Let Me Go (An Ashley Hope Suspense Thriller—Book 1)

PROLOGUE Ethan Barrett picked up the book and shook out the remnants of the photograph. He’d stared at her face every day for the past eight years, had counted every hour she’d stolen from his life. Trapped in the six-by-nine concrete tomb – his new home at the Middle Tennessee State Pen – he’d had a lot of time to think. He’d packed on an additional fifteen pounds of solid muscle and traded in his dark mop of curls for a buzz cut. He’d waited. And he’d planned. Word was that after the trial – after her testimony had put him away – she’d moved. Created a whole new life, while he rotted in this hell hole. Sensing movement behind him, he palmed the shank and stood, careful not to rise too fast. Only a book remained on the desk, nothing more. It was his cellmate coming through the open door to the block. The lifer with the cobra tattooed on his face, known around the pen for beheading a rival g**g leader. Ethan stretched to his full height and took a step forward, his muscular frame filling the tight space. The lifer stopped short, glanced toward the toilet. “Use a bottle,” Ethan ordered, making it clear the room was currently off limits, not caring if the cellmate pissed himself. The lifer wavered beneath Ethan’s steel gaze as if calculating his odds – probably wondering whether the rumors that Ethan had strangled the biker in the laundry room were true – then nodded and backed out of the cell. Ethan turned back to the picture. He raised the shank, plunged it into her throat first. He sliced from the top of her pretty blonde hair, across her forehead to her cheek and then back to her chin. Smiling at his handiwork, he pushed the blade between her breasts and cut the photograph in half. Wherever she’d gone, he’d find her. The time had finally come to set his plan into motion. It was time to make Ashley pay.