Lost Predator

by Alicia Brodersen

  Books in the Primeval series

  A RIP IN TIME

  DANGEROUS DIMENSION

  THE LOST PREDATOR

  FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  puffinbooks.com

  First published 2008

  1

  Text copyright © Impossible Pictures, 2008

  Photographs copyright © Impossible Pictures, 2008

  Adapted by Alicia Brodersen

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America,

  this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,

  by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated

  without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition

  being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  978-0-14-191854-9

  Today was turning out to be a very good day for Andy. Not only was he already several holes ahead of his game partner, Jeff, but now – as he veered round a corner in his golf buggy – he could see the fairway stretching ahead, down towards the stately Victorian manor that doubled as the club house. If he played this next shot right, he’d be straight on to the green and back inside the club for lunch.

  ‘Tiger Woods.’ He smiled smugly to himself. ‘Eat your heart out!’

  Andy jumped out of the buggy and placed a tee in the grass. Pulling out his favourite club, he put the ball into place and lined up the shot. Unfortunately, it took three missed shots before Andy finally got it right.

  Thwack!

  A grin spread across Andy’s face as the ball and club connected, sending the small white sphere spinning into the air. But as he watched in dismay, the ball arched and headed downwards, straight into a water hazard a few metres away from the right of the green.

  Andy shook his head in disbelief. What a way to ruin a perfect day. His mobile began to ring in his pocket. It was Jeff, wondering if Andy was on the green yet.

  Andy looked back at the pond his ball had just fallen into.

  ‘Yeah,’ he bluffed, squinting in the sunshine. ‘Easy.’

  Andy closed his phone and headed purposefully towards the water. If he didn’t find the ball soon, Jeff would beat him to the eighteenth and he wouldn’t hear the end of it for months.

  Andy inched towards the edge of the water trap, carefully putting his hand into the murky green water as a slight breeze whistled through the bullrushes at the edge of the pond. Feeling around in the mud, Andy soon found the ball and pulled it out.

  It was just as well Andy wasn’t really paying attention to his surroundings. Because down there in the pond, twisted among the water weed and smiling a grey, lifeless grin, lay the bones of a baby deer. From the puncture wounds in its skull it was clear the unlucky creature hadn’t died of natural causes. And now it was lost forever, buried in a watery grave.

  Connor Temple smiled satisfactorily at the breakfast laid out on the tray before him. A ripe plum, a freshly brewed pot of coffee, a fluffy croissant… yes – this was the life! Standing in the kitchen in his dressing gown, Connor couldn’t have been happier.

  He’d been staying at his friend Abby Maitland’s place in London for a month now, and he loved it. He was sleeping on the sofa – after he’d been kicked out of student digs for not being able to keep up with the rent.

  But Abby loved animals and had a job as a keeper at Wellington Zoo, which meant that her home decorating reflected her lifestyle. It really was something else.

  Connor loved the cactus plants lined up beside the radiators. He loved the lizard posters and kooky creature ornaments that hung along the walls. He even loved all the reptile pets that lived in glass boxes at various points around the main living room.

  But most of all, Connor loved the fact he got to see Abby every day. He’d had a massive crush on her since the moment they’d met. Connor was convinced that the longer he stuck around, the sooner Abby was going to realize how much she liked him too!

  Connor took the breakfast tray in both hands, just as Abby came walking through the door, rubbing her eyes. As always, she was wearing the skimpy clothes she’d been sleeping in.

  ‘Morning!’ she smiled sleepily, eyeing the breakfast tray. ‘Aw… you shouldn’t have!’

  ‘Shouldn’t have what?’ Connor said, oblivious to her hint. He inched around her. ‘Excuse me!’

  Abby put her hands on her hips as she watched him leave the kitchen. The cheek of him! Abby thought back to when Connor had turned up uninvited on her doorstep, begging for a place to stay for a few days. And now he’d been here a month and couldn’t even be bothered to make her breakfast!

  Abby followed Connor into the living room, intending to ask him how much longer he’d be staying. But something was wrong – the room felt so hot! Abby looked at the thermostat on the wall.

  ‘Thirty-four degrees?’ she cried.

  Connor averted his eyes and scuttled nervously over to sit at the dinner table in the middle of the room.

  ‘Yep,’ he replied breezily, as he began to wolf down his breakfast. ‘Rex was looking a wee bit chilly.’

  Connor began to feel a little sheepish as Abby glared at him. Even though they both knew the temperature of the flat needed to be warm for Abby’s reptile collection, she obviously didn’t believe him.

  ‘The way I see it,’ he added cheekily, ‘if we get too hot, we can just take a bit more kit off, can’t we?’

  Abby sighed as she looked over at her pet dinosaur Rex. He was thirstily slurping at a water bowl on top of the glass box that doubled as his home. The small reptile looked too hot, if anything – the thin, limecoloured crest on his head opening and closing like a Chinese fan, his long green body swaying from side to side as his transparent wings stuck firmly by his sides. The flying Coelurosauravus returned Abby’s gaze and happily licked its lips. Connor noticed Abby’s expression softening and decided to try again.

  ‘If that little fellow gets too cold, well…’ he said, casually pouring himself a coffee. ‘I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to him, Abby…’

  Connor snuck a glance at his friend and was relieved to see she was having second thoughts. He was the only other person that knew Abby had kept the little dinosaur that she’d found in the Forest of Dean when she’d been called out to investigate a strange lizard sighting. There was no way she’d sacrifice Rex’s welfare for anything.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she said, heading off to the kitchen to fix herself some breakfast.

  Connor smiled.
Did he have Abby sussed or what? If she could see how much he cared about Rex, then surely she was going to see how much he cared about her too. It wouldn’t be too long now before she realized he was perfect boyfriend material!

  Back at the golf course, Andy and Jeff had finally met up. Andy was driving his buggy along the fairway and feeling superior – in more ways than one.

  ‘Jeff,’ Andy was saying in a condescending tone. ‘You could have got your own buggy. You didn’t have to be such a tightwad, did you?’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Jeff, pulling his golf bag wearily behind him in the hot sun. ‘Give us a lift.’

  Andy gave his golfing partner a pitying look. ‘Come on, then,’ he said, with a glint in his eye. ‘Hurry up.’

  But just as Jeff went to pull his golf bag up on to the cart, Andy put his foot to the accelerator and took off. Laughing, he watched as the figure of a clearly irate Jeff grew smaller in his rear-view mirror.

  A few minutes later Andy wasn’t in such a good mood. Once again, he was having trouble with his golf swing. This time, the ball had veered off into a patch of trees, way off the side of the green.

  Andy walked into the undergrowth and started searching through shrubs. Ouch! He pulled his hand back in shock when a thorn ripped into his finger. Andy shook his hand in pain as drops of blood flew from the wound and landed on a nearby tree. How annoying! Now he had no ball and a bad golf hand. How was he going to beat Jeff back to the club house now?

  Andy trudged out of the trees and back on to the green. He looked across the course for his friend, but there was no one in sight. Andy started walking towards his tee, only to be distracted by a noise that seemed to be coming up fast behind him. Andy turned round but there was no one on the ground. Instead, he was horrified to see a large shadow descending rapidly from the sky towards him. What on earth was that?

  Whatever it was, it was coming straight for him. A petrified Andy dropped his club and started pelting down the fairway.

  Seconds later, as he lined up a shot further up the green through the trees, Jeff stopped mid-swing as a blood-curdling scream split the air. He ran through the shrubs and back on to the fairway, only to be confronted by the most horrific thing he’d ever seen. There, lying on the edge of the undergrowth, was a body. It was clear from the bloody wounds that the person was dead.

  Jeff inched closer. A wave of nausea came over him as he noticed the body’s golf shoes. They looked horribly familiar.

  They were Andy’s.

  ‘I’m off to yoga!’ Abby said, emerging from her bedroom dressed in sweats.

  ‘Right,’ said Connor absentmindedly. ‘Well – any time you need help with your bending or with your stretching, give me a call.’

  Abby stood in front of the television, forcing a smile. She was used to Connor dropping stupid hints about how much he liked her, and she’d long ago learnt to ignore them.

  ‘Windows shut at all times,’ she reminded him, looking over at Rex as he flexed his wings.

  Connor mumbled in agreement and leant over, trying to look around her as his game progressed on the telly without him.

  ‘Get in and leave by the same exit,’ Abby continued firmly, picking up her yoga mat. Connor responded by waving her out of the way.

  Abby glared at him, annoyed. Honestly – he was impossible. It was like talking to a child. She’d have to get him to move out in the next couple of days, or else he was going to drive her crazy! Abby stormed out of the flat, slamming the front door behind her.

  Connor paused the game to watch her go as Rex fluttered over to the couch and perched beside him. The young man looked at the tiny dinosaur and grinned.

  ‘She likes me, Rex,’ he smiled, misinterpreting Abby’s irritation completely. ‘Oh yeah… she likes me bad!’

  ‘Four hours?’ Claudia Brown was pacing through the gardens of the manor that housed the golf club, berating Captain Ryan of the SAS as the rest of his soldiers surged throughout the surrounding woodland.

  ‘I told you to seal the perimeter – not drystone wall it!’ Claudia huffed, annoyed at how long things were taking. If her boss at the Home Office, James Lester, got wind of this, she’d be in big trouble. ‘I want it done in an hour. Where’s the golfer’s body?’

  ‘In the casualty clearance centre in the main house,’ the captain replied, unfazed. He knew she’d been thrown in at the deep end when all this dinosaur business surfaced. Considering she was one of the younger staff members of the Home Office he admired the tough way she’d handled it so far. Besides, he was used to her brisk method of dealing with things.

  It had been over an hour since Jeff had made his gruesome discovery. Given the severity of the attack, the local police had quickly realized it was a much more serious case than they could handle. The SAS had immediately been called in to investigate. Now, Ryan, the captain of the squad, and Claudia were surveying the scene.

  Instructing Ryan to keep her briefed on any updates, Claudia made her way over to an ambulance parked at the front of the manor. The victim’s friend, wrapped in a red blanket, was clearly in shock. Professor Nick Cutter, a palaeontologist from the Central Metropolitan University, was listening intently to Jeff’s version of events. Cutter ran the Department of Evolutionary Zoology at the college, and had helped discover the very first anomaly that had opened in the Forest of Dean several months ago.

  As he saw Claudia approaching, Cutter left Jeff in the hands of one of the paramedics.

  ‘What did he see?’ she demanded, her pretty face looking authoritative.

  ‘It was all over by the time he got there,’ replied Cutter, slightly bemused by Claudia’s lack of greeting. Like Ryan, he was used to her getting straight to the point. But there were other qualities about Claudia Brown that Cutter was beginning to warm to.

  ‘Any sign of the anomaly?’ Claudia pressed.

  ‘We don’t know for sure there is one yet,’ said Cutter firmly, watching Claudia raise a sceptical eyebrow. ‘I need to see the victim.’

  Claudia stared at the older man’s rugged features. They had been working together for some months now, and she was starting to like him. But they were so different. Here she was, a professional young woman with her hair nicely done, wearing a smart white jacket and slacks with a rose-coloured blouse. Cutter, meanwhile, gave the impression that he had never set foot inside an office – he was unkempt and unshaven in a faded grey T-shirt and jeans. Although, Claudia had to admit to herself, he was rather attractive. And he was the person Britain was relying on to help them through this terrible threat.

  Claudia smiled to herself as she remembered that a couple of months ago, she hadn’t even known what an anomaly was. But now she’d got used to the strange calls telling her yet another dinosaur had travelled through the ‘doorways in time’, as Nick called them. Prehistoric creatures had been arriving in present-day Britain through these large rips in the atmosphere for a while now. It certainly wasn’t your average day at the office.

  ‘Look, I think I should warn you… Lester’s getting impatient,’ Claudia said carefully, reminding Cutter of the prime minister’s man in charge of the investigation. ‘He thinks you cause as many problems as you solve.’

  ‘And what do you think?’ replied Cutter with a slight smile.

  ‘I think it could be helpful if we could show him we’re making some sort of progress,’ Claudia challenged.

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or… it becomes difficult.’ Claudia frowned as concern crept into her dark brown eyes. ‘Please don’t make me take sides, Nick.’

  Cutter watched as Claudia turned and strode purposefully back over to the SAS unit, further down the manor’s gravel driveway. He was beginning to like her too, but she could be so stubborn – much like her boss.

  James Lester was a government man who didn’t know why the anomalies were happening, but just wanted Cutter to make them stop. Cutter didn’t trust him, mostly because Lester and his people thought they were in control of the situation. They d
idn’t like to think that one scientist could know more than they did. And sometimes, Cutter could see Claudia behaving the same way.

  Cutter checked his watch as he walked back over to the ambulance. It was time to call in the rest of his team.

  Back in Abby’s flat, Connor was still playing his computer game when the phone rang.

  ‘Abby Maitland’s Love Shack!’ greeted Connor, picking up the receiver. ‘Number One Stud speaking!’

  Connor’s face fell as he heard the voice at the other end of the line. It was the professor, asking him to get down to the golf club right away.

  Connor threw down the phone and ran to get dressed, cursing his stupidity. He was the one who had originally persuaded the professor and his lab assistant, Stephen Hart, to investigate the dinosaur sighting that had led to them finding the first anomaly.

  That’s where the three of them had met Abby too – it was while she was investigating a strange lizard sighting that she’d stumbled upon Cutter, Stephen and Connor. So by default the four of them had become a team, cobbled together to explore the dinosaur phenomenon. But Connor had always felt Cutter saw him only as a student and not as a peer. And he knew saying stupid things on the phone wasn’t going to help his cause.

  Within a minute Connor was heading out of the flat. He was so excited about the new anomaly that he didn’t even stop to say goodbye to Rex. Instead, he just grabbed Abby’s car keys and slammed the front door behind him.

  A curious Rex watched Connor leave. It didn’t take long for the little creature to notice the open window above the radiator, swaying back and forth in the breeze.

  Outside in the street, Connor got into Abby’s Mini and leant over to the passenger side to grab hold of the A-Z from the dashboard. Pinpointing the fastest route to the golf course, he quickly straightened up and pulled the door shut. Connor started the car and sped off down the road.

  Connor was completely oblivious to the fact that a little, green Coelurosauravus had silently flown from the window of the flat above, through the open door of the car and was now perched quite happily on the back seat.