Victim Of Circumstance
Freya Barker
Contents
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Also By Freya Barker
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Victim of Circumstance
Copyright © 2020 Freya Barker
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 by other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author or publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in used critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses as permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, mentioning in the subject line:
"Reproduction Request” at the address below:
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, any event, occurrence, or incident is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created and thought up from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ISBN: 978 1 988733 463
Cover Design: Lauren Dawes
Editing: Karen Hrdlicka
Proofreading: Joanne Thompson
Prologue
Fresh air.
I stop when I hear the harsh clank of the gate closing behind me and suck in a deep, desperate breath. It’s like my lungs are able to expand fully for the first time in eighteen years. The full hit of oxygen makes me instantly lightheaded.
It’s all between my ears, I realize that, but there’s no denying the physical impact breathing actual free air after so many years has on me. I force myself not to bend over and gasp, like my body wants to. Instead I raise my eyes to a mostly cloudless sky, giving my senses a moment to adjust.
The shrill honk of a car horn interrupts my efforts to calibrate my senses and my eyes automatically dart to the end of the wide drive into Rockwood Penitentiary, where I’ve spent almost two decades in Cell Block C. My cab is waiting for me and I slowly start walking toward it, almost expecting a harsh voice to call me back.
All I have is a paper bag with the few meager, and by now meaningless, belongings I had on me when I was brought here. My clothes feel weird and unfamiliar, taken from a supply closet with stacks of unclaimed street clothes for people like me who have no one on the outside to send them some. I don’t know where the clothes I was wearing back then disappeared to. Maybe some other guy wore those home.
Home. A weird concept, even before I ended up here it was an undefined place. At that time I had a tiny, rented studio apartment, but for two decades home had been a six-by-eight prison cell. Small, but it was mine. I didn’t have much to fill it with except for the books given to me through Books to Prisoners, one of the many organizations trying to make life behind bars more livable.
I have eighteen books, one for each year I spent inside. Books I read over and over and over again. There’d been more, some borrowed from the prison library, but these eighteen came to mean something to me. They were representative of every year I spent inside. The ones that allowed me to disappear, even just for the time it took me to read them. They’d been my true sanctuary, my peaceful haven in an oppressive, sound-filled environment.
They’re all in my paper bag, making it heavy as fuck to carry. Also in there are my toothbrush, my soap, and a leather wristband I forgot I had until it was handed to me earlier. My leather jacket, the only item of my own clothing remaining, is hot on my back in the midday sun. The wad of cash, both the hundred and fifteen dollars I had on me when I was arrested, and the gate money—a few weeks’ worth of living expenses I’m supposed to pay back in a few months—are burning a hole in my pocket.
“Where are you heading?” the old man standing beside the taxi asks when I approach.
Isn’t that the million-dollar question? One I don’t have an answer for right away—it’s been so long since I’ve had to make any decisions—so I buy myself some time by answering, “The closest bus station.”
Clutching my paper bag, I climb in the back seat and immediately open the window, wanting to feel the air move on my face.
“Is that okay?” I ask politely.
“Sure,” he says, climbing behind the wheel. “You’re not the only one who does that.”
I don’t talk much. Never have, and certainly not while I was inside. I kept mostly to myself. I’m relieved when the driver doesn’t make an effort to engage in small talk.
I look out the window, letting the landscape roll by as I consider where I might want to go. Big cities where I can disappear anonymously pass my mind’s eye, but during the twenty-minute ride, the one place that keeps coming to the forefront is my hometown of Beaverton.
It seems crazy to go back to a small town where most people will remember what you did, but somehow I find myself compelled to ask for a ticket there when I walk up to the window at the bus station.
Chapter One
Gray
“This is too much.”
I look at the stack of bills stuffed in the envelope Jimmy shoves in my hand, which was just supposed to hold my earnings for the past two weeks.
Jimmy Olson was still in Beaverton when I arrived last month. We’d been best friends since elementary school and he’d even visited me in jail twice, until I finally refused to see him. My head had been fucked up—hell, it likely still is—and watching Jimmy walk out of there twice had almost done me in. I was sad, I was scared, and I struggled finding my equilibrium inside. As much as seeing him gave me a brief moment of reprieve, seeing that door
