It was a good night in the ranch house. Even the rain battering the windows couldn’t dampen the mood.

* * *

The sun was up, breakfast over, the men off to work the next morning. Kade had spent a satisfying night in bed with the prettiest lady around. He’d slept better the last few weeks than he had in years.

Ellie was still on his mind as he dumped a can of grain into the trough for the little palomino Billy had been tending. The kid had a real talent with horses, animals in general. During school hours, when Billy couldn’t be there, one of the hands took turns mucking out stalls and feeding the livestock in the barn. Roy Cobb was handling the chores this week.

Leaving Cobb to his work, Kade pulled out his cell and phoned Webb Fischer. Though there hadn’t been any more incidents on the ranch—no more dead steers, poisoned waterholes, or back-shot cowhands—it bothered him that the man who had murdered Frank Keller and poor ol’ Earl Dunstan was still on the loose.

The line picked up on the second ring. “Sheriff Fischer.” “Kade Logan, Sheriff. Figured I’d call, see if you’ve got any news on the murders in Phippsburg?”

“I was planning to give you a call. We were able to get a set of tire tracks from a vehicle parked behind Flatt’s the night Earl Dunstan was killed.”

“It was raining. I didn’t figure you’d get much of anything in the way of tracks.”

“Vehicle was parked beneath a tin roof covering a stack of hay bales. Once the guy drove out from under the shed, the tracks turned to mud and disappeared. We didn’t find the ones under the shed right away, didn’t connect the dots till later.”

“So what kind of car was the shooter driving?”

“That’s the interesting part. Looks like a big-ass Hummer. Not something you usually see country folk cruising around in. It’s impractical on the narrow roads, and any kind of rancher would rather spend his money on something more versatile. A pickup’s something you can haul stuff around in. Hummer’s more a city-boy pretending to be a tough guy kind of rig.”

That was pretty much true, though a flashy Mercedes wasn’t much of a rancher’s car, either. Kade kept the thought to himself. “You got a way to run it down?”

“No plate number, nothing like that. The tires were an upgrade on a 2019 H2 model.”

“That narrows it down.”

“We’ll be searching DMV records, but there’s bound to be a lot of those cars in Colorado. Deputies have been asking questions, trying to find a witness who saw a rig like that in the area. Car like that is memorable. Might get something that’ll help us refine the search.”

“It’s a good lead, Sheriff. You try asking around in Coffee Springs?”