Deadly Embrace

into his bedroom, lock the door, and make her touch him. ‘When you’re a big girl we’ll do a lot more than this,’ he’d promised, with an evil chuckle.
‘You mean y-you’ve slept with him?’ Dani stammered, keeping her secret to herself.
‘Wasn’t my choice,’ Emily said, turning up her nose at the memory. ‘He’s a pig.’
‘That’s horrible! Disgusting!’ Dani said, shuddering.
‘It’ll be your turn next,’ Emily warned.
Emily was short, with light brown frizzy hair, a compact body, and big breasts. She was seventeen and quite smart. Dani worshipped her and followed her around whenever she could.
Although over seventy, Dashell took advantage of all the female members of his family. Since Lucy’s unfortunate death (they’d buried her in the back garden and told Dani when she was old enough that Olive was her mother) he’d taken on two more wives. One was an ex-prostitute, the other a teenage runaway. Between them they’d given him five more children.
Dashell ruled his large household like the Pasha he imagined himself to be. All seven of the older girls had to sleep with him whenever he summoned them, and so did his four wives. Recently two of his daughters had become pregnant by him. He called it ‘the grand circle of life’.
Dani dreaded the day when he would come after her. Emily was right, she knew it would be soon.
‘If you don’t want him on top of you, you’d better run,’ Emily said. ‘God! I wish I had.’
‘Run where?’ she asked.
‘Anywhere–as long as it’s away from here.’
‘Will you come with me?’
‘I might,’ Emily answered mysteriously. ‘The thing is, if we get caught he’ll beat the bejesus out of us. That man is full of vengeance–he don’t care what he does.’
Emily knew things the others didn’t on account of the fact that she’d palled up with Sam Froog, a cocky young man with bright red hair who occasionally worked part-time at the ranch and had eyes for her. She liked him too. He smuggled her books and magazines, and from them she learned plenty about the outside world, information she sometimes shared with Dani.
Sam rode in on his motorcycle for a few days every month. He’d sat next to Dashell at the roulette table in Vegas, and the old man had offered him good money to come out to the ranch and help him. Mostly he took care of the horses, cleaning their stalls, grooming them, and stocking up on feed.
‘Your old man’s a perv,’ he told Emily one day when they were getting more than friendly in the back of the barn.
‘What’s that mean?’ she asked, picking straw out of her hair.
‘He’s screwin’ all these women. Whaddaya think that makes him?’
‘A pig!’ Emily said.
‘A perv,’ Sam said.
And then they began necking again.
Soon, Sam began telling her all kinds of stories about Las Vegas and life outside the ranch. Emily couldn’t believe how exciting it all sounded.
‘Y’know, there is a better way of living out there,’ she confided to Dani, passing on her knowledge. ‘I’ve been thinking that maybe we should go find it. We’ve got nothing to lose.’
‘Yes,’ Dani said, nodding fervently. ‘I want to get away from here more than anything!’
So they made their plans, eliciting the help of Sam, who was sure he could squeeze them both on the back of his motorcycle as long as they were really serious about splitting.
‘If I help you, I can’t ever come back here,’ he said. ‘The old geezer pays me plenty, so I’ll be losin’ out.’
‘Think of it this way,’ Emily said persuasively. ‘You’ll be rescuing Dani and me. That makes you a real hero.’
‘It does?’ Sam said, liking the hero idea.
‘Oh, yes,’ Emily said encouragingly, giving him a quick peck on the cheek.
‘It’s not like he knows where I live or anything,’ Sam mused. ‘He only comes t’town every coupla months–so he’ll never track us. We’ll see him before he sees us.’
‘Then you’ll take us?’ Emily asked.
‘Why not?’ Sam said, imagining himself as a kind of Superman figure. ‘I’ll help you.’
‘We’ll pay you back,’ Emily promised.
‘You bet you will!’ he joked.
Two days later they took off in the middle of the night while everyone was sleeping. Sam wheeled his motorcycle a good distance from the property before he dared start it.
‘Don’t worry about waking him,’ Emily said, climbing on the back and helping Dani aboard. ‘He sleeps like the dead, snores so loud he wouldn’t hear a bear fart if it was standing next to him.’
‘I know, but the old guy’s some kinda wacko,’ Sam said, experiencing second thoughts. ‘We don’t want him catching us.’
‘He won’t,’ Emily assured him.
‘I could give him up to the cops, you know,’ Sam said. ‘Havin’ all those wives–it’s gotta be against the law.’
‘Really?’ Dani said, thinking how satisfying it would be to see Dashell led off in handcuffs.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Sam said confidently. ‘An’ how about none of you goin’ t’school? That’s not legal for sure.’
‘I taught Dani to read and write,’ Emily said proudly. ‘She learned good.’
Dani’s heart was fluttering at the thought of this new adventure. All she’d ever known was the ranch, and Olive forcing her to work. Every day she’d had to feed the animals, clean the house, do the cooking, washing, sewing and scrubbing. Her workload was endless.
She clung on to Emily, her arms round her sister’s waist, hoping and praying that they’d make a clean getaway and Dashell wouldn’t come after them.
As they neared the bright lights of Vegas she went into shock. ‘It’s–it’s like a fairyland,’ she gasped, darting her head this way and that.
‘Just you wait,’ Sam said, chuckling. ‘You got the good stuff to come.’
‘I do?’
‘Bet on it.’
And sure enough, the moment they hit the Strip she could barely speak. ‘Oh, my Lord!’ she exclaimed. ‘Look at all these people.’
After driving up and down a couple of times, they stopped at a coffee shop, where Sam bought them all hamburgers, milkshakes and big slices of apple pie.
‘What’m I gonna do with you two now I got you here?’ he said, realizing