Easy Prey

Table of Contents

 

 

“When you come out of the twists and turns that are
Easy Prey,
it is a marvel how [Sandford] could do this . . . he's a writer in control of his craft.”
—Chicago Sun-Times

 
 
EASY PREY

 
“Crackerjack suspense . . . [Sandford's] at the top of his game again with
Easy Prey
.”—
New York Post

 
“Wildly successful . . . contains all the elements fans have come to expect: solid plot, gallows humor . . . sex, and the likeable, self-assured Davenport.”—
Booklist

 
“A Grand Guignol of a climax.”—
Kirkus Reviews

 
“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.”

—
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.”—
The 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

TITLES BY JOHN SANDFORD

 
Rules of Prey Shadow Prey Eyes of Prey Silent Prey Winter Prey Night Prey Mind Prey Sudden Prey Secret Prey Certain Prey Easy Prey Chosen Prey Mortal Prey Naked Prey Hidden Prey Broken Prey Invisible Prey

 
The Night Crew

 
THE KIDD NOVELS

 
The Empress File The Fool's Run The Devil's Code The Hanged Man's Song

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 
EASY PREY

 
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

 
Copyright © 2000 by John Sandford.

 
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1

WHEN THE FIRST man woke up that morning, he wasn't thinking about killing anyone. He woke up with a head full of blues, a brain that was too big for his skull, and a bladder about to burst. He lay with his eyes closed, breathing across a tongue that tasted like burnt chicken feathers. The blues rolled in through the bedroom door.

Coming down hard.

He had been flying on cocaine for three days, getting everything done,
everything.
Then last night, coming down, he'd stopped at a liquor store for a bottle of Stolichnaya. His bleeding brain retained a picture of himself lifting the bottle off the shelf, and another picture of an argument with the counterman, who didn't want to break a hundred-dollar bill.

By that time, the coke high had become unsustainable; and the Stoli had been a bad idea. There was no smooth landing after a three-day toot, but the vodka turned a wheels-up belly landing into a full crash-and-burn. Now he'd pay. If you peeled open his skull and dumped it, he thought, his brain would look like a coagulated lump of Campbell's bean soup.

He cracked his eyes, lifted his head, and looked at the clock. A few minutes past seven. He'd gotten four hours of sleep. Par for the course with coke, and the Stoli hadn't helped. If he'd stayed down for ten hours, or twelve—he needed about sixteen to catch up—he might have been past the worst of it. Now he was just gonna have to suck it up.

He turned to his left, where a woman, a dishwater blonde, lay facedown in her pillow. He could only see about half of her head; the rest was buried by a red fleece blanket. She lay without moving, like a dead woman—but no such luck. He closed his eyes again, and there was nothing left in the world but the blues music bumping in from the next room, from the all-blues channel, nine-hundred-and-something on the TV dial. Must've left it on last night. . . .

Gotta move, he thought. Gotta pee. Gotta take twenty aspirins and go down to Country Kitchen and get some pancakes and link sausages. . . .

The man didn't wake up thinking about murder. He woke up thinking about his head and his bladder and a stack of pancakes. Funny how things work out.

That night, when he killed two people, he was a little shocked.

 
 
GREEN - EYED ALIE'E MAISON stood in the hulk of a rust-colored Mississippi River barge. She was wrapped in a designer dress that looked like froth over a reef in the Caribbean Sea—an ankle-length dress the exact faded-jade color of her eyes, low-cut and sheer, hugging her hips, flaring at her ankles. She was large-eyed, barefoot, elfin, fleeing down a pale yellow two-by-twelve-inch pine plank, which stretched like a line of fire out of the purple gloom of the barge's interior.

Behind her, a huge man in a sleeveless white T-shirt, filthy Sears work pants, and ten-inch work boots blew sparks off a piece of wrought iron with an acetylene torch. He was wearing a black dome-shaped welding helmet, and acrid gray smoke curled around his heavy, tense legs. The blank robotic faceplate, in combination with his hairy arms, the dirty shirt, the smoke, and the squat legs, gave him the grotesque crouching power of a gargoyle.

A fantasy at three thousand dollars an hour.

And not quite right.

 
 
“THAT'S NO FUCKING good. NO FUCKING GOOD!”

Amnon Plain moved through the bank of strobes, his thick black hair falling over his forehead, his narrow glasses glittering in the set lights, his voice cutting like a piece of broken glass: “Alie'e, you're freezing up at the line. I want you
blowing out
of the place. I want you moving
faster
when you come up to the line, not slower. You're slowing down. And I want you to look
pissed.
You look annoyed, you look
petulant—
”

“I
am
annoyed—I'm freezing,” Alie'e snapped. “I've got goose bumps the size of oranges.”

Plain turned to an assistant: “Larry, move the heater into the back. You gotta get some heat on her.”

“We'll get the fumes,” Larry said, arms akimbo, a deliberately effeminate pose. Larry wasn't gay, just ironic.

“We'll deal with the fucking fumes. Huh? Okay? We'll deal with the fucking fumes.”

“You gotta do something. I'm really cold,” Alie'e said. She clasped her arms around herself and shivered for effect. A man dressed in black walked out from behind the lights, peeling off his cashmere sport coat. He was tall, thin, his over-the-shoulder brunette hair worn loose and back. He had a thick hammered-silver loop earring in his left ear and a dark soul-patch under his lower lip. “Take this until they're ready again,” he said to Alie'e. She huddled in the coat. Turning away from them, Plain rolled his eyes. “Larry—move the fuckin' heater.”

Larry shrugged and began wheeling the propane heater farther into the barge. If they all died of carbon monoxide poisoning, it wouldn't be his fault.

Plain turned back to Alie'e. “Jax, take a hike, and take your coat with you. . . .”

“Hey--” the man in black said, but nobody was looking at him, or paying attention.

Plain continued: “Alie'e, I want you pissed. Don't do that thing with your lips. You're sticking your lips out, like this.” Plain pursed his lips. “That's a pout. I don't want a pout. Do it like this. . . .” He grimaced, and Alie'e tried to imitate him. This was one of her talents: the ability to imitate expression, the way a dancer could imitate motion.

“That's better,” Plain said to Alie'e. “But make your mouth longer, turn it down, and get it set that way while you're
moving.
Do it again.” She did it again, making the changes. “That's good, but now you need some mouth.”