’s anythin’ larger than an eight-footer, you grab the tail and help me bag it up. I’d like to make this a quickie.”
“Understood.”
He pulled in next to a house, about five streets away from his own, and this was a more wooded area. I could imagine them seeing snakes frequently here. The backs of the houses all faced a shrubby forest.
An older woman opened the front door as we got out of the golf cart.
“Ty, thank goodness! It’s a big one!”
“She always says that,” Ty said under his breath. “Ten bucks it’s under five feet.” Then he cranked up the charm and approached the woman with his duffel in a firm grip. “Let’s have a look then, Mrs. Blum.”
I tagged along, feeling properly mindfucked and lost. Because I didn’t know if I could relax, if it was okay to bring back the excitement, if Ty was going to remember me, if…if, if, if. Ugh. My brain needed a vacation. Or I needed a vacation from my brain, whichever.
We walked through a house that hadn’t changed since the sixties, and then we came out on the patio in the back.
My eyes bugged out a little. Weirdly, I wasn’t shocked, nor did I feel an emotional skip within me like I sometimes did, but that thing in the grass was nowhere near five feet.
Ty was going to need my help.
“I should’ve bet against you,” I noted.
He dropped his duffel and scratched an eyebrow.
I folded my arms over my chest and took a few steps closer, just off the low deck. The snake was clearly catching some sun in the freshly mowed grass, and it stretched almost the entire length of the backyard. If I were to venture a guess, the snake was at least fifteen feet. Maybe longer.
It wasn’t a Burmese, though.
The markings were different, and the coloring was off. It was thicker too.
I glanced back at Ty. “It’s a green anaconda, right?”
He nodded with a dip of his chin. “Yes.” He turned to Mrs. Blum. “We’re gonna make one attempt at catching him, but if I determine he’s too strong, we’ll put him down on-site. You okay with that, darlin’?”
“Of course, of course. I’ll be right inside,” she replied, a little nervous.
She didn’t linger.
Ty sighed and faced me. “You afraid to get bit?”
“No, Sir. I mean—sorry.”
He grinned. “You’re cute. I’ll give you that.”
Damn right I was cute. But I was more than that. He’d see.
In all honesty, though, I wasn’t sure we could pull this off. Anacondas were sheer muscle and weighed more than a python. It was an invasive species too, just not as widely spread. This one had likely been someone’s pet at some point years ago.
Ty pulled out a sack in some thick fabric and tossed it nearby the snake, which didn’t so much as twitch. But it knew we were here, no doubt.
“The moment I go for the head, you dive for the tail,” he instructed. “He’s gonna try to coil himself around your leg or arm, so be ready. And don’t be a hero. You tell me immediately if it gets to be too much.”
“Of course.” I nodded and steeled myself. Even though I’d caught snakes before, this was the biggest by far, and I had to shake my nerves.
Ty detached the strap around the knife he had at his hip, then stepped down onto the lawn and moved closer to the snake. “Christ, he’s gotta be seventeen, eighteen feet.”
That did not help with the nerves.
“It was pretty cold last night, so let’s hope he’s unmotivated to put up a fight.” That was the last thing he said before he picked up the pace, and I followed suit.
I kept him in my periphery and concentrated on the tail, and just a couple seconds before Ty charged, the snake started to coil in on itself, and we didn’t want that.
