#1 New York Times bestselling author John Sandford's “haunting, unforgettable, ice-blooded thriller”* that introduced Lucas Davenport...   The killer was mad but brilliant.   He left notes with every woman he killed. Rules of murder: Never have a motive. Never follow a discernible pattern. Never carry a weapon after it has been used... So many rules to his sick, violent games of death.   But Lucas Davenport, the cop who’s out to get him, isn’t playing by the rules. “Terrifying...Sandford has crafted the kind of trimmed-to-the-bone thriller that is hard to put down…scary...intriguing...unpredictable.”— Chicago Tribune   “ Rules of Prey is so chilling that you’re almost afraid to turn the pages. So mesmerizing you cannot stop...A crackle of surprises.” —* Carl Hiaasen “Sleek and nasty...A big scary, suspenseful read, and I loved every minute of it.” — Stephen King “A cop and a killer you will remember for a long, long time.” — Robert B. Parker 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 for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of the Prey novels, the Kidd novels, the Virgil Flowers novels, and six other books, including three YA novels co-authored with his wife Michele Cook. 1 A rooftop billboard cast a flickering blue lightthrough the studio windows. The light ricocheted offglass and stainless steel: an empty crystal bud vase rimedwith dust, a pencil sharpener, a microwave oven, peanut-butterjars filled with drawing pencils, paintbrushes andcrayons. An ashtray full of pennies and paper clips. Jarsof poster paint. Knives. A stereo was dimly visible as a collection of rectangularsilhouettes on the window ledge. A digital clockpunched red electronic minutes into the silence. The maddog waited in the dark. He could hear himself breathe. Feel the sweat tricklefrom the pores of his underarms. Taste the remains of hisdinner. Feel the shaven stubble at his groin. Smell theodor of the Chosen’s body. He was never so alive as in the last moments of a longstalk. For some people, for people like his father, it mustbe like this every minute of every hour: life on a higherplane of existence. The maddog watched the street. The Chosen was anartist. She had smooth olive skin and liquid brown eyes,tidy breasts and a slender waist. She lived illegally in thewarehouse, bathing late at night in the communal restroom down the hall, furtively cooking microwave mealsafter the building manager left for the day. She slept on anarrow bed in a tiny storage room, beneath an art-decocrucifix, immersed in vapors of turpentine and linseed.She was out now, shopping for microwave dinners. Themicrowave crap would kill her if he didn’t, the maddogthought. He was probably doing her a favor. He smiled. The artist would be his third kill in the Cities, the fifthof his life. The first was a ranch girl, riding out of her back pasturetoward the wooded limestone hills of East Texas.She wore jeans, a red-and-white-checked shirt, and cowboyboots. She sat high in a western saddle, riding morewith her knees and her head than with the reins in herhand. She came straight into him, her single blonde braidbouncing behind. The maddog carried a rifle, a Remington Model 700ADL in .270 Winchester. He braced his forearm against arotting log and took her when she was forty yards out.The single shot penetrated her breastbone and blew heroff the horse. That was a killing of a different kind. She had not beenChosen; she had asked for it. She had said, three years beforethe killing, in the maddog’s hearing, that he had lipslike red worms. Like the twisting red worms that youfound under river rocks. She said it in the hall of theirhigh school, a cluster of friends standing around her. Afew glanced over their shoulders at the maddog, whostood fifteen feet away, alone, as always, pushing hisbooks onto the top shelf of his locker. He gave no signthat he’d overheard. He had been very good at concealment,even in his youngest days, though the ranch girldidn’t seem to care one way or another. The maddog wasa socia