Malone's Back

The ghost is alive. The hunter is desperate. And five million dollars could destroy them both.

DEA agent Mack Donnelly arrives at the smoking ruins of Johnny Malone's Miami home and finds the one piece of evidence no one else understands: Johnny's scorched Vietnam lighter. Everyone believes Malone died in the explosion. Mack knows better.

Twelve years earlier, Mack infiltrated Bocephus Dawber's criminal empire and helped bring down the smuggling operation that made Dawber County rich. The legendary takedown should have defined his career. Instead, scandal, alcohol, and a dangerous debt to the Russian mob have left him with nothing but an obsession he cannot escape. Now the Russians are threatening his family, and Malone's missing fortune may be Mack's only way out.

Back in Dawber County, Johnny is wounded, hunted, and struggling to reconnect with Bones, the angry son he abandoned. Alongside Alex Gregory and Billy Dawber, they race to recover five million dollars hidden in the Everglades before Warden Kinder's corrupt prison guards reach it first.

When attorney Tiana Ross brings Willis Childress news of his brother's murder, the feared leader of the Maroon Gang enters the war. DEA agent Aisha Reyes begins questioning her partner's motives. Sheriff Buck Dawber calculates the price of his loyalty. And inside prison, Bo Dawber prepares for freedom while waiting to see which of his enemies survives.

As airboats tear across the black water and old alliances collapse, Johnny and Mack move toward the confrontation they have postponed since 1991.

Johnny Malone came home for the money.

Mack Donnelly came to collect the man.

Malone's Back is the explosive second novella in the Sawgrass Wars Southern Gothic crime trilogy—a story of obsession, corruption, fathers and sons, buried fortunes, and the terrible price of returning home.