Carolyn Sullivan

Monday mornings are hell. That's what Carolyn Sullivan is thinking as she arrives at her office at the Ventura County Probation Department. One of her probationers has just been arrested for rape. Just when Carolyn should be lying low, instead she's assigned a sensitive case that's sure to have everyone breathing down her neck - supervising convicted killer and paranoid schizophrenic Daniel Metroix.

Neil has discovered the body of his girlfriend, Laurel, floating in his swimming pool. When her death is ruled a homicide, Neil becomes the prime suspect. But he has an alibi - he was in bed with Melody Asher, a seductive party girl and heiress. Their torrid affair is as steamy as it is addictive, a twisted game of manipulation and sexual blackmail. When Melody refuses to back up Neil's story, the sensitive brother Carolyn thought she knew suddenly seems like a complete stranger.

Cold, cunning, and without remorse, Holden was the kind of criminal the death penalty was made for, and the forensic evidence had him nailed - or so everyone thought. But when the evidence is discredited, Holden is a free man again, and Carolyn is his assigned parole officer. To the state, Holden is a man who has served his time. But Carolyn still remembers the grieving family and the victims who have been betrayed by a miscarriage of justice.

Carolyn knew everything about Veronica Campbell. She knew about the case of murder and retribution that haunted her life and her career. About her stormy relationship with her husband, Drew. About the emotional darkness that was overwhelming Veronica's fragile seventeen-year-old daughter, Jude. But seeing her friend laid out on a cold hard slab of steel in a morgue, and hearing the initial judgments of the investigators, she knows this: there's no way Veronica would have ever taken her own life.