Grace Period by Mandy Miller

Author:Mandy Miller [Miller, Mandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

23

We head west from Fort Lauderdale on I-595, a bazillion-lane highway through endless cookie-cutter developments inhabited by people who trust suburban homogeneity will save their children from evil. The moment we cross I-75, those clean, well-lighted neighborhoods give way to the blackness of the Everglades, a vast and unforgiving marshland populated by species crafty enough to survive the double whammy apocalypse of climate change and the man-made environmental degradation wrought by sugar manufacturing and agriculture.

Vinnie’s hands haven’t moved from ten and two since we left The Hurricane. For a man who made a career out of rule breaking and breaking a few other things too, his insistence on the proper hand position and staying at least five miles under the speed limit is amusing.

“How’d you manage the hall pass?” he says. “You two are closer than Sonny and Cher these days.”

“Sonny and Cher got divorced, Vin.”

“You two’s like white on rice, then, the peel on a banana, like⁠—”

“I told Manny I was going to a meeting.”

“Which technically, you are.”

“Nothing but the truth would have only ended in an argument given the nature of this little excursion.”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. We came prepared.” He pats his pocket. “Forearmed is forewarned,” he says reversing the truism I use to explain why I’m an over-preparer.

I bite my lip. It’s illegal for him to carry a weapon thanks to an ancient conviction for running an illegal gambling operation out of the back of a laundromat, and the gun’s presence does give me some measure of comfort. That and the fact that, like me, Vinnie is a crack shot.

“Why you lookin’ so worried?”

“I don’t like going in blind is all. It goes against my training,”

“Yeah, well sometimes, all the training in the world ain’t enough. Shit happens.”

I glance at Oscar. “Exactly.”

“Hell, Marcus probably set you up with some little old lady who sells Fentanyl for bingo bucks.”

“You got some kind of imagination, you know that?”

He chuckles. “You don’t know the half of it, sweetheart. Besides, no way Marcus would put you in any kind of danger he thought you couldn’t handle.” He raises his chin. “Or that I can’t.”

“Somehow I’m not reassured,” I say, a conga line of apprehension charging around in my guts.

“There’s another one.” He points at a police cruiser lurking in the shadows, the main reason I decided to let Vinnie drive. His old clunker Carmela is less obvious than my Jaguar. This route is ground zero for Florida State Troopers with nothing better to do than point speed guns at passing motorists all day in hopes of nabbing some schmuck transporting a trunk full of Oxycontin. Or, as in a recent case, stolen froufrou dogs on their way to pet shops up north.

Before we left, I checked the coordinates Marcus gave me and found they correspond to a Florida Department of Transportation rest stop halfway between Fort Lauderdale and Naples. When we arrive, however, I realize the information must be old because the billboard affixed to a hurricane fence reads: Closed for renovations to better serve you.

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