Trophy Hunt by C. J. Box

presence, and it had traveled a long way to get there to mount a challenge. This time, she didn’t tell her dad about the dream.
    A fter nearly a year of apprenticeship in falconry, which consisted mainly of the care and feeding of Nate Romanowski’s two peregrine falcons, and his almost whispered lectures concerning the philosophy of falconry, this was a special lesson. For the first time, Nate had brought her hunting. Hunting with falcons, Nate had told her, was a whole different thing than the kind of hunting she might be familiar with from her father, the game warden. In this instance the agents of the kill weren’t rifles or shotguns, but the birds themselves. Humans were there to flush out the prey like bird dogs, so the falcons could rocket down from the sky and kill what had been scared out into the open. Nate had told her that many times she wouldn’t even see the prey she had flushed until the falcon swept down and hit it.
    “This is how mankind conceived of an air force,” Nate had said. “This is where it all started, the idea of striking targets from the air.”
    “What are you talking about?” Sheridan had asked.
    “Fire from the sky. Hell from the heavens,” Nate had said. “This is where it all began.”
    “Huh?”
    T he lessons took place after school, unless she had basketball or choir practice or Nate was out of town. Her mom or dad would drive her out to Nate Romanowski’s cabin near the river, and Nate took her home afterward and often stayed for dinner. Her mom and dad seemed to have a special relationship with Nate, although they never really talked about it with her. They seemed to trust Nate, or they never would have okayed the lessons. After all, Nate was unmarried and solitary, and Sheridan was twelve. She knew there was something different about Nate, something serious. He was not like anybody she had ever met, certainly not like anyone her parents hung around with, like the Logues.
    Nevertheless, her dad seemed oddly comfortable with Nate, like they shared some kind of old experience together, while at the same time she saw her father eyeing Nate coolly when he thought no one was looking. It was as if he were trying to decide something. Her mother, on the other hand, made special meals on Fridays, including salads and desserts. While this hadn’t meant much at first, it did now, since her mom had become so busy with her new business that regular sit-down dinners had become more infrequent. Sheridan had noticed an expression on her mother’s face at times when Nate was at their table. It was a look Sheridan had rarely seen before. It was a kind of a glow, the kind of look her mother sometimes had when she and Dad were going out somewhere—dinner or a movie—at night. The look reminded Sheridan just how attractive her mother was to some men. The expression didn’t last long but it made Sheridan uncomfortable and made her want to act out. Sometimes, Sheridan knew, she acted like a brat at the table when this happened, like picking on Lucy or demanding a second helping of something that was no longer there. She didn’t know why she did this, other than to divert attention. But there was something about the way her mom looked at Nate.Maybe that was why her dad acted so differently when Nate was around. There was something adult going on, Sheridan knew, but she wasn’t sure what it was. But she didn’t want to ask about it, or say anything. She didn’t want to give them a reason to question the propriety of the falconry lessons.
    Not that the lessons were anything special so far. The first few months it seemed like all she did with the falcons was clean the mews where they lived and help feed them. The feeding was kind of gross, with the way Nate pulled freshly killed rabbits and pigeons apart to give to the birds. She was fascinated by the way the falcons ate—they finished off not only the flesh but the fur, feathers, and bone—but wondered when they would ever actually do some