Chapter 11

Birmingham was a good half-day drive from Black Lake. As a result, Dave wasn’t entirely surprised that Lito was the only one who volunteered to come along and give a talk at Junior’s school. It worked out well, actually—Lito needed to stay in the Birmingham hotel overnight, and even though Dayspring Inn & Suites was dog-friendly it would have been awkward to have Spot along on a work trip. He’d jumped at Dave’s offer to dog-sit and meet up together the next morning.

Lumpy and Woozy loved having Spot sleep over. The three of them chased themselves silly from when Lito dropped Spot off until their dinner hit their dog bowls, then slept like rocks until five o’clock in the morning when they started tearing around again. Dave was actually kind of impressed at how they managed to keep that excitement up for the entire two-hour drive. This had to be what parents of toddlers felt like. Toddler triplets, maybe.

Lito was waiting in the parking lot of his hotel when Dave pulled up, as promised. He hopped in with a smile and two cups of coffee. Dude must have been psychic.

“You are a god among men,” Dave pronounced.

Lito laughed and set them carefully in the two cupholders, which were both far enough forward the dogs couldn’t investigate too closely. Spot stuck her nose between the front seats, but Lito just gave her an ear scratch and a playful noogie and then nudged her back where she belonged. “I’m lucky the manager here considered me worth impressing,” he said. “The executive suite has a Keurig—everyone else gets to deal with the pot in the lobby. However stale it happens to be. The poor lady at the front desk this morning certainly hadn’t had time to refresh it, not with one of those guests complaining at her.”

“Difficult?” Dave guessed.

“That’s a polite word for it.” He wrinkled his nose. Dave had a hard time not leaning over and kissing it, he was so adorable, but Lito was still talking. “Used to hate them back when I was in her shoes. They stay the night, then come down in the morning to nitpick at their bill because the air conditioner was too loud or the cell phone reception wasn’t good enough and they want you to give them a discount. Sometimes it’s things I could have fixed if they’d told me earlier and sometimes it’s totally in their heads, but they almost never give up without a twenty-minute argument. At least. We had about one a week on the overnight shift, way back when.”

“Glad you’re not still on the front line?”

“God yes,” Lito answered immediately. “Not saying I don’t still hear inane things from people at work, but at least now I’m not required to smile while I do it.” He sat back in his seat and sipped his coffee in silence for a moment. “Yesterday wasn’t bad, all things considered, but I’m not excited about having to introduce myself to a whole new set of people now that I’m here. At least with the Georgia locations, I’d finally gotten the managers to stop treating me like I’m on the hotel version of Queer Eye. I mean, I’m finally getting to see the layout of each Dayspring in person, which makes visualizing the space a lot easier, but I do miss the distance an email can give.”

“I’ve never…” Dave shook his head. He’d always preferred getting his hands dirty versus languishing in front of a computer every day, but he thought he knew what Lito meant. “Can I say I commiserate even though I’ve never seen Queer Eye?”

That surprised a laugh out of Lito. “Clearly you’ve missed some required viewing.”

“Is there a checklist?”

“There’s a whole queer agenda, haven’t you heard?” Lito let out an amused snort. “Gonna guess you’ve never worn heels either, even just trying them on with your drag queen friends. Or memorized Broadway musicals and belted out all the good diva parts. Or went to a gay club and got down and dirty on the dance floor.”

“I think you and I have had very different life experiences.” Very, very different. “Correct on two out of three.”

Lito stilled. Dave could sense him sorting through what he’d just said. Then… “You sing?”

“Only country, and only karaoke. When Rick makes me.” Dave kept his eyes on the road, but he could feel Lito’s gaze on him. “I’m a pretty damn good dancer, though. In the right circumstances. Have I not mentioned that?”

“The Nashville thing?”

“On occasion.”

They each drank their coffee in silence for a few minutes. It didn’t take a psychic to know they were both thinking back to the previous weekend, where they’d spent most of Sunday afternoon in Lito’s bed together. It hadn’t been “dancing,” exactly, but Dave came home feeling simultaneously more energetic and more exhausted than he’d been in a very long time. Lito was very flexible, as it turned out. He’d let Dave boss him into attempting some truly ambitious positions until they both couldn’t take it anymore. Lito ended up riding Dave until they both collapsed and passed out for a long afternoon nap together. It had been sexy as hell and comfortably domestic and hell if he was going to be able to reconcile the two. With Lito, both descriptions fit.

“More travel now, then?” Dave finally asked.

“Yeah, probably, but who the hell knows how it will all shake out.” Lito sighed and let his head thunk against the back of the seat. “In this particular hotel, they’re redoing the lobby and breakfast area. I accidentally got the owners on a ‘local art’ kick with some of the stuff I did in Georgia, so now my big project is to revamp every Alabama Dayspring to be more local without breaking the bank. The lobby here is an odd shape, so I wanted to get a sense of the space and light levels in person.”

“You have to suss out the local art scene for every town in Alabama? That’s…ambitious of you.”

“Shut up.” Dave didn’t turn his head to look, but he could tell Lito was smiling. “Janet is trying to hook me up with a friend of hers who’s in some sort of Alabama painters’ guild. If they’ve all got portfolios online, it will save me a lot of time.”

“You’re still going to have to visit all the hotels, though.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I didn’t realize your job was so expansive.”

“Neither do most other people. Including the women I work with here.” He upended his paper coffee cup, draining the last few swallows, and sat up straight again. Seeming slightly more awake. “When I first moved to Atlanta, I was doing purchasing and inventory management. Then I made some executive decorating decisions because nobody else would. About a year after that, I finally persuaded Betty and Ronald—the owners—to do all the hotels in the same color scheme. Now I’m still doing most of the purchasing and inventory, but I get to pick most of what we get. That usually means I can spend some time with Google and at least come up with a short list of local artists, but web presence doesn’t always correlate to talent.”

“I can believe that.” Computers weren’t usually Dave’s first choice for dicking around outside of work, but he’d seen enough of the internet to make that particular truism very clear. Which brought to mind that NALSAR needed a website too. Tracking all that web hosting nonsense down was going to be a huge headache.

“So yeah,” Lito said, “more reason to travel.” He twisted around so he could give the ever-patient Spot another ear scratch while he held his coffee in the other hand. “Dayspring Inn & Suites doesn’t have all that many locations in Georgia too far from the Atlanta area, so in the past I’ve always just taken day trips before when I needed to see something. This will be new.”

He didn’t look enthused by the concept. More like exhausted. “I’ll always be happy to let Spot bunk with my two idiots when you’re gone,” Dave offered. “They had fun last night. Loud I-don’t-know-where-they-get-all-that-energy fun, but all three were clearly having a blast.”

“Thanks.”

The offer won Dave another one of those genuine little smiles.

“On a not-entirely unrelated note,” Lito said, “I think I’ve forgotten most of what was in that ‘how to not get mauled by wolves while lost in the woods’ handout you gave me way back when. You’re not expecting all that much teaching from me today, are you? I mean, I know the basics—”

The basics would be more than enough. “Don’t worry about it,” Dave assured him. “They’re not going to be grading us on our presentation. Junior said it’s only for the sixth and seventh grades, and the kids got a list of something like two dozen speakers to pick from. I wouldn’t be surprised if we only end up with a handful who signed up to hear us.”

Lito laughed. Really laughed. “Did your school never do these? They’re universally terrible. I guarantee you, when ‘dogs who find dead bodies’ get stacked up against the chance to hear the school nurse lecture on healthy eating or watching a Smokey the Bear video from the seventies, the dogs are gonna win.”

“Seriously?”

“Trust me.”

The school wasn’t at all hard to find: it was a giant brick monstrosity with a mural of the school logo painted over the entrance. Dave could have pointed it out from half a mile away. Lito got the three dogs in their vests and harnesses while Dave double-checked that everything in his box of hand-outs was how he remembered it.

“Ready?” Standing in the parking lot was a really inconvenient time to remember that he hated public speaking, but the realization usually hit right…about…now. Crap.

“Ready,” Lito answered. He passed Lumpy and Woozy’s leashes to Dave, but gave Dave’s hand a quick squeeze on the way.

The nervous quiver in Dave’s stomach lessened a bit.

They got about ten feet into the school before the dogs drew a giant cluster of students in the hallway. The rush cleared out quickly once the class bell rang, but they still drew more than a few curious glances as they got their VISITOR stickers from the front office and made their way toward the back door of the auditorium. Junior’s teacher lit up when he saw them.

“You were by far the students’ most popular choice,” the man said, beaming. He was tall and thin, his hipster glasses and neatly-shaped beard not quite balancing out how much his receding hairline aged him. “We don’t have a microphone hooked up for you, I’m afraid, but if there’s anything else you need…”

“I don’t think there is, but thanks.” Dave braced himself against the wall so Lumpy could nuzzle against his thigh. “We’re just doing a bit of talking and then a practical demonstration—those always get the kids’ attention. And I don’t mind being loud.”

“Excellent.” The teacher gestured for them to follow him through a cramped green room and down a short flight of stairs to the wing of the stage. The sounds of excited middle schoolers already echoed around the room as the students filed in. “It’s called NALSAR, right? North Alabama Search and Rescue? You’re Dave Schmidt and…”

“Lito Apaza,” Lito filled in for him. “Thanks.”

The teacher—Dave couldn’t remember more of a name than the “Mr. S” Junior had called him—calmed the students down and gave a long-winded introduction. Junior waved enthusiastically from the second row. Dave had probably done hundreds of these educational talks over the years, to varying age groups, but actually being on a stage was unusual. A stage in a giant auditorium full of middle schoolers, whom he was expected to educate. Yeah, the venue really wasn’t helping with his dislike of speaking in front of large groups. Lito flashed him a questioning look—What’s wrong?—so Dave tried his best to focus on the dogs instead. He dropped Lumpy and Woozy’s leashes and snapped his fingers, the command that said you can wander but be ready to come back to me immediately when I call you. Woozy walked in a tight circle, looked up at him, and flopped herself down on his foot. The kids tittered.

Lito smiled too, though, and followed suit. He took a seat on the edge of the stage next to Woozy, dangling his legs down in the orchestra pit, so Dave sat on Woozy’s other side. Eventually Mr. S conceded the fact that his students weren’t listening to a word he was saying and turned the whole thing over to Dave and Lito.

This part—the actual spiel—came almost automatically by now. “Who here owns a dog?” About half the hands went up. “Who knows the correct way to pet one?” Nearly everyone. So far the students were chatty and excitable, not rude but not paying attention to the humans on stage either. Dave singled out a cocky-looking boy in the front row. “You, then—come on up and show us.”

The boy strutted up onto the stage and gave Lumpy a few head pats, grinning at his buddies. Lumpy practically rolled her eyes. The gesture was exactly what Dave had expected, though, so he used the boy’s mistake to explain the difference in reaction time between reaching in overhand (slower and appears more of a threat) versus underhand (easy to pull away and gives the dog plenty of chance to telegraph its intentions). Lumpy made an excellent visual aid. Lito fit himself into the talk perfectly too, helping wrangle volunteers up and down from the stage and stopping the dogs from wandering off into the audience with a subtle throat clear on the few times they looked like they might want to explore. He was surprisingly attentive to Dave’s speech too, which was both flattering and a bit distracting.

“We’ve got time for some questions,” Dave concluded, “and then Mr. Apaza and Spot will do a bit of a practical demonstration for you.”

“Seriously?” Lito murmured, just loud enough for Dave to hear. “A little warning would have been nice.”

“You’ll do fine,” Dave whispered back. “Trust your dog.” Spot was behaving very well. Incredibly well considering it was her first time in this kind of situation. Lito running the find meant Dave could narrate. It also meant Lumpy and Woozy could continue to lie on either side of him on the stage like big black-and-brown slugs, watching the audience and letting their tongues loll out.

The students had quite a few questions, unsurprisingly, ranging from insightful to absurd. Dave tossed a few of the more obvious ones to Lito: no, their dogs weren’t trained to attack people. Yes, the dogs lived with them as pets. No, they didn’t get paid. The dogs didn’t either. Yes, it took a long time to learn search and rescue.

“Spot and I have been doing this about three months,” Lito elaborated for a girl with frizzy hair and braces who’d asked how long they’d each been on the team. “She and I probably won’t get certified until sometime next year, and then learning cadaver finds takes, what, a year after that?”

Dave nodded.

“So we’re newbies. Da—err, Mr. Schmidt here was the one who started the team and has been doing this a lot longer than me.”

Another boy raised his hand. “What’s a cadaver?”

Ha! Dave sat back and raised an eyebrow at Lito. He usually avoided that term for a reason, but sixth graders were old enough to not be traumatized by the concept. Probably. “Go on,” he urged. “You’re the one who brought it up…”

Lito shot him a look that promised retribution later. The students thought it was hilarious. “A cadaver is another word for a dead body,” he explained. “I’ve only been on two or three call-outs so far—all without Spot, since she’s not experienced enough—but I, personally, haven’t done a cadaver search yet. NALSAR sometimes gets asked to look for people who have been missing for a long time, and when that happens our dogs need extra training because we don’t always know whether the person we’re looking for is alive or not. Sometimes we’re pretty sure they’re not. When that happens, our dogs help the police find out where they died and where their body is.”

It was a calm, age-appropriate response. Way better than Dave usually did when faced with a question he wasn’t expecting. Christ, he’s amazing.

Junior was grinning like mad—his coolness quotient had probably just doubled in the last thirty seconds. The excitement in the room rose dramatically as several students started whispering to each other. The cocky boy in the front row didn’t even bother raising his hand this time. “Have you ever—”

Oh, this was going to get out of control fast. Damn.

“Right. So.” Even though it was fun and a bit hot watching Lito deal with rabidly curious sixth graders so handily, letting this particular topic of conversation continue would probably be a mistake. “Who wants to see an example of what our dogs do?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Lito grumbled quietly as he got Spot’s attention and took her leash off. His back was temporarily to their audience, blocking them from seeing his lips move. “Running Spot on a no-warning search is preferable to giving a no-warning talk about dead people to children. Also, screw you very much for that.”

“They’re not going to forget this talk.”

Lito glared at him, but the corners of his mouth kept twitching upward into a hint of a smile. “I’d like to elaborate on my previous statement,” he whispered, “but it wouldn’t be appropriate for school.”

Any students who weren’t already engrossed in the presentation were definitely interested now that Spot was loose. Several started trying to attract her attention, but Spot stayed cheerfully at Lito’s side and ignored them all. Not that Dave blamed her—he had to crane his neck to look up at Lito, now standing a few feet away while Dave was still seated at the edge of the stage. The disparity in their relative positions sent a hot spark through his entire body. Lito looked gorgeous and confident and charismatic and Dave was extremely aware of the fact that he was currently at eye level with Lito’s thighs. Lito cocked one eyebrow at him in a clear now what? gesture.

“Okay.” Dave had to clear his throat, but climbed to his feet as well. “I’m going to need a volunteer to be ‘lost’ up here—you with the pink shirt. Perfect, come on up. Lito, you and Spot start out over there near the side aisle. Make sure she’s not peeking.”

A wave of laughter from their audience.

Dave beckoned their volunteer victim closer. “What’s your name, hon?”

The stage wasn’t an ideal search venue—outdoors was usually better—but Dave got the demonstration search set up fairly quickly. The girl “hid” behind a stray cardboard box toward the back of the stage. She was in view of the left half of the audience but not visible from where Lito and Spot waited. Lito had to keep turning Spot’s head toward himself so she wouldn’t look over her shoulder at the kids, but the students in the nearest seats found that so hilarious Dave doubted Spot would have noticed the search target anyway.

“Okay,” Dave called, loud enough to be heard over the growing buzz of students whispering to each other and craning for a better view. “We’ve got a young woman lost in the woods back here. Her name is Lanisha. You ready?”

“What’s her description?” Lito called back. They often skipped the preliminaries in practice, but this was good.

“Eleven years old, African-American, long hair in several braids. She also giggles a lot.”

Laughter from the audience and the girl.

“When and where was she last seen, and what are my search parameters?”

“Last seen at school about ten seconds ago, wearing pink. Your boundaries are the edges of the stage. Go when you’re ready.”

Lito did an excellent job of ramping up Spot’s excitement—”Ready, girl? Ready? Ready? Go find!”—and Spot took off like a shot. She skipped the stairs entirely, jumping straight from the floor to the stage. Several kids shouted encouragement. Her first lap took her straight across the front of the stage and down the opposite stairs to where the students were now all standing and cheering her on, but she came straight back to Lito and made her second pass further back up the stage. She was still running for the fun of it at this point. Lito angled his body perfectly, though, delineating the boundary of the search area (and the fact that the audience wasn’t in it). Spot shrank her excited circles accordingly.

Dave had a sudden mental image of Lito using that same take-charge stance in a different situation. He didn’t even have to talk, just stand there, and now Dave had the beginnings of a hard-on. Christ. Lumpy and Woozy both sat up to watch Spot run, but they stayed put at Dave’s side.

Even after several months of practicing, Spot still overreacted when she actually found someone. This time, she woofed in full voice and then bounced around the girl for a good ten seconds before remembering what she was supposed to do. The rest of the students were all craning their necks to see, but it would have been hard to miss how frantically Spot’s tail was wagging. She returned to Lito, sat just like they’d practiced dozens of times, then took Lito directly in and sat on the girl’s feet looking immensely pleased with herself.

“Nicely done,” Dave murmured when Lito and Spot rejoined him at the front of the stage and both Spot and their “victim” had been given suitable applause. “It’s harder in front of an audience, I know, but you both did well.”

“Not much of a challenge, search-wise,” Lito murmured back. “I was expecting you’d hide her out in the audience or something. Possibly on the catwalk overhead.”

Dave looked up—yes, there was a catwalk up above where the spotlights hung. “I thought you didn’t like heights.”

The glint in Lito’s eyes turned a bit wicked, then he leaned in to speak directly in Dave’s ear. “I’ve found I don’t mind if you’re there to catch me.”

Dave had been vaguely turning around some tease in his head, something about enjoying the view as Lito climbed the ladder to get up there, but some things weren’t appropriate to say out loud at a middle school. Including ninety percent of his current thoughts. Well fuck.

Instead of doing something that would get them thrown out, he motioned for the students to settle down again. “It looks like we have ten minutes left,” he announced in his public speaking voice. “Those of you who would like to practice greeting and petting a dog, Mr. Apaza and I will bring Heffalump, Woozle, and Spot to the edges of the stage. Make a line, one person petting at a time, and remember to use proper hand positioning—underhand, palm up, fingers together. And always ask the owner for permission first.”

There would be time for ogling, and all the rest, later. If they hadn’t had the dogs along, Dave would have suggested they go back and put Lito’s executive suite to use. As it was, they’d just have to wait until they got back to Black Lake. By then, he’d have had time to come up with a challenge Lito might like better than searching for barely hidden middle schoolers.