Primal Estate: The Candidate Species by Samuel Franklin Page A

scratched his cheek with a black hand full of road dirt.
Bad liar, Rick thought and smiled. “You just got dirt all over your face when you scratched it like that.” Rick’s way of telling him that he knew he’d just been lied to. The man went back to tightening nuts. Rick looked at the tire lying in front of him. Gator!

He immediately became much more alert and scanned around the vehicle, his eyes landing on the paint job of the new SUV. There were numerous light scrapes down the side of the door; in fact, they were down the entire length of the vehicle. Rick had the same scrapes down the side of his Jeep. They came from the trees on the narrow back roads. Rick smiled to himself with satisfaction. “You must have been out on these back trails. Looks like you’ve got some pretty nasty scrapes here. Too bad, but they do buff out.” Rick knew he was being a little too friendly now, maybe to the point of being obvious. But this was a challenge for him, to see where this would go. If he denies it then he must be following me, Rick thought.
“No, I’m not sure how that happened.”

Rick parted his jacket and unconsciously put his hand on his belt, just in front of his pistol. “I’m Rick Thompson. I was just out for a drive, too.” Rick put out his hand. “Sure you don’t need any help?” Rick thought, let’s see what this asshole does now.
“Tony Carrian.” He shook Rick's hand after wiping it on his pants. “Nice to meet you, and, no, but thanks for stopping.”

“See you around then.” Rick walked back to his truck while keeping the corner of his eye on Tony and listening for movement when his back was momentarily turned. He memorized the license plate as he pulled away and wrote it down the first chance he got. Why has that asshole been following me?

Chapter 6

Yootu Restricted to his cell

Yootu put his fish on the heat plate and surrounded it with the green stalks of some new kind of plant that they’d recently brought him. In the customs of his people, he would cook the plant, eat a small bite, and wait for hours to see how he felt. The fish was his favorite. He didn’t eat any red meat because he knew it might be human.

He missed sharing his customs with the people of his tribe. But he was wise. And he had learned patience. He sat on a simple stool next to his sizzling food and watched the steam rise. Yootu missed his dogs. He’d had many of them. They were his greatest company when people had been scared of him.
He glanced up at the school-aged Provenger watching him from behind the large window. He smiled while thinking that someday he would like to kill them all. Because, someday, they would grow into adult Provenger.

Emotionally, Yootu was feeling his age. He’d been a prisoner since he’d been taken during a battle which, to him, seemed to have happened many lifetimes ago.
Without their knowing, he had managed to learn their language. From that day on, anything they said, he remembered. His excellent memory kept every detail, every word, and he made it his own. He had the unique ability to remember what one of them had said, even without knowing the word or language they used. When he later learned the word or language they had spoken, he then had the knowledge of what they’d said. He did all this while acting the animal that they expected him to be. He never let on any understanding. Even during his captivity, except for communicating a few meager preferences to make his lodgings a little more bearable, he maintained the image of an idiot.

Despite the stress he’d endured, he was in excellent physical condition. The Provenger saw to it. He had nothing but the best nutrition and physical care. Yootu was an imposing human specimen. He was allowed access to a vast array of strengthening equipment and made good use of it. Though he was covered with scars from the sparring bouts that went a little too far, any injuries of significance were carefully repaired by the excellent Provenger