He flipped on the bright overhead lights and brought to life a room that was remarkable to anyone privileged enough to have seen it. Tonight, after he’d placed the Great Owl in its empty glass case, Neal Nash would find it remarkable, too.

The sounds of the party continued outside. He didn’t think anyone had seen him drive up and he didn’t really care if they had. It was his birthday. He could drive through the house if he wanted to.

He didn’t think of Harvey and he didn’t think of Saul. Roger still snored in the passenger seat of the Jaguar outside but Neal hadn’t acknowledged his friend as he drove home. Hardly knew he was there.

“Jonathan Trachtenbroit,” he said as he stepped past the stuffed buffalo, the stuffed lioness, too. “Only us.”

He knew he needed to stuff the bird before displaying it, but right now he just wanted to see it.

He had to.

He held the owl chest-high, both arms beneath it, as if carrying a dead lover to her grave. He passed the enormous rhinoceros he’d bagged in Namibia. The Russian lynx. The Icelandic reindeer that had taken ten days to track.

But his eyes remained fixed on a point ahead: a glass case with nothing to show.

“The first,” Neal said, swatting away the pinpricks of guilt that arose. Then those feelings of guilt froze over and died within him.

He’d made his decision. He’d chosen history.

“Oh, Jonathan Trachtenbroit…we are colleagues now. We are unique. Only us.”

Nash’s friends had seen his face this way before; snowy nights where the liquor worked against him. Harvey would’ve said Neal was “getting edged.” Saul would’ve braced himself for a night of Nash bragging.

Neal stepped past an ape, its face so well preserved it seemed to watch him.

“You did wonderful work, Trachtenbroit,” Neal said. “I admit I couldn’t have done it without you.”

He laughed, each syllable rising to the hangar roof.

His Alaskan grizzly stood at full height above him. His Spanish ibex glowed.

“I killed ’em all, Jonathan, with my skill alone. With my dedication to the sport.”

He’d come to the empty case. The bird weighed nothing to him now.

“Trachtenbroit and Nash. Jonathan and Neal.”

He gently set the owl on a square of carpet at his feet and rubbed his hands together.

“The pride of Goblin,” he said. “Right here at home.”

Rain pelted hard against the hangar’s roof as Neal lifted the glass case and set the limp bird beneath it. He knew he had much work to do—hell, the arrow was still sticking out of her heart—but he’d never seen a sweeter sight in his life.

“Happy birthday, Hunter,” he said.

The bird lay unnaturally bent on the display podium.

“Mr. Trachtenbroit, say hello to me,” Neal said. “I am forever inscribed…beside you…”

The hangar door slammed open behind him.

Neal turned quick, angry.

“Who’s there?” he called. He raised a hand to cover the Great Owl.