“I’m Eleanor Bowman. I’m here with Kade Logan. Both of us are legally armed. We need an ambulance. Please hurry.”

“They’re on their way. Stay on the line until they get there.”

Ellie dropped the phone into the grass beside her, peeled off her puffy jacket, and pressed it against Earl’s chest to slow the bleeding.

“Just take it easy, okay?”

“He . . . he did it. He . . . he shot me.”

“Who, Earl? Who shot you?” But Earl was already fading, his body jerking and his eyes losing focus.

“Frank said . . . said he knew him from . . . from the mine.”

The mine? “Who, Earl? What was his name?” She reached out and took hold of his hand. Earl’s fingers curled around hers, but they felt icy cold. “Tell me who shot you.”

Earl’s eyes slowly lifted to hers. In the faded yellow beam of the distant truck lights, his mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

Ellie’s heart went out to this man who had gotten caught up in something far bigger than he could have imagined. “Just rest and take it easy, Earl, okay? The ambulance is on its way.” She smoothed a hand over the little man’s forehead and tightened her grip on his limp hand. “You’re going to be okay.”

The words seemed to comfort him. His features relaxed, and the tightness around his lips softened. Then a trickle of blood slid from the corner of his mouth, and his eyes slowly closed. Air whispered out of his lungs, but his chest never rose again.

Ellie’s heart squeezed. Earl Dunstan was just another victim, like Kade’s dead steers, like Alejandro, and Smoke. Like the sick cows, and the man who’d lost his leg at the Red Hawk Mine. Frank Keller had pulled his cousin into something sinister, and now he was dead. Both of them were.

Ellie wiped tears from her cheeks and looked up as Kade approached. “Earl’s dead.” She swallowed past the painful lump in her throat. “We didn’t get here in time.”

Kade’s jaw hardened, and he glanced off toward the trees. “Whoever it was made it back to his vehicle and took off into the hills. There are a couple of feeder roads that’ll take him to the main highway. No way to catch up with him.”

Ellie picked up her phone and rose from the grass next to Earl’s body. Without her jacket, she was shaking, but she didn’t think it was from the cold.

Kade pulled off his sheepskin coat and settled it around her shoulders. It smelled like him, like pine forests and horses.

Clutching his jacket around her, Ellie looked up at him. “Earl died before he could give me the shooter’s name, but he said something that could be important. Earl said Frank knew the man who murdered him from the mine.”