Read Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog for Free Online Page A

against the door. I did, too. The sky was blue-black, the air crisp. As if he knew that I’d gotten cold, wearing just an oversize T-shirt and sweat socks, Chip put his arm around me and drew me close.
    I was tired, but I had no desire to go to sleep. Even with Chip at my side and our protection-trained dogs just yards away, I had a sense of foreboding, a feeling there was something treacherous in the night, something that required vigilance to keep it at bay. I had told Chip that my new job would just be a matter of research. But I wasn’t convinced of that myself. I was sure he wasn’t either.
    Over dinner, I’d even asked Sophie why she didn’t do the work herself instead of spending a small fortune to have me do it. It was a logical question in this case. At first, she’d said she was too busy, and too tired after work to do much else. “The medication makes me sleepy,” she’d told me. “I’m lucky to get through the day.”
    When I didn’t respond, she’d gone on, telling me how stressful the whole idea was to her, that millions of dollars were being wasted on this project, money that could be used, one way or another, to really help people who needed help. She’d taken my hand then and told me that stress and exhaustion were the two major factors that triggered her seizures. She’d said she hoped I wouldn’t change my mind. That’s when she’d reached into the inside pocket of her coat and counted out my advance, in cash, thinking if all else failed, money might do the trick and persuade me to stay on the case.
    “Would you do it?” Chip asked.
    “What?”
    He didn’t elaborate.
    “Oh, you mean, would I clone Dashiell?”
    He nodded.
    I shook my head. “It wouldn’t be him. It would only look like him,” I said. “What about you?”
    “It sounds like an expensive way to get your heart broken.”
    “I’ve had it done for very little.”
    For a few moments, neither of us spoke.
    “I’ll have him as long as I can,” I said into the night yard. “When he’s gone, I’ll cry my heart out and get another dog.”
    Chip nodded and tightened his arm around me.
    The dogs were lying down together, chewing on each other’s faces.
    We sat there for a long time with nothing else to say. We both knew what was inevitable. For people like us, the life span of dogs is the world’s dirtiest trick. When we finally went upstairs to bed, we called the dogs to join us and held the blanket up so that they could come underneath, Betty burrowing way down to the foot of the bed and Dashiell laying his head on my pillow, stretching out along my side, sighing as he did so.
    “You’ll be careful,” Chip said right before we fell asleep, a statement rather than a question.
    “It’s just a missing-person case,” I told him. “Well, a missing organization, actually.” I snuggled closer. “Yeah, yeah,” I said, “I’ll be careful.”
    He left early to see a client with a destructive golden retriever. I showered and dressed, then turned the phones back on and went to check the blinking answering machine.
    There were no messages, only hang-ups. Eleven of them, all from the same number. It looked familiar. Then I realized why. It was Sophie’s, the one she’d written down on a napkin, along with her work number, at the end of dinner, the one that had appeared on the caller ID box the morning before, when she’d first called.
    What was so urgent that she had to keep trying to reach me all through the night?
    I picked up the phone and dialed her number, but all I got was her answering machine. Odd, I thought. It was too early for her to leave for work. But then I remembered she’d said, whenever possible, she took Bianca to the run before work in the hope that she’d use up enough energy so that she’d just sleep until the walker came at two.
    I left a message saying that I’d wait for her call, but it never came.

Chapter 4
    I Handed Dashiell's Leash to Mel

    After looking up Loma West, the Horatio