Million Dollar Baby. Lisa Jackson

       CHAPTER ONE

      THE DOG STUCK his wet nose in Chandra’s face. He whined and nuzzled her jaw.

      “Go ’way,” Chandra grumbled, squeezing her eyes shut. She burrowed deeper into the pillows, hoping Sam would get the message, but Sam didn’t give up. The persistent retriever clawed at her covers and barked loudly enough to wake the neighbors ten miles down the road. “Knock it off, Sam!” Irritated, she yanked a pillow over her head and rolled over. But she was awake now and couldn’t ignore Sam’s whining and pacing along the rail of the loft; the metal licenses hanging from his collar rattled noisily.

      When she didn’t respond, he snorted loudly and padded quickly down the stairs, whereupon he barked again.

      So he had to go out. “You should’ve thought of this earlier.” Reluctantly, Chandra pulled herself into a sitting position and shoved a handful of hair from her eyes. She shivered a little and, yawning, rubbed her arms.

      Sam barked excitedly, and she considered letting him out and leaving him on the porch. As Indian summer faded into autumn, the nighttime temperature in the Rocky Mountain foothills had begun to dip toward freezing. “It would serve you right,” she said ungraciously as she glanced at the clock on the table near the bed. One forty-three. Still plenty of time to fall asleep again before the alarm clock was set to go off.

      Grumbling under her breath, she had leaned over and was reaching under the bed, feeling around for her boots, when she heard it: the sound that had filtered through her dreams and pierced her subconscious over Sam’s insistent barking. The noise, a distant wail, reminded Chandra of the hungry cry of a baby or the noise a Siamese cat would make if it were in pain. Chandra’s skin crawled.

      You’re imagining things! she told herself. She was miles from civilization….

      The cry, distant and muffled, broke the silence again. Chandra sat bolt upright in bed. Her heart knocked crazily. Clutching the quilt around her shoulders, she swung her feet to the floor and crossed the worn wood planks to the railing, where she could look down and survey the first floor of the cabin.

      Moonlight streamed through the windows, and a few embers glowed behind the glass doors of the wood stove. Otherwise the cabin was cloaked in the darkness that night brought to this isolated stretch of woods.

      She could barely see Sam. His whiskey-colored coat blended into the shadows as he paced beside the door, alternately whining and growling as he scratched on the threshold.

      “So now you’re Lassie, is that it?” she asked. “Telling me that there’s something out there.”

      He yelped back.

      “This is nuts. Hush, Sam,” Chandra commanded, her skin prickling as her eyes adjusted to the shadows. Straining to listen, she reached for the pair of old jeans she’d tossed carelessly across the foot of the bed hours earlier. The familiar noises in this little cabin in the foothills hadn’t changed. From the ticking of the grandfather clock to the murmur of the wind rushing through the boughs of the pine and aspen that surrounded the cabin, the sounds of the Colorado night were as comforting as they had always been. The wind chimes on her porch tinkled softly, and the leaky faucet in the bathroom dripped a steady tattoo.

      The cry came again. A chill raced up Chandra’s spine. Was it a baby?