Chapter 3

“You were right, you bastard.” Rick downed the last of his beer and held the empty bottle up to Dave in a mock toast. “Lord knows where you keep finding them, but that new dog yesterday played beautifully with the rest of the pack. Friendly and not at all put off by Scratch being a little shit to her at first. She’s got to have some Golden in her, you think? She looks mostly lab but it’s mixed with something else.”

Dave shrugged. “No clue. Lito said when we first met that he’d tell me why he named a plain yellow dog ‘Spot,’ but I never did get the story. You’re probably right, though—too much fur for a lab. She’s got the persistence, though.”

The VFW was nearly empty, result of it being a Wednesday and still early yet, but Isaiah the bartender (and janitor, and event coordinator, and all-around decent guy) was glued to the tiny television at the other end of the room so Dave got Rick another bottle himself. Isaiah saw him stand, looked up, and waved.

“Guess we’ll just have to hope Lito comes back so you can ask,” Rick said, tossing a five on the counter. “You think he’ll stick?”

God, Dave hoped so. There really was no way to tell, unfortunately. Not this early. “Maybe?”

Rick huffed. “That last girl you found wouldn’t have been a good fit anyway. Her heart was never in it. I know we do need more bodies—”

“Going a bit beyond need at this point.”

“Still.”

He wasn’t wrong, Dave had to admit. Debbie had been a sophomore at the community college and living with her parents, but her six-month-old puppy had been an absolute dream to work with. Energetic, focused, starved for attention, and ridiculously eager to please. The lady at the shelter where she’d adopted him had recommended NALSAR as a way she could encourage him to burn off some energy. The two of them had lasted for about six weeks before Debbie decided the dog team interfered too much with her social life and called it quits. Dave fervently hoped her pup was getting some alternate source of exercise, wherever they were now.

“One more pair would work. If they were able to do regular call-outs.” That was the main issue. “We’re treading water right now, but only having four available dogs means we can’t afford for anyone to have a work conflict or be too sick to search when we get asked.”

“Five dogs,” Rick corrected. “Sharon can run both of ours, in a pinch.”

Doesn’t matter. “Five, then. Still four handlers. Lumpy and Woozy do fine for school visits, but they’re not getting any younger and we’ve been hurting for two years now. Even one more team member would help a lot.”

“It’s not going to replace Jessica, you know.” Rick drummed his fingertips on the bar, suddenly more interested in the scarred wood than in looking Dave’s way. “Whoever we find to join us, whether it’s Lito and Spot or someone else, it won’t be the same. Jessica’s gone and even though Steve is dealing with it okay, we’ve got to start being proactive in how we patch the team back up again.”

Dave didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to even think about Jessica, actually, but Rick was right. “Would be a hell of a lot easier to get back on our feet with more people on our side,” he grumbled, exaggerating the petulance in his voice purely to hear Rick snort. “For all that Jessica and Steve pissed each other off at every possible opportunity, she and Copper were a good team. And I think it was the first decent father-daughter bonding time that those two ever really had.”

“That’s on Steve, though.” Rick toyed with the label on his bottle, picking at one corner. It was a pretty strong indication he was trying to work himself up to broaching some topic he didn’t really want to discuss. That makes two of us. “Look,” he finally said. “I’m not saying I’m not enjoying what we do, but…maybe it’s time to let the team become a little more casual? Cut back on the practices, keep running the dogs we have, but not kill ourselves trying to respond to every call-out in a three-state radius? It’s just—it feels like we’re spread too thin. We can’t keep everything going like it was five or ten years ago. You can’t keep everything going like it was. Eventually something’s gotta give.”

“I can start looking for a new dog,” Dave blurted out. It was something he’d considered, and rejected, many times over. “I know I said I’m not ready for a third pup right now, but it would get me back out there on the ground—”

“Dave. Shut up.” Rick pinned him with a we both know you didn’t mean that look. “Not six months ago you were sitting in this exact spot and telling me you couldn’t afford the time and the money to take on another puppy. You said you were more help to NALSAR in a non-handler capacity, and that hasn’t changed. Lumpy and Woozy are tolerant as hell but that doesn’t mean they need you splitting your attention.”

Damn. “I hate when you’re right.” Between Woozy’s arthritis and Lumpy’s one-two punch of cataracts and canine diabetes, Dave’s pet budget was already stretched beyond what most people would consider reasonable. Adding another dog would require all three mammals in the Schmidt household to approve, and—despite his pups’ laissez faire personalities—the chances of finding the right new dog were fairly low even if he could justify it.

Rick chuckled half-heartedly. “I know you don’t want to think about it,” he said, “but sometimes you’ve already done all you can do. Someday when you’re old and lonely, I’ll help you find the smartest puppy ever and you can get back out there as a dog and handler team. For right now, though, we need to take things one step at a time.” He glanced down at his wheelchair and grimaced. “So to speak.”

Fifteen years of friendship had rendered Rick’s missing feet—among other completely inappropriate topics—an old joke between them. The IED responsible had also taken Dave’s explosives detection dog, who had really been the one doing the work anyway. Whom Dave was steadfastly not going to let himself think about.

“You don’t like steps anymore,” Dave teased.

“Jackass.” Rick grinned and kicked Dave’s shin with his own. “I’ll have you know this chair goes down stairs just fine, as long as they’re little ones. It’s getting it up that’s the problem.”

“Hey, whatever problems you have with keeping it up, keep those between you and Sharon—”

“Screw you,” Rick interjected. “Just for that, you get to run the business meeting next practice.”

“Enjoy it while we still have a team to practice with.”

Rick shook his head, the levity falling away. “Just…give it time, all right? We’ll see if this Lito guy works out or not, but if not…NALSAR doesn’t have to be your whole life, you know. You can do other things. It’s allowed.”

Dave knew. Of course he knew. But what else was there?

* * * *

Hope you had fun last night! See you tomorrow? - Dave, Lumpy, and Woozy

The dude signed his texts as if they were from his dogs. That was really damn adorable. Lito unclipped Spot from her leash and topped off her water bowl so she could rehydrate after their run. There was no question she enjoyed being out and about with him as they covered what had now tentatively become their “usual” route, but she had obviously loved getting to play with the other dogs during search team practice even more. She’d also loved the frantic dash-back-and-forth-for-treats without having to slow her speed for her poor bipedal human. Lito’s new rental house had a small backyard—a luxury they’d never had in Atlanta—but it wasn’t fenced. Letting Spot charge around out there unsupervised probably wasn’t a good idea, no matter how much she might have disagreed with him. Lito poured himself a cup of ice water and downed it in one go. Damn, it was muggy and miserable out there. Autumn, my ass. He refilled the glass, pulled out his phone again, and thumbed out a response.

Woof, woof! - Spot

Pretty sure that’s “can’t wait” in dog. - Lito

It was five minutes to seven, so Lito headed for his living room and turned on his PlayStation. He and some of the guys in Atlanta had a standing “date” for gaming on Wednesday nights, and he was extra-thankful for that fact now that he was two and a half hours away from everyone else. Or farther, for some—Brandon was now living out in the suburbs on the east side of Atlanta with his new boyfriend, Paul, and Jericho was on the home stretch of a three-year stint in Haiti. He had crap internet access most of the time but he joined them whenever he could. Black Lake felt like the middle of nowhere, Lito decided, but it definitely could have been worse.

Tonight the gang ended up being him, Brandon and Paul, and a handful of the usual crew. Lito slipped on his headset, got comfortable on his beat-up secondhand sofa with Spot lying on his feet, and signed in.

“—and look who’s here,” Chris said, his voice loud through the headphones. “Lito, my man! How’s exile?”

“Oh, screw you.”

“That good, huh?”

“He means he misses your twink ass,” Ian chimed in. “Both your ass specifically and the rest of your hot bod attached to it.”

“None of y’all have ever gotten that close to my ass,” Lito countered. “Like I’d share it with you losers.”

“As opposed to that dude with the rainbow squid tattoo last year? Yeah, real winner there.”

Ian had a point, but Lito couldn’t flip him off over audio chat so he settled for taking another gulp of his water instead. “We playing Overwatch again tonight, gentlemen?”

“And he changes the subject. Nice.” Chris laughed, but they settled into the game with no more than the usual amount of bickering. Paul and Brandon were the best players in their little circle—by far—but Lito usually managed to not drag their group’s team down too much. He snagged his favorite character, the one with the ice powers, and relaxed into the sofa cushions while everyone else worked out who got dibs on DPS and who got stuck playing the healer. As so often happened, Brandon finally ended up handing out assignments so they’d have a balanced squad. He was excellent at battle strategy, as evidenced by the fact that they won their first two games handily. The crew usually got their asses handed to them when Brandon and Paul weren’t online.

“But seriously, Lito,” Ian said during a lull between rounds, “I want to know how your new job is treating you. Or, you know. Not new necessarily—you said you’re still doing a lot of the same stuff?—but new location. This is the first time you’ve lived in a small town, right?”

It was, and Lito was a bit surprised he’d remembered. Attention to detail wasn’t usually Ian’s strong suit. “Miami, Orlando, and Atlanta,” Lito answered. “And Lima, technically, although we moved when I was still too little to remember it. So yeah, it’s an adjustment.”

“Is it terrible?”

“Believe it or not,” Paul cut in, “most of Alabama got electricity way back in the eighties. Some of the towns even have cars.”

“Fuck you.” Ian said it with a laugh. “Just for that, you get to play Mercy this next round. I’m sick of having the big glowing ‘healer’ target on my back.”

Now that Lito thought about it…Paul was from a town about the same size as Black Lake, wasn’t he? He’d moved in with Brandon in Atlanta after some sort of messy fallout when an ex outed him to the conservative religious college he’d been teaching at, but the whole thing had finally been worked out a few months earlier and he and Brandon seemed perfectly happy together out in suburbia now. “It’s not as terrible as I’d feared,” Lito admitted, “but I still miss you guys like crazy. It’s lonely here.”

Adam, who’d been pretty typically quiet so far, made a sound of commiseration. “Hard to imagine you staying lonely for long, dude,” he said. “You attract friends the way flowers attract bees.”

“Only friends like you guys.” Friends who got him. “I think it’s safe to say there aren’t a lot of people like y’all in Black Lake. I only accepted the move because I didn’t have much of a choice if I wanted to keep my job. I like it, I’m good at it, and Dayspring practically built their purchasing and renovation procedures around me. If I have to get exiled to Bumfuck, Alabama to keep doing my thing, then that’s what I’ve got to do.”

“I thought it was because you hated telling your bosses no,” Chris chimed in.

“You hate telling anyone no,” Brandon teased. “Except Ian.”

Ian mumbled something that sounded like “screw you.”

They weren’t entirely wrong. Ronald and Betty ran their hotel chain like a family business, and Lito had long ago been adopted into the fold. And yeah, so maybe he was “the gay designer.” Might as well own it, right? Even if the new office was a bit…less welcoming than he’d hoped.

“It’s different here.” Painfully so. The not-rightness was hard to explain, but Lito tried anyway. “I’m the only man at work. Also the only non-white person, the only non-straight one, and the only one who’s ever lived within reasonable shopping distance of an IKEA. Everyone’s been nothing but nice, but it keeps feeling like the old ‘bless his heart’ kind of Southern nice, you know? Like they’re not sure what to make of the strange gay decorator so they’re just faking it. I still haven’t met my new direct supervisor, either—she’s been on a business trip all week. I’m really hoping she’s not as weird-Southern-sweet as the rest of them.”

“So find somewhere else to get your socializing in,” Brandon suggested. “Join a rec league. Take up swing dancing. Whatever.”

“Right, and dance with who?” Lito could just picture the looks he’d get if he showed up at whatever passed for the local watering hole and started grinding on random dudes. Probably not just evil looks—a full-on beatdown was more likely. “I don’t think there’s much of a local LGBT scene. Can’t spit without hitting a church, though.”

Ian made an amused noise. “Take Spot for lots of walks and hope you run into a cute guy with a compatible dog, maybe? Isn’t that where you found that personal trainer dude way back when?”

“I, um.” Prior experience suggested he really ought to tell them about NALSAR now so they could get the teasing out of their systems all at once. “I’m thinking of joining a search dog team, actually. The rescue-lost-hikers-in-the-woods kind. I mean, I’ve only been to one practice so far, but it was fun. Spot loved it.”

“Damn, dude!” Adam exclaimed. “Go you, getting out of your comfort zone! Never would have taken you for a nature type. Not with that whole ‘city boy’ thing.”

“Oh, me either.” Hell, he’d never even been anywhere that could be termed “nature” until he was already an adult, Miami’s beaches excepted. “It’s kind of nice, though. There’s about half a dozen people on the team and they all seem pretty easygoing. I bumped into the team trainer at the pet store this past weekend and he invited me out to see it for myself. I was curious, and bored, so…yeah.”

“Ha!” Ian sang a few bars of “bow-chicka-wow-wow” cheesy-porn-style music. “Let me guess—the trainer dude is hot. And built.”

Lito rolled his eyes at Ian’s totally predictable guess. The guy made for a terrifically reliable friend, probably Lito’s best friend in their little group, but he had sex on the brain 24/7 and rarely had much of a filter. Sometimes it was a wonder he managed to make time for things like eating or going to work. “He’s…not bad looking,” Lito admitted. “No reason to think he plays for our team, unfortunately.”

“Like that’s ever stopped you from appreciating when something good is in front of you.”

No point arguing with that. “I try to be subtle, at least.” Had it been only in his imagination that Dave was eyeing him with more than just professional interest? Or that Dave’s texts were a touch flirty? “Afraid this one is wishful thinking, but if he ever lets me take a picture of him and his dogs I’ll send it to y’all. I honestly can’t tell whether he spends all his free time at the gym or whether he, like, chops his own firewood or something, but you’d appreciate the chance to ogle.”

“Hot damn,” Ian said, and whistled. “You know me so well. Although I guess chances are if he is gay, he’s probably in the closet. Can’t imagine otherwise living way out there.”

Yeah, thanks. There was an awkward moment of silence while nobody wanted to point out that Lito was living “way out there,” thankyouverymuch, but then Brandon put them in the queue for the next capture-the-flag battle and the game eventually resumed. Lito found himself paying significantly less attention than he had been before.

Was it possible Dave was in the closet? r anything other than one hundred percent straight? Unlikely, Lito had to give Ian that, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Both of them liking cock didn’t mean Dave would be interested in Lito’s cock (or any other part of him), of course, but Dave hadn’t seemed to mind Lito flirting a bit. A very little bit. If nothing else, daydreaming about Dave was going to make a nice little fantasy until Lito got settled into his new, much-less-LGBT-friendly life.

However long that took.