States of Grace by Mandy Miller (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📕

Her face flushes bright red. “No, I didn’t! He tried to help me. Nobody else cared.”

“Did Mr. Sinclair ever touch you?”

In a flash, she lunges at me, grabbing me by my jacket lapels. “No! He never did anything like that to me!”

I flip into tactical mode. I plant my feet, crook my elbow, twist my body around, and put her in a choke hold. After a few seconds, her body turns limp and I guide her down onto the chair.

“You’re strong,” she says, half crying, half smiling.

“I think that’s enough for today. You need to get some rest.”

Tentative, I hold out my hands to pull her out of the chair. She takes my hands and lets me pull her up.

“And you’re strong, too. I bet you’re stronger than you think.” I wipe a giant tear from her face. “Things might not look so good, I understand. But hang in there. I’ll do everything I can to get you out of this mess.”

She glances down at her disheveled clothes. “I’m a mess. Mom would freak. Not a beauty-queen moment.”

“We can never lose our sense of humor, can we?” I say, pressing the button to call the nurse. “It gets us through when nothing else does.”

She gives me a crooked, sniffly smile. “Thanks, Ms. Locke.”

“It’s Grace, remember?”

At the door, I turn. “Hey, they have you registered in here under the name Zoya. What’s with that?”

“That’s my real name. It was my name when I was adopted from the orphanage in Solnyshko. Zoe’s my nickname.”

“Zoya’s a beautiful name.”

“Zoya means ‘sun’ in Russian.”

“Even better. From now on you’re Zoya The Warrior Princess to me. And warriors do matter. They matter a lot.”

Chapter 20

“Dinner tonight? Red’s at seven,” Marcus says, but before I can reply “Roger that,” he’s already hung up. Marcus calls, I come. And vice versa. No questions asked.

Beyond being a man of few words, Marcus Jackson is my closest friend and everything you wouldn’t expect in a brainiac prosecutor appointed by the Republican Florida Attorney General to head up the South Florida Office of the Statewide Prosecutor. Marcus is black, from the ghetto, and gay, facts well-disguised by his Brooks Brothers suits and spit-and-polish wingtips. He is not, however, “out,” other than to a few close friends. A former foster kid schooled in the ways of the street at Miami’s Northwestern High School, Marcus survived his youth by hiding his superior intellect under two hundred and fifty pounds of defensive back muscle. He got a scholarship to play football at the University of Miami and transformed himself into the warrior philosopher. Two national championship rings, an English and Philosophy double major, and a 4.0 GPA got him a free ride at the University of Miami School of Law and a job as a professional ass kicker with the Florida Attorney General upon graduation.

The year before I got myself fired from the State Attorney’s Office, Marcus and I worked on several Statewide projects together. The last one was a task force to shut down organized crime, the task force that netted Vinnie. We became fast friends, developing an ease and mutual respect in our interactions that stood in stark relief to my relationship with Manny, one characterized by unpredictable cycles of intense desire and abject hate. I admired Marcus’s tenacity for ferreting out the bad actors, and Marcus said he envied my outspoken nature and foul mouth.

I arrive ten minutes early. Red’s is already a beehive of activity. An iconic watering hole located in the heart of Wilton Manors, a small and predominantly gay city adjacent to Fort Lauderdale, Red’s serves as a social hub for all sorts, regardless of sexual orientation or political persuasion. On any given night, aspiring politicos and judges can be seen rubbing shoulders with patrons dressed in body paint, while business types discuss the relative merits of Pinot Noir and Cabernet with sports stars.

I take a seat at a quiet table on the patio to decompress. In a park across the street, a father and son are playing catch. The boy can’t be more than four, all soft-limbed and uncoordinated, like a newborn deer.

At seven o’clock on the dot, I detect the rumble of Marcus’s motorcycle.

“You look like Lord Vader in that helmet,” I say, as he pulls me in for a bear hug.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, my lovely. But look who’s talking about having gone to the dark side.”

He slings his black leather motorcycle jacket on the back of the chair. He’s wearing indigo designer jeans, creases knife-edge sharp, and a starched blue-and-white-striped dress shirt, open at the neck.

“You look great, as always. A little bad boy in that jacket, but all buttoned up underneath. Too bad you play for the other team.”

The well-worn joke makes us both smile. Manny had been jealous of the countless hours we’d spent working together on the task force. At least until he found out Marcus is gay, a fact I’d kept in my back pocket just to rankle Manny.

“Your gorgeous mug in the papers a lot these days. How is it sitting on the other bench?”

“It’s work.”

“Everyone deserves a defense, right?” he says, smoothing the napkin on his lap. “Tell me, how’s it looking for your girl’s defense?”

“Now that would be telling tales out of school, wouldn’t it?”

He leans in. “Come on, you can tell little ole me.”

I hold out my hand and count down the reasons Zoe’s case sucks. “First, my client is a rich kid, who is as bratty as she is batty, for whom I have no defense, at least not one that isn’t made up out of thin air. Second, she says she didn’t do it, that she was somewhere else when it all went down, but don’t they all say that? And, third—surprise, surprise! There’s no alibi witness in the discovery. Oh, and how can I forget? I got the case through my ex who may or may not be still sleeping with my client’s