Witch of Sonora
Evil rides the borderlands--and it knows your name.
Nocona Ketemoczy, a battle-scarred Marine turned border agent, is barely holding his life together when girls start disappearing from the scrub and river crossings of West Texas. Their bodies--when they're found--bear the unmistakable signature of ritual killings tied to Palo Mayombe, an African-Cuban religion twisted here into a weapon of terror. Locals whisper about an old woman with cataract eyes and a rotted smile: the Witch of Sonora, a presence that has stalked Nocona's nightmares since he was a boy and now walks the caliche roads in broad daylight.
Drawn into the case is Hannah Durand, an eighty-something ranch widow who runs Casa de Katia, a hard-scrabble safe house for trafficked girls hidden in the hills outside Rocksprings. When a half-starved migrant named Ava arrives with a black cauldron and bones inked down her arm, Hannah recognizes a mark she's only ever seen in forbidden images on the dark corners of the internet. She knows at once: whatever is hunting her girls has stepped onto her land.
As a historic Halloween flood slams the Hill Country, Nocona is forced to confront two enemies at once--the cartel lieutenant building a torture-and-trafficking hub along the Rio Grande, and the generational trauma that has turned his Comanche and Mexican blood into a tinderbox for the Witch's whispers. His one true ally is Jo McKenney, a razor-sharp former Army Ranger and Del Rio border agent whose own moral injuries from Afghanistan mirror his own. When Jo goes missing while surveilling a remote ranch near Seminole Canyon, Nocona realizes he may be too late--for the girls, for Hannah, and for the woman he's finally allowed himself to love.
From haunted canyons and flash-flooded rivers to a shipping container "temple" lined with skulls, Witch of Sonora is a visceral blend of crime, supernatural suspense, and spiritual warfare, steeped in the stark beauty and violence of the Texas borderlands. This novel asks a single searing question: when evil wears both human and supernatural faces, what will you sacrifice to save the ones who can't save themselves?
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