Friday Night in The Glades

FRIDAY NIGHT IN THE GLADES A GRACE LOCKE NOVEL - BOOK TWO MANDY MILLER PRAISE FOR FRIDAY NIGHT IN THE GLADES “Mandy Miller is a sly, evocative writer. Her Florida clings to your skin and sets fire to your nerves. The finely-drawn characters in Friday Night in The Glades will be whispering to me for a long time. It's that good.” —Jeffrey Fleishman, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Good Night, Forever; My Detective; and The Last Dance “Friday Night in The Glades is a compelling, eager, and fearless novel. Mandy Miller deals with crime and cover-up, with drug trafficking, with Big Sugar and Big Pharma, and with the football-industrial complex right here in desolate Sugar Bay, Florida, where employment is oppression, and the only way up is out but getting out means selling out. Miller knows how to wield the weapon of suspense, knows, too, that every story is many stories, and she handles the complex intersecting tales of loss, death, and unspeakable secrets with wit, grit, and poise. Friday Night in The Glades will remind you of why you started reading stories in the first place.” —John Dufresne, Author of New York Times Notable Books of the Year Louisiana Power and Light and Love Warps the Mind A Little; Storyville: An Illustrated Guide to Writing Fiction; and The Lie That Tells the Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction PRAISE FOR STATES OF GRACE “Grace Locke came home from Iraq with a purple heart and a prosthetic leg. She’s an ex-junkie, ex-prosecutor, ex-wife, and now she’s taking on an unwinnable murder case as a defense attorney. Mandy Miller has written an unnerving and irresistible novel of judicial intrigue and betrayal set in the volatile South Florida netherworld of opioid addiction. As in the best of plots, nothing here is as it seems. States of Grace is engrossing, unpredictable, and fast-paced. So grab yourself a drink, settle into your easy chair, open the book, and begin. You’re home for the evening. You are about to be carried away to a world more vivid and, in this case, a hell of a lot scarier, than the one you’re living in.” —John Dufresne, Author of New York Times Notable Books of the Year Louisiana Power and Light and Love Warps the Mind A Little; Storyville: An Illustrated Guide to Writing Fiction; and The Lie That Tells the Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction “States of Grace is a powerful, compelling crime debut that captures the dark side of South Florida with verve and style. It pairs nicely with Grace, a three-dimensional and memorable protagonist. Miller paints a bleak, realistic picture that readers will not soon forget.” —Alex Segura, award-winning author of Secret Identity: A Novel; Star Wars Poe Dameron: Free Fall; and the three-time Anthony Award-nominated Pete Fernandez Miami Mystery series “The dialog zings, the plot races, the Florida setting is richly detailed, the characters are 3-D, intriguing and fresh, and the prose is muscular and witty. Oh, yes, then there's Grace, the star, a full-bodied, complicated and fascinating woman. The pages flew by in a happy blur. What more can one ask for in a legal thriller? Even more amazing is that this well-crafted story is a debut novel. Mandy Miller is the real thing, a writer of consequence who I'm certain will have a long and distinguished career.” —James W. Hall, Edgar and Shamus Award Winning Author of the Thorn series Friday Nights in The Glades is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or deceased), business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2022 by Mandy Miller All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Published by Stirling Publishing, LLC, 2023 ISBN Print: 979-8-9875274-2-9 ISBN Digital: 979-8-9875274-3-6 Cover Design: Craig Terlson Literary Wanderlust edition, 2022 Printed in the United States of America To my Dad, who taught me that there is no better place to learn what lies in the hearts of men than on the field of play. CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author 1 Tonight is a night for football. The second Friday in October. The Glades Bowl. The only day of the year dreams have a chance of coming true in Sugar Bay, a hellhole of a swamp town wedged between Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, where mosquitoes grow as big as bats and football’s the only thing folks have to look forward to. Everyone except me, that is. Sugar Bay is the last place I want to be tonight. Being here means I have no choice but to lie to Hachi, my best friend, or at least she was my best friend until I spent the last year dodging her calls. And maybe it’s not a lie I’m telling, but simply a secret I’m not. For her own good, is what I tell myself, to save her the heartache. Hachi doesn’t need any more of that. Neither do I. And neither does the one counting on me to keep my own counsel, and his. I park my rental car between a rusted-out work truck and a neon-green compact jacked up like a praying mantis. Head down, I bull my way toward the gate marked VIP, past vendors hawking their fare under hand-lettered signs. None of standard the concession offerings, however—hot dogs, popcorn, pretzels. No, these are homemade delicacies—ribs sizzling in