Dead on Release
.Before sunrise, the Smoky Mountains swallow a young woman whole. She walked out of the county jail and then she's gone-no witnesses, no footprints, no trace. And the last person seen with her is the county sheriff.
Former deputy Cass Tolliver feels the wrongness immediately, a bruise beneath the skin. She knows the sheriff's charm, his temper, and the lies he tells to keep his world intact. She once trusted him with her life. Now she trusts her instincts more-and they're screaming.
Cass left the department years ago after a case that nearly broke her. She traded the badge for a PI license and a one-room office above a diner. She promised herself she'd never look back. But the mountains don't forget, and they don't forgive. When the missing woman's file lands on her desk, the past comes roaring back like thunder rolling through the hollows.
The official story is simple: the sheriff drove the girl to safety. Cass knows a lie when she hears one.
Her search begins with a single name and unravels into a pattern of vanished women, falsified reports, and a buried river of fear running through the Smokies. Every lead pulls her deeper into the mountains' shadowed heart-abandoned cabins, dead radio zones, backroads where headlights vanish into fog. The silence feels deliberate. The danger feels personal.
Someone is watching her. Someone who knows her routines. Someone who remembers the night she walked away from the badge.
Threats appear like fingerprints: a slashed tire, a warning carved into her office door, a deputy who won't meet her eyes. Cass realizes she's not just investigating a disappearance-she's trespassing on a secret the sheriff has spent years protecting. And he's not working alone.
As Cass pushes forward, the line between justice and survival blurs. Old allies become suspects. Old wounds reopen. The sheriff's reach stretches farther than she imagined, and the truth he's hiding is darker than anything she faced in uniform.
The mountains close in. The fog thickens. And Cass must decide how far she'll go to expose a predator wearing a badge-before she becomes the next woman who disappears before dawn.
Dead on Release launches the Cass Tolliver Female-Detective Thriller series with relentless suspense, Appalachian atmosphere, and a heroine shaped by grit, loss, and unbreakable resolve. Perfect for fans of Lisa Gardner, Karin Slaughter, and James Patterson, this novel draws from a true story of betrayal, obsession, and the deadly cost of uncovering the truth in a town built on silence.
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