Chapter 5 #3
The teacher took the sleeve with obvious delight. Maddox and Zeus stepped into the hallway, and she could hear the excited whispers as the kids watched their teacher hide it.
A small voice asked from inside, “How does he know where to look?”
“Zeus has an amazing sense of smell, about forty times better than ours. He can smell things we can’t even imagine,” Jade said.
A pause, then, “Does that mean he can smell what we had for breakfast?”
Laughter rippled through the gym, including Jade’s.
“Probably,” Jade said. “That’s why we always want to be kind to working dogs. They notice everything.”
Mrs. Patterson called them back in. Maddox gave Zeus the search command, and he moved through the gym with purposeful efficiency, his nose working and body language shifting as he narrowed on the hidden sleeve. When he found it, he sat and looked directly at Maddox, waiting for acknowledgement.
“Good,” Maddox said, rewarding him. The kids erupted in applause.
Questions came rapid-fire after that, and Maddox fielded them with practiced ease. Jade wove herself into the conversation so naturally that Maddox almost didn’t notice when the questions shifted.
“How many of you felt a little nervous when Zeus was searching?” Jade asked. Several hands shot up. “That’s good. That’s your brain keeping you safe by paying attention. Zeus feels nervous sometimes, too, especially when his job is really hard.”
A girl in the front row frowned. “But he’s a police dog. Police dogs aren’t scared.”
Maddox opened her mouth, but Jade caught her eye with a pointed nod.
“Even the bravest dogs and people feel scared sometimes,” Jade said. “What makes them brave isn’t that they don’t feel scared. It’s that they do their job anyway, and they trust their team to help them.”
Maddox felt something shift from deep in her chest.
“Zeus trusts Officer Shaw to keep him safe,” Jade continued. “And Officer Shaw trusts Zeus to keep her safe. That’s called teamwork, and it’s okay to need your team. Even police officers need help sometimes.”
She glanced up at Maddox, the question implicit—okay?
Maddox nodded, then picked up the thread without planning to. “Zeus’s job is hard. Sometimes we work in loud places or scary situations.” She rested her hand on Zeus’s head, his warmth solid and grounding. “But we trust each other. That’s what makes us good partners.”
A boy in the back raised his hand. “Do you ever get scared?”
The gym went quiet, fifty kids and three teachers waiting for her answer. Jade watched, not with a therapy-observation but something like curiosity.
“Yes,” Maddox said. The word came easier than she’d expected. “But Zeus helps me be brave.”
Jade's small smile was private, meant only for Maddox. Thank you, it said.
The demo wound down with supervised petting time with kids approaching Zeus in small groups, gentle hands on his fur, his tail wagging with patient tolerance.
Maddox and Jade managed the crowd together, directing traffic, ensuring Zeus's comfort, and correcting overexcited children with kindness instead of reprimand.
They worked well together. Maddox couldn't deny it anymore.
When the last kid had been herded back to their teacher and the gym began to clear, Mrs. Patterson approached with obvious gratitude.
"That was wonderful," she said. "Best assembly we've had all year. The kids will be talking about this for weeks.”
"I’m glad it went well," Maddox said.
Jade gathered her materials, and they headed for the parking lot in silence, Zeus between them and the spring air warming as morning stretched toward noon.
Maddox should've felt relieved after the demo was complete with no disasters, but instead she felt unsettled and off-balance in a way she couldn’t figure out.
They were packing equipment into their vehicles when Mrs. Patterson materialized from the building, a small boy trailing behind her. “I’m so sorry,” she said, slightly breathless. “Tyler has one more question he was too shy to ask in front of everyone.”
The boy—maybe eight, dark hair, serious expression—looked up at Maddox with the gravity of someone about to ask something deeply important.
“It’s fine,” Maddox said. “What’s your question, Tyler?”
He glanced at his teacher for encouragement, then back at Maddox. “Does Zeus ever…you know”—his voice dropped to a whisper—”go to the bathroom during work?”
Maddox kept her face carefully neutral. “Yes, he’s trained to wait for breaks, but sometimes nature calls.”
Tyler’s whole body sagged with relief. “Okay, good. I was really worried about that.”
“It’s an understandable concern,” Maddox said, maintaining her professional tone despite the corner of her mouth twitching.
Tyler nodded and ran back toward the building, satisfied. Mrs. Patterson followed with an apologetic wave.
Silence settled over the parking lot for a minute, then Jade made a sound, a half-snort half-laugh, and pressed her hand over her mouth.
Maddox glanced over. “What?”
“That kid”—Jade’s shoulders shook—”he spent the entire demo worried Zeus might pee on stage.”
“It’s valid,” Maddox said, but her lips were twitching more too.
“And you answered so seriously!” Jade lost the battle with composure, genuine laughter escaping. “Like it was a tactical question.”
“It was a serious question!”
Jade laughed harder, the sound warm and infectious, and Maddox felt something crack open in her chest. A smile broke through first, then an actual laugh, rusty and unfamiliar but real.
Zeus looked up from where he’d been drinking water, head titled in obvious confusion at the sound coming from his handler. That made it worse, and Maddox laughed harder, pointing at Zeus’s bewildered expression. “He has no idea what’s happening.”
“He’s like ‘who is this person?’” Jade managed between laughs.
“He’s probably never heard me laugh.” The words slipped out before Maddox could stop them, truth escaping in the moment’s lightness.
The laughter faded gradually, leaving something else in its wake. Maddox’s walls tried to reconstruct themselves, muscle memory and habit. “We should finish packing.”
But the damage was done. Jade had seen her laugh—really laugh, unguarded and genuine—and Maddox had admitted it was rare enough to be remarkable.
They loaded their vehicles in silence, but it wasn’t the same tense silence from before.
Something had shifted into something almost comfortable, and Maddox wondered when had silence between them become comfortable?
Zeus settled between them as they worked, his presence a bridge neither of them asked for but both seemed to accept.
“Thanks for letting me be a part of this,” Jade said, closing her car door. “You were right. The kids definitely wanted to see Zeus work.”
Maddox surprised herself with her response. “Your part wasn’t terrible.”
Jade’s smile reached her eyes. “I’ll take it,” she said, though they both knew it was high praise.
“Same time next month?” The words came out before Maddox could stop them. “Different school, I mean.”
She was offering to work together again, choosing proximity when she could’ve suggested they split the demos in alternate schools.
“I’d like that,” Jade said.
They parted ways, but Maddox sat in her vehicle longer than necessary afterward, the engine idling, as she watched Jade make a left toward downtown. Zeus’s head rested on the console between the seats.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Maddox muttered. “It was just work.”
Zeus’s expression clearly said he didn’t believe her. Neither did she. The laugh and ease had been real, and somewhere in that elementary school gymnasium surrounded by fifty kids and their questions, something between them had shifted.
Maddox wasn’t ready to examine what it meant that Jade could make her laugh or that working together felt more natural than forced. She put the vehicle in gear and headed back to the precinct, but the feeling followed for—unsettled and off-balance, wall cracking in ways she couldn’t repair.
And the worst part, the truly unsettling part: She wasn’t sure she wanted to repair them anymore.