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

leading the way, we shuffle into the blinding sunlight. Limp, suspended like laundry on a clothes line, they maneuver me down the rickety staircase. A Zodiac, like my father’s, sits tied up, abandoned.

“I— I didn’t…” My vision turns hazy. My eyelids are lead weights.

Manny shakes my shoulder. “Stay awake, Gracie! We need you to stay awake.”

Everything spinning. Images swirling above the crystalline water. Sonny crushing pills. Tubing tightening. The needle sliding in…

They prop me up like a mannequin in the back of the boat.

My stump, the gauze filthy and tattered. “He threw it…”

“Hurry, Manny! Hurry! She’s fading!”

A stinging slap to the face. “Don’t go to sleep. Stay with us!”

Engine revving.

Sea spray stinging my face.

Manny screaming, “Keep her awake! If she loses consciousness again, she’ll die!”

Acceleration like a jet-powered roller coaster.

Chapter 35

“That’s one hell of a story,” Marcus says, squeezing my hand so tightly I wince.

“I wish it were a story,” I say, extracting my hand from his death grip. “And where do you fit in?”

“These two called me to notify the authorities, to make sure Sonny Sorenson and Anton Slim never take a breath as free men again.” His voice cracks. “I…I wish I hadn’t mentioned the Statewide case. I had no idea I was—”

“You were trying to help an old friend.”

“Thank God you’re okay,” Marcus says. “And you’re not old, by the way.”

I sink back into the pillows. “Yeah? Well, I feel like I’m a hundred.”

The bed shifts back to center when Marcus raises his bulk to get me a glass of water from the pitcher on the nightstand. “Don’t you worry. We’ll get those pieces of garbage.”

“Thank God Manny didn’t get rid of that damn boat when I told him to,” I say, winking at Manny.

Vinnie chimes in from his post in the corner, hands gripping his Marlins cap. “That’s one helluva boat.”

Manny shoots me a self-satisfied smile over his shoulder. “And she wanted me to get rid of it a while back. Thought it was too Miami Vice for a City Commissioner.”

“And it still is. Makes you looks like a wise guy.”

Vinnie bats his eyelids.

Manny jerks a thumb at Vinnie. “You should have seen this chicken shit. He was pasted to the seat as if he were walking into a hurricane. Never opened his eyes the whole way there and back.”

“Hey, I thought I was gonna die out there,” Vinnie says, and we all laugh for a second, until what could have been hits us like a brick.

Marcus hands me the plastic glass. “One thing I don’t understand is how these guys knew where you were?”

“Educated guess.” I flip up the sleeve of the hospital gown. “The coordinates for Stiltsville.”

Marcus nods. “Ah, the tattoo.”

“Sonny used it as a road map to get rid of me, and the truth right along with me.”

“And these two used it to find you.”

“Thank God, even if they thought I’d relapsed,” I say, gaze shifting to the twinkling Miami skyline out the window, a jagged neon metropolis cut from the onyx sky.

A shadow passes over Vinnie’s face. “When I used the master key to get into her apartment, I found her backpack on the table. And a bottle of Jack on top of the fridge.”

“The bottle was unopened,” I say—I’d chosen Jack Daniel’s, my favorite, for my weekly test, to see if I could survive the temptation throughout the stress of Zoe’s trial.

Vinnie rushes over and grabs my hand. “I know you don’t drink no more, sweetheart. But I know you don’t go nowhere without your backpack neither and it was there, and Manny and me, we were besides ourselves and—”

“It’s okay, Vin. You guys saved me. And I’m forever in your debt. Maybe you and me, we can call it even.”

Vinnie swipes a tear away with the Marlins cap. “Not a chance.”

“I knew Stiltsville was the one place she’d go to be alone. To calm her mind,” Manny says. “She went out there when she was a kid. When she came back from the war—”

“What he means, Marcus, is that I went out there to drink when we were married.”

Manny steps to my bedside. “That’s in the past. And what’s past is past. Let’s leave it there, where it belongs.”

I pull the sleeve back over the tattoo. “Stiltsville used to be my secret little piece of paradise.”

“You’re safe, Gracie. That’s all that matters.” Manny says. “We’ll find you another special place.”

“Deal, but only after we lock those pieces of you-know-what up for the rest of their miserable lives.” I point at Vinnie. “I didn’t use the bad word this time.”

“All you needed was a near death experience to clean up your language,” Vinnie says, smiling.

Marcus rocks back on his heels, arms crossed. “We’ll get them all. Sonny and the Slims and anyone else who needs arresting. But, one last thing, how’d Sonny know about Stiltsville?”

Manny retreats to the window, a faraway stare replacing the forgiveness in his eye from a moment ago. “He’d seen the tattoo, hadn’t he, Grace?”

To end the awkward silence, Vinnie pounds the fist of his right hand into the palm of the left. “Testa di cazzo, let me tell you what I’m gonna do to—”

I give him a time-out sign. “He’ll get his. They all will.”

A conspiratorial smile brightens Vinnie’s face. “If there’s anything I can do. I got skills, ya know.”

“Speaking of what you can do, what did you do with Miranda? Where is she?”

“She’s with Jake. I left the key under the mat when we went looking for you and called him to come by.”

“Who’s Miranda?” Manny asks.

“Her dog,” Vinnie and Marcus reply in unison.

Manny lowers his head to conceal a smile. “You replaced me with a dog?”

I point at Vinnie, trying not to laugh given the two broken ribs I got from falling off the chair. “Blame your partner in crime over there.”

“Can I get you anything before I leave?” Marcus asks.

“Thanks, but no. I’ll be getting out of here tonight. Doc says I must have had at least a little