Author
Ruby Sloane
From dark psychological thrillers to emotional mysteries and unforgettable YA adventure...
every story is meant to be told.
Ruby Sloane Crime/Detective Mystery Series - Coming 2027
When a prominent rancher’s teenage daughter vanishes without a trace from her family’s sprawling West Texas property, FBI Supervisory Special Agent Leah Ellis is brought in to lead the investigation teaming up with Lee Falls Sheriff Levi Rodgers. The only clue left behind is a single audio recorder placed on the girl’s bed—containing nothing but ten seconds of pure, unnerving silence.
As Leah digs deeper, she discovers that the kidnapping fits a disturbing pattern stretching back more than fifteen years. Each victim disappeared under different circumstances, from different towns, but every scene contained a recorder with the same chilling silence.
None of the victims were ever found.
With pressure mounting and the desert heat closing in, Leah teams up reluctantly with a reclusive sound‑forensics specialist who believes the silence itself is a message—one encoded with hidden meaning. But the more they uncover, the more Leah realizes the kidnapper has been studying her as closely as the victims.
When a second recorder appears—this time delivered directly to Leah—the case shifts from a search-and-rescue to a deadly game of cat and mouse.
In the endless emptiness of West Texas, silence is not absence—it’s a warning.
When a wildfire tears through a remote stretch of West Texas ranchland, firefighters uncover a horrifying discovery in its wake—the charred remains of a man deliberately killed before the flames ever reached him. FBI SSA Leah Ellis is assigned to the case, working alongside Sheriff Levi Rodgers, who suspects the fire was used to erase evidence of something far more sinister.
The victim is soon identified as a local historian who had been researching a series of unsolved disappearances tied to abandoned oil camps and forgotten border towns. Among the ashes, Leah finds a metal lockbox containing fragments of old newspaper clippings, cryptic maps, and a burned photograph that suggests the historian was close to exposing a long‑buried secret.
As Leah and Levi follow the trail across scorched terrain and communities still reeling from the fire, they uncover connections to a shadowy group determined to silence anyone digging into the region’s hidden past. Each lead brings them closer to a conspiracy that has survived decades—and closer to a killer who leaves nothing behind but ashes.
In a land where the wind can turn a spark into an inferno, the truth smolders beneath the surface—waiting to burn its way out.
When a young oil worker is discovered dead near an abandoned pump jack in the desolate stretches of West Texas, local authorities call in FBI SSA Leah Ellis to investigate.
What looks like an isolated killing quickly unravels into something far more sinister when Leah finds an encrypted note hidden on the victim—one containing symbols she’s seen only once before, in a classified case she was warned never to reopen.
As Leah follows the trail across dusty ranchland, border towns, and forgotten oil fields, she uncovers evidence of a clandestine operation buried deep within the region’s history. Witnesses vanish, files are erased, and every discovery leads back to a secret someone has killed to protect for decades.
Complicating the case is the arrival of a mysterious ex–Border Patrol officer who offers Leah help—but whose true motives remain unclear. The closer she gets to the truth, the more she realizes that the murders are only the beginning of a larger conspiracy tied to a long-buried government project.
Under the blazing West Texas sun, where isolation breeds danger and shadows hide more than just memories, Leah must unravel a chain of secrets before the killer silences her—and the truth—forever.