Cougar Bait Read online

  “What the hell? I . . . I’m youthening,” Samantha muttered, staring at herself in the mirror.

  “No, you’re Rejuvenating,” a voice said behind her.

  She whirled around, her arms coming up instinctively to cover her nakedness.

  Eddie Lounds was standing there with a wide grin on his narrow face. But it wasn’t his face that drew her attention—it was his hand.

  He was holding a gun.

  “Eddie?” She stared at him blankly. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

  “Some alone time with you, Samantha.” His smile became predatory under the pencil-thin black mustache. “But not here—this isn’t private enough.” He waved the gun at her. “Come on, we’re going on a little trip, just the two of us.”

  * * *

  Keller stared at the phone in his hand in disgust. It was the fourth time he’d called Samantha in the past two days and she still hadn’t answered. Instead, her phone kept going to voice mail. He supposed she thought he was calling to try and persuade her to give him another chance, but she could at least have the common decency to tell him to fuck off personally instead of just ignoring him.

  On the phone, he heard her recorded voice telling him to leave a message. Should he bother? She hadn’t answered his first few messages, but he supposed all he could do was try again.

  “Samantha,” he said into the phone. “This is Liam Keller. As I told you in my previous messages, I am not trying to reconnect with you romantically. I do, however, need to speak to you about the night you were attacked. Please call me soon.”

  He sent the message and hung up. Looking out the window of his Manhattan office, he surveyed the city skyline, which was lighting up as the sun set and the sky went dark. The lights reminded him a little of the view of the Vegas Strip he’d had from his hotel room. Which in turn reminded him of being with Samantha, holding her in his arms . . . What was going on with her? Why wasn’t she answering his calls? It worried him, although more from a personal point of view than a professional one.

  Keller would have been more concerned if the compound they’d found in the syringe had been dangerous. But though it proved to have a complex chemical composition with some of the same additives he himself had experimented with, the mixture was essentially inert. In other words, it didn’t matter how much of the stuff the Hyena Shifter had injected Samantha with—it couldn’t hurt her. Still, he thought she ought to know that she’d been injected with a foreign substance, even if that substance was essentially harmless.

  “Mr. Keller? Mr. Keller!” There was an excited rapping at his office door, and then Brody Peals dashed in without waiting for an invitation. “Mr. Keller,” he exclaimed, hurrying over to Keller’s desk, his white lab coat flapping. “Sir, there’s something you have to see.”

  “Hello to you too, Brody,” Keller said dryly. “Thanks for knocking before you came barging in.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome.” Brody nodded—clearly Keller’s sarcasm had gone right over his head. “Mr. Keller, sir, you have to see this. You’re not gonna believe what I found!”

  Keller frowned at the young scientist, but honestly, he couldn’t stay mad at Brody for long. Like Keller himself, Brody had gained early admittance into MIT and was considered one of the brightest students in his class. Keller had spoken at his alma mater, and afterward, Brody approached him with a complicated question about a paper Keller had written. Seeing the boy’s promise, Keller had snapped him up, bringing him to work at Keller Biotech and Robotics the day after he graduated.

  He gave Brody a lot of leeway and allowed him to pick his own projects, but he’d had the boy drop everything to help him analyze the orange compound Samantha had been injected with. Brody had been disappointed when they didn’t find anything significant, and Keller had authorized him to go back to whatever else he was working on at the moment.

  He supposed now that Brody was excited about some new formula or chemical compound he’d discovered. Though Keller was usually very supportive, right at the moment, he didn’t feel like being amazed or excited. He just wanted to sit at his desk and brood over Samantha.

  “Brody,” he said. “I’m really not—”

  “It’s about that compound you gave me—the orange stuff you found in the syringe at that con you attended?”

  “Yes?” Keller’s head jerked up. “I thought we decided it was inert.”

  “It is—at first. But look at this!”

  Reaching into the pocket of his lab coat, Brody pulled out something small and fluffy and set it carefully in the center of Keller’s vast steel-and-glass desk.

  “What’s this?” Keller leaned down and frowned at the little creature that was sniffing around a pile of paperwork. “Why are you showing me a guinea pig?”

  “Not just any guinea pig—a baby guinea pig,” Brody emphasized. “One that appears to be only a few weeks old.”

  “All right,” Keller growled. “Why are you showing me a baby guinea pig, then?”

  “Because it didn’t used to be a baby!” Brody exclaimed. “That’s Celia—one of the pigs we genetically engineered to have that special Gene you’ve been working on for so long.”

  “Oh yes?” Keller felt his heart starting to pound. As Brody wasn’t a Shifter himself, Keller had never gone into an in-depth explanation of the Shifter Gene. The young scientist was under the impression that the Gene was linked to an antiaging study Keller wanted to conduct.

  “So,” Brody continued. “After we analyzed your mystery compound, I made up a batch of the stuff and decided to use some of it. Celia here was handy, and also she was getting pretty old—well, for a guinea pig. They don’t usually live much past four or five years, you know.”

  “So . . .” Keller began to feel numb as the implication sank in. “So you’re saying this guinea pig was old and then you injected the compound and it . . . it rejuvenated back to youth?”

  “Yeah. I injected her two days ago and nothing seemed to happen except I noticed Celia was kind of sluggish and lethargic. But she usually is—I mean, she’s like, a grandma guinea pig, you know?”

  “Yes, I know,” Keller said tightly. “So when did you first start noticing the changes?”

  “Just now, when I went to feed her,” Brody said. “Well, I mean I was feeding all of the pigs, but when I got to her cage, I noticed that Celia was kind of trembling and shaking. Then she started scratching and clawing at herself all over. I was afraid she might hurt herself, so I took her out and as I was holding her . . .” His eyes widened behind his glasses. “She started changing.”

  “Changing? Changing how?” Keller demanded.

  “I dunno—her eyes got brighter and she started getting friskier. And then she started shrinking—all right while I was holding her in my hands!” Brody held out his cupped hands, as though to demonstrate. “When she finally stopped, she looked like that.” He pointed at the tiny furry creature on Keller’s desk again. “And I realized she had somehow gotten younger. Like, way younger.” He shook his head. “That stuff in the orange compound, it doesn’t seem like it would do anything, but I guess it’s time release or something. Or maybe it reacts to that special gene once it gets inside the host’s body. But for whatever reason, that’s the result—instant youth. Well, instant after a couple of days, anyway.”

  Instant youth . . . Rejuvenation!

  Keller stared at the tiny guinea pig blankly. Was the chemical the Hyena Shifter had injected Samantha with meant to bring on Rejuvenation in a female with a latent Gene?

  “No,” he muttered to himself. “It can’t be—it’s impossible.”

  He knew it was impossible because he had worked for years himself, trying to discover such a compound—a chemical cocktail that would bring a latent Shifter Gene to life. It had been his hope that Rachel would agree to take it after he perfected it. That she would agree to spend her life with him.

  But that was before. Before she—

  Keller pushed the old pain aside—it