Political Alliances

Political Alliances

When South Miami horticultural journalist Mara Wayne loses her grandmother, she expects grief. What she doesn’t expect is betrayal. The family avocado grove, long promised to Mara, has been left to the Children of Jordan, a secretive religious group with unsettling ties to Senate hopeful Hud Holland and his powerful citrus empire.

Mara has known men like Holland all her life: loud, ruthless, and comfortable taking whatever they want. But as she digs into the Children of Jordan, she uncovers a darker web of cult influence, political corruption, migrant exploitation, and deadly secrets stretching across South and Central Florida.

With help from Daniel, a local palm grower whose motives may not be as clear as they seem, Mara follows the clues from Miami Beach to Big Cypress Swamp and the groves of Florida’s interior. The closer she gets to the truth, the more dangerous the investigation becomes—and the harder it is to know who can be trusted.

Atmospheric, suspenseful, and grounded in the landscapes and power struggles of Florida, Political Alliances is an action-adventure thriller about family land, hidden crimes, and one woman’s fight to expose the truth.

Read Political Alliances today.

Excerpt from the book

“There you are!” the old woman said with a smile as she unlatched the screen door to admit the young man. “I knew you’d be along any minute now.”

“Well, of course.” He smiled, too, and placed a plastic-wrapped serving dish on the kitchen counter. “Vegetarian chili with soy protein,” he told her. “It’s good. You’re going to like it.”

“Let me make you some tea, then we can go into the parlor and talk for a while. This rose hips flavor is something that you like, I believe.”

“Yeah, sure, rose hips is fine.” He hadn’t stopped smiling, but that was mostly because he didn’t know what else to do. He was nervous. He didn’t want to kill the old lady, to tell the truth. Killing her was simply something that he had to do. The way he was going to kill her wouldn’t hurt her though and wouldn’t take very long. So, carrying out the assignment wasn’t that bad, when you considered the pros and cons. Her death was necessary, too, important to the greater good.

He took his cup with him into the other room, and she took her cane. She didn’t lean on it, but she liked to have it with her, just in case, she always said.

“Don’t get old,” she advised him. “And, if you do get old, don’t have arthritis.” She seemed tickled with the little prescriptive she had handed out.

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed, taking her seriously.

She sat, using the cane as if her back hurt too much to rely on mere muscle to assist her down into her chair.

“I have some vitamins for you again, if you like,” he told her cautiously, settling onto the sofa across from her. “David told me I should bring it for you. The other stuff helped you alright, didn’t it?”

“I wasn’t sure,” the woman responded, her face twisting with resistance to his suggestion.

“You need to have it regularly for it to work,” he argued, unpacking a little bag he had brought into the room with him.

“I really don’t like the idea of taking a shot.”

“I’ve gotten better at giving them since last time,” he assured her. “I really have. And I know this is going to do you a lot of good. It’ll block the pain.” Quickly, he unwrapped the new hypodermic that he had “borrowed” at the hospital and plunged it into the medicine bottle. This would do it, he thought.

Not any fluid itself (none was in the bottle), but the lack of it would mean her death. An air bubble, he had heard, would go straight to her heart and kill her. He had explained that to David.

He approached, not letting her see the syringe, but instead making much of the alcohol and the cotton he was holding. He prepared her arm and told her to turn her head. “You won’t feel a thing,” he promised.