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n First Offense, she draws on her personal experience as a California probation officer to create a remarkable heroine in Ann Carlisle, who suddenly finds herself the target of someone who wishes to harm not only her but also her teenage son. As a probation officer, Ann knows what it means to walk a treacherously thin line between dangerous criminals who have scores to settle- and the system that seeks to punish them. As a wife, she holds closely guarded secrets about her life with her police officer husband, who inexplicably vanished four years ago. And as a woman who has been sexually reawakened by a handsome, hard-driving attorney after being alone too long, she is haunted by the specter of a mate who may suddenly reappear... and terrified of an unknown enemy who seems to know her every move and thought.
The danger is clear to Ann from the moment a bullet hits her while she is leaving work one day. Ironically, the man who comes to her aid and saves her life is one of the first offenders she is supervising- convicted drug dealer Jimmy Sawyer. What was this smooth-talking, slick-moving, almost too good-looking young man doing at the scene of the shooting?
No one is able to help Ann find answers, not her dynamic, career-obsessed lover, or the cops who were buddies of her missing husband and who look on her as a prone to shock and fantasy- especially when the evidence of an unspeakable crime she finds in Jimmy Sawyer's house disappears before she can prove it existed. Meanwhile, she is investigating a man accused of a series of brutal rapes, never suspecting his case will have a bearing on her own growing peril.

First two pages of First Offense

he courtroom was armed and waiting. Assistant district attorney Glen Hopkins was making notes in his file and sipping a cup of coffee while the defense counsel, Harold Duke, glanced at his watch anxiously. Two court clerks and a uniformed bailiff were staring straight ahead like statues. A probation officer, Ann Carlisle, an attractive woman with short blond hair and classic features, had her head braced in her hand and intermittently glanced over at the well-built district attorney, wanting to catch his eye.
Judge Hillstorm took another look at the clock and then glared at the defense attorney. Originally from Georgia, the white-haired judge still spoke with a distinctive southern accent. "Your client is late, Mr. Duke," he chided. "This here hearing was scheduled for four o'clock. In exactly sixty seconds your client will forfeit his bail, and a bench warrant will be issued for his arrest."
Harold Duke, a small, wiry man , gulped and swallowed. He turned toward the double doors for the hundredth time and then let out an audible sigh of relief when they were thrown apart by a lanky long haired young man wearing black jeans, a black shirt, and black leather boots with jangling chains and fake spurs. He strode into the courtroom as if he owned it, marched straight to the counsel table, and flopped down in the chair between his attorney and the probation officer. Duke's relief quickly dissipated when he saw the entourage that followed.
The judge had the gavel in his hand and had opened his mouth to call the court to order when he froze. Four striking young girls pranced into the courtroom, each one flashing a smile at the judge.

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