Three years ago, Gemma Lust Wilder was fifteen. She'd been in an arcade—a big one, air-conditioned and shiny-new. She was racking up points on a war simulation. She was lost in it, shooting, when two boys she knew from school came up behind her and squeezed her boobs. One on each side.
Gemma elbowed one sharply in his soft stomach, then swung around and stomped hard on the other one's foot. Then she kneed him in the groin.
It was the first time she'd ever hit anyone outside of her martial arts classes. The first time she'd needed to.
All right, she hadn't needed to. She'd wanted to. She enjoyed it.
When that boy bent over, coughing, Gemma turned and hit the first one in the face with the heel of her hand. His head flew back and she yanked the front of his T-shirt and yelled into his greasy ear, "I'm not yours to touch!"
She wanted to see fear on that boy's face, and to see his friend crumpled over on a nearby bench. Those two boys had always been so cocky at school, afraid of nothing.
A pimple-face man who worked at the arcade came over and grabbed Gemma's arm. "We can't have fighting in here, miss. I'm afraid you'll have to leave."
"Are you grabbing my arm?" she asked him. " 'Cause I don't want you to grab my arm."
He dropped it fast.
He was afraid of her.
He was six inches taller than her and at least three years older. He was a grown man, and he was afraid of her.
It felt good.
Gemma left the arcade. She didn't worry that the boys would follow her. She felt like she was in a movie. She hadn't known she could take care of herself that way, hadn't known that the strength she'd been building in the classes and in the weight room at the high school would pay off. She realized she had built armor for herself. Perhaps that was what she'd been intending to do.
She looked the same, looked just like anyone, but she saw the world differently after that. To be a physically powerful woman—it was something. You could go anywhere, do anything, if you were difficult to hurt.
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A few floors down in the Rio hotel hallway, Gemma found a maid who was pushing a cart. A forty-dollar tip and she had a room to sleep in until three-thirty. The check-in time was four p.m.
Another night of lifting wallets and another day of sleep and Gemma was ready to buy an inconspicuous used car off a sleazy guy in a parking lot. She paid cash. She collected her luggage from the bus station and stashed her extra IDs deep under the felt that lined the hatchback.
She drove herself across the border to Mexico with Laide Bell Perry's passport.