On The Run: Jessica Banks Thrillers, #0

By Lew Gibb

Action packed prequel to the Jessica Banks Thriller series

 

Trafficked by psychotic and abusive foster parents.

 

Jessica escapes and vows to take revenge.

 

She's On The Run: With no money and no skills except the ones she's aquired the hard way.

 

Jessica will need to fight off enforcers and thugs while transforming herself from victim to avenger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lew Gibb
• Release date: Sep 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393167877

Book preview

Epigraph

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way it treats its children

—Nelson Mandela

Chapter One

The worn-down fork slipped in Chrissy’s hand; her palm was bleeding again. Chrissy cursed under her breath, readjusted her grip and kept scraping. Calling the broke-ass three-inch piece of metal in her hand a fork was being generous. She dragged the sharpest edge along the worn groove, pressing with all the muscle her underfed sixteen year-old body could produce. Her reward for the effort was an almost non-existent trickle of sawdust. When the fork had been new, or new to her, when she’d snatched it off a room service tray in the hall of the Holiday Inn, it had three of those stabby points and the whole thing was almost as long as her hand. In the three weeks since, the length had decreased so that now it was barely longer than her palm, ground down by maddeningly slow work of digging free of her prison. The points had broken off the first night, right after she got through the drywall. That had been such a good night. Only an hour of scraping at the soft material, after her sisters had gone to sleep, and she had cut out a square hole big enough to squeeze herself through. She didn’t know that was going to be the easiest part of the whole thing.

She was careful with the dust. Peeled back the carpet in the front corner of her closet so everything would drop on the plywood and the carpet would hide it when it was dropped back into place. The sawdust wasn’t as bad as the drywall dust had been. That white powder clung to everything. Once, Poppa put a guy’s head through the wall. The asshole was smacking Chrissy around and Poppa came busting in, all veins popping on his red neck and yelling what the fuck is going on here? Took one look at the fat lip already blowing up on Chrissy’s face and laid into that motherfucker. You want to smack my girl! he yelled. Smashing the guy in the face with his big fist on every other word, You gotta pay for it first asshole! She had to clean up the mess afterwards, and it took forever. That dust was a motherfucker.

The stabby points had broken off when she got to work on the next layer, the one she thought was the outside wall, or the siding, or whatever. Turned out it was called sheathing and they put it there to hold everything together so the house wouldn’t fall down. She found that out when she borrowed a smartphone one of the Johns left on the little table next to the bed while he went to the bathroom. She almost cried when she saw what the fuck she was dealing with. She kept going though. What choice did she have? With the points broken off, things actually went pretty well at first; she had a nice quarter inch deep square in an hour or so. Then the jagged edges started to wear down and she had to keep switching her grip, turning the handle over so the sharp part was against the wood, which seemed to happen about every five or six scrapes. It had taken her three more weeks of scrunching herself into that little corner and fighting that goddammed sheathing, and then the siding, while trying to not wake up the other girls. For sure those bitches would rat Chrissy out to Momma and Poppa for some extra food, or a new pair of kicks. Her so-called foster parents were masters at playing the girls against each other. Even though they were supposed to be sisters.

She felt a puff cool air. Didn’t believe it at first. Put her face right up against it and felt the coolness on her chin. She could smell damp, and fresh grass. Someone had mowed the lawn earlier that day.

Just a little more, she whispered and attacked the groove with more determination ignoring the blood trickling down her arm.

She had to get out tonight. There was no telling when Momma and Poppa were going to decide it was time to move on. They kept one step ahead of the po-po by moving to a new house every couple months. Even changing states once in awhile. They’d been in the current place so long Chrissy lost track, but she knew they had to be moving any day.

The siding moved. Or she thought it moved. She was a little light headed from hyperventilating and over-exerting herself in the corner of the stuffy closet. People would probably laugh if they knew she’d fought for this tiny, two foot wide space that was her bedroom. Momma and Poppa didn’t believe in private bedrooms for lazy whores who wasted too much time sleeping when they should be making money. A few more scrapes and the board twisted in the opening. No doubt about that. It moved like the top on a can of soup when the opener didn’t cut all the way around. She let the fork fall. It made a dull thud when it hit the pile of sawdust in space between the studs. She pressed the siding's top corner with her fingertips. There was a little tearing, cracking sound, and the opposite corner popped out a little. She worked the fingers into the gap and pried while pushing with her other hand. The square piece twisted a little and stopped. Something was holding it. Chrissy was on her back and ready to kick the fucking thing before she knew what she was doing. Her knees were up against her chest so