Page 1 of The Sleeping Girls

PROLOGUE

HAYES STATE PRISON

All Darnell, AKA Digger, Woodruff wanted was to leave this hellhole in prison and go home. But even if he was released, that would be a mistake.

His stepfather and little brother hated him. And who could blame them? He’d murdered his little sister.

He stared at his shaking hands as he sat on the narrow prison cot. Hands that reminded him of what he’d done.

Last night, he’d had the nightmare again. Only it hadn’t been a nightmare because it was real.

He’d been sleepwalking that night. It had been happening all his life. As a child, he’d end up in bed with his parents or outside in the treehouse or down the street peeing in some neighbor’s driveway. One time, he’d been digging a small hole in the backyard. Another, he’d been standing on a ledge about to jump off.

Anna Marie’s face haunted him. His little sister.

He’d been sixteen at the time of his arrest. Locked away like a monster.

Sixteen and scrawny and a perfect target for the prison gangs. He’d been beaten. Shanked. Raped.

Footsteps sounded as a guard approached. And he shut out the memories.

“Let’s go, Digger,” the guard said as he unlocked his cell. The metal-on-metal turning of the key grated on his last nerve. The guard, a two-fifty-plus man with a mean streak in his eyes, patted his baton and motioned for him to get up.

Digger dragged himself from his cot and shuffled to the door, half-expecting to be hauled to one of the no-camera zone rooms where the guards took you to supposedly teach you a lesson. The lesson was to bend over and do whatever the hell they wanted. He’d tried fighting at first until they’d beaten the fight out of him.

“Might be your lucky day,” the bastard said as he jerked Digger’s hands behind him and cuffed him. “Some pretty lady done come to your rescue.”

Digger frowned at that. The only lady he’d seen since he’d been moved here was a woman named Caitlin O’Connor who had a true crime podcast associated with the Innocence Project. It was run by a do-gooder organization of lawyers and investigators who actually wanted to find the truth and free inmates who’d been falsely convicted. She’d taken it upon herself to look into his case and had questioned him half a dozen times already, forcing him to relive the night he killed Anna Marie.

Not that he had any hope she’d succeed.

Digger was, after all, the seed of some evil loser from Red Clay Mountain who’d screwed his mother and left her high and dry, barefoot and pregnant. His stepfather, Gil, had swept in to save her and her bastard child—him—but he never let Digger forget for a second that he was pure dirt.

Shouts and jeers from the other prisoners boomeranged off the concrete walls as he was escorted down the hallways and led to the visiting room.

The guard opened a locked heavy metal door and shoved him inside, standing close to him with his baton ready, in case Digger decided to pull a stunt and run.

“Sit,” the guard instructed as he pushed him into a chair bolted to the floor.

Digger sat. Legs spread out. Cuffed hands on the table. Wondering where the hell all this was going.

It was probably the public defender telling him that, yet again, his parole hearing was declined. No, the guard had said it was a woman.

A minute later, Caitlin O’Connor stepped inside.

A man in a three-piece suit followed.

She waited until they sat, and the guard stepped outside. “Hello, Darnell,” she said. “This is Ethan Baldwin, the attorney who’s been working with me.”

Darnell simply stared at them. Waiting for the bad news to drop.

Instead, Ms. O’Connor smiled. “You’re being released on parole, Darnell.”

He swallowed hard. “What?”

She squeezed his hand. “We’re working to get you a new trial. But for now, you can go home.”

Home? He didn’t have a home anymore. Even if he went back, no one wanted him there.

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