Lucas Davenport has met his match-a brilliant, wanton killer who knows more about mind games than Lucas himself. This man is more depraved and intelligent than anybody Lucas has tracked before-and with a female psychiatrist in his trap, he's already one step ahead of Lucas... Praise for John Sandford’s Prey Novels   “Relentlessly swift...genuinely suspenseful...excellent.”— Los Angeles Times   “Sandford is a writer in control of his craft.”— Chicago Sun-Times   “Excellent...compelling...everything works.”— USA Today   “Grip-you-by-the-throat thrills...a hell of a ride.”— Houston Chronicle   “Crackling, page-turning tension...great scary fun.”— The New York Daily News   “Enough pulse-pounding, page-turning excitement to keep you up way past bedtime.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune   “One of the most engaging characters in contemporary fiction.”— Detroit News   “Positively chilling.”— St. Petersburg Times   “Just right for fans of The Silence of the Lambs .”— Booklist   “One of the most horrible villains this side of Hannibal.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch    “Ice-pick chills...excruciatingly tense...a double-pumped roundhouse of a thriller.” —Kirkus Reviews John Sandford is the pseudonym of Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of the Prey novels, the Kidd novels, the Virgil Flowers novels, The Night Crew , and Dead Watch. He lives in New Mexico. 1 The storm blew up late in the afternoon, tight,gray clouds hustling over the lake like dirty, balled-upsweat socks spilling from a basket. A chilly wind knockedleaves from the elms, oaks, and maples at the water’sedge. The white phlox and black-eyed Susans bowedtheir heads before it. The end of summer; too soon. John Mail walked down the floating dock at Irv’s BoatWorks, through the scents of premix gasoline, dead, dryingminnows and moss, the old man trailing behind withhis hands in the pockets of his worn gabardines. JohnMail didn’t know about old-style machinery—chokes,priming bulbs, carburetors, all that. He knew diodes andresistors, the strengths of one chip and the weaknesses ofanother. But in Minnesota, boat lore is considered part ofthe genetic pattern: he had no trouble renting a fourteenfootLund with a 9.9 Johnson outboard. A driver’s licenseand a twenty-dollar deposit were all he needed at Irv’s. Mail stepped down into the boat, and with an openhand wiped a film of water from the bench seat and satdown. Irv squatted beside the boat and showed him howto start the motor and kill it, how to steer it and accelerate.The lesson took thirty seconds. Then John Mail, withhis cheap Zebco rod and reel and empty, red-plastic tacklebox, put out on Lake Minnetonka. “Back before dark,” Irv hollered after him. The whitehairedman stood on the dock and watched John Mailputter away. When Mail left Irv’s dock, the sky was clear, the airlimpid and summery, if a little nervous in the west. Somethingwas coming, he thought. Something was hiding belowthe treeline. But no matter. This was just a look, justa taste. He followed the shoreline east and north for threemiles. Big houses were elbow to elbow, millions of dollars’worth of stone and brick with manicured lawns runningdown to the water. Professionally tended flowerbeds were stuck on the lawns like postage stamps, withfaux-cobblestone walks snaking between them. Stoneswans and plaster ducks paddled across the grass. Everything looked different from the water side. Mailthought he’d gone too far, but he still hadn’t picked outthe house. He stopped and went back, then circled. Finally,much farther north than he thought it would be, hespotted the weird-looking tower house, a local landmark.And down the shore, one-two-three, yes, there it was,stone, glass and cedar, red shingles, and, barely visible onthe far side of the roof, the tips of the huge blue sprucesthat lined the street. A bed of petunias, large swirls of red,white, and blue, glowed patriotically from the top of aflagstone wall set into the slope of the lawn. An opencruiser crouched on a boat lift next to the floating dock. Mail killed the outboard and let the boat drift to a stop.The storm was still below the trees, the wind was dyingdown. He picked up the fishing rod, pulled line off thereel and threaded it through the guides and out the tip.Then he took a handful of line and threw it overboard,hookless and weightless. The rat’s-nest of monofilamentdrifted on the surface, but that was good enough. Helooked like he was fishing. Settling on the hard bench seat, Mail hunched hisshoulders and watched the house. Nothing moved. Aftera few minutes, he began to manufacture fantasies. He was good at this: a specialist, in a way. There weretimes when he’d been locked up as punishment, was allowedno books, no games, no TV. A claustrophobic—and they knew he was claustrophobic, that was part ofthe punishment—he’d escaped into fantasy to preservehis mind, sat on his bunk and turned to the blank facingwall and