Enlightening Emmy (Submissives of Rawhide Ranch #25)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Then

“What are we doing?”

“Shh!” Lilah looked grim as she quickly crammed clothes into an old duffle bag she’d picked up somewhere. “No questions, Em. Pack. Now.”

I stared at a duffle bag, similar to the one she now packed, that she’d shoved into my hands. “Why are we leaving?” I whispered.

She glared at me, then at the bag in my hands, her message clear and brooking zero arguments.

I pulled open my dresser drawer and started packing.

We’d lived here nearly four months, two of five foster kids. We were the oldest, Lilah seventeen and me just turned sixteen. It beat the shelter we’d spent over a year in after losing our previous foster home.

It wasn’t like we had a lot. Even with all our clothes we both had room to spare in the duffle bags and in our school backpacks.

She’d already grabbed everything from our bathroom and stashed it in leak-proof zipper-top bags.

Our foster father was asleep in the back bedroom. He worked nights and his wife worked days. The other three kids, all boys unrelated to each other, ages eight, ten, and eleven, were still at school.

Lilah scoured our shared bedroom one last time and handed me another plastic baggy, a large one, this one filled with paperwork.

My eyes widened when I recognized it. “How’d you get this?”

She shrugged. “I learned how to pick a lock. Took them last night after he left for work while she was still at the grocery store.”

I hadn’t seen my paperwork since we first arrived and knew it’d been locked in a filing cabinet in the master bedroom. The only identification I had was my school ID.

“Let’s go.” She went first, slowly cracking the bedroom door and carefully listening before easing it all the way open and motioning for me to follow. I stayed in her footsteps, avoiding the creaky hall floorboards, and it wasn’t until we were a block away that I finally spoke again.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

I didn’t think she would answer me at first. “I overheard him on the phone the other night. You know that ‘summer camp’ he talked about sending us to after school lets out?”

A shiver rippled through me. “Yeah?”

“Well, turns out a couple of his ‘friends’ will be there. Oh, and it’s not a camp; it’s a private hunting lodge. And we’d be the only girls there.”

“Fuck. Me.”

“Exactly.” While Lilah and I weren’t sisters by blood, we’d been together for over five years now, sticking together, having each other’s backs.

I didn’t want to think about my time in the foster system before we met and she refused to talk about her experiences, although I could easily guess the basics.

Funny how when you start calling each other sisters the people who are supposed to take care of you don’t really check that shit out, which is how we’d managed not to be separated in all that time.

“So now what?” I asked.

“Now we do things our way. I’ll be eighteen in ten months, and then I’ll be your legal guardian until you turn eighteen.

We already get free breakfast and lunch at school.

Mia said she’d let us into the gym to shower for free and use a locker for extra storage.

Before summer break we can shower at school in the mornings. ”

“What about somewhere to sleep?” I asked.

“I already figured that out,” she said. “The public library across the street from school is open until 8pm on weeknights. We can study there. The 4H barn at school? There’s a thickly wooded patch out behind it.

We’ll get a tent and sleep there. There aren’t cameras or alarms in the barn.

If the weather’s nasty, we can sleep there.

Besides, you’ll be in summer school to help with your extra credits for your GPA so we can explain our presence there. ”

My stomach dropped. “You sure this is a better option?”

“If we go back to the shelter, they’ll separate us when I age out. And it’s our word against his. I’ll get a job after school lets out, and in a few weeks we should be able to afford a room at that old hotel just down from the gym.”

“Why can’t I get a job, too?”

She shook her head. “No. You have to keep your grades up for your scholarship. No way in hell am I letting you screw that up.”

While we were eligible for scholarships due to being wards of the state, I had also landed an academic scholarship to a university in northern California with a decent pre-med program. “I can’t let you do all that, Lilah. I need to help, too.”

She stopped and turned to face me. “Em, you’re smart.

You’re probably a fricking literal genius.

We both lost the parental lottery, okay?

But I am not a genius, and there’s no way in hell I can make it through college right now even if I do manage to land financial aid beyond the state help.

Let me do this for you, okay? On the other side of things you can pay me back in other ways, if that makes you feel better. Please?”

I studied her and knew there was no way I’d ever budge her off that decision. Not so much as a centimeter. “Okay,” I quietly said.

She firmly nodded and headed off again, our destination a bus stop two blocks away. I didn’t question her as we got on and rode several miles before getting off again, and then walked several blocks to a house. She checked a piece of paper and I followed her up to the front door, where she knocked.

A middle-aged woman opened the door, cautiously eyeing us. “Can I help you?”

Lilah put on a smile. “Hi! I’m the one who contacted you this morning about the tent.

We’re supposed to go on a campout this weekend with our church youth group, and our stupid brother destroyed ours last time he was out and didn’t tell anyone.

If we can’t get another one, our parents said we can’t go… ”

Twenty minutes later we left with not only a tent, but a large hiking pack, a tarp, two sleeping bags, and a few other camping accessories I suspected would be invaluable.

Lilah let me carry her school backpack but insisted on toting her duffle bag as well as wearing the new camping backpack.

Maybe it should’ve bothered me that she’d put together this plan so quickly, but I was also thankful for her taking care of me. She literally was a sister to me in everything but name and DNA.

“Where are we going now?” I asked as we headed to the bus stop.

“School,” she said. “There’s a soccer game tonight. Lots of people, meaning no one will notice us. The weather will be good. We can sleep out tonight and tomorrow, then we have the weekend.”

I felt terrified. “Won’t they just come get us at school?”

“Why? We’re going to school, so there’s no truancy issue. How many times have we not even crossed paths with either of them for a couple of days with their work shifts. You honestly think they’re going to turn down free money when they don’t even have to feed us?”

“What about the boys?”

“They’re not our problem,” she said. “Besides, he wasn’t talking about them. He was only talking about us.” She glanced at me. “And I suspect the ‘runaway girls’ they’ve hosted in the past weren’t runaways. Funny how none of the boys they’ve taken in run away, isn’t it?”

My stomach churned. “This is bad, isn’t it?”

“Only as bad as we make it. We’ve got this, girlie. Less than a year, and we’ve got it made. They won’t dare take you away from me then.”

There was something comforting in her words, her confidence.

I never felt confident like that. Ever.

“You’re smart too, you know,” I said. “I don’t know why you think you aren’t.”

“I’m not saying I’m an idiot. What I’m saying is I am completely realistic that my future isn’t college. Maybe later, but not right now. I’d rather work and get you into college and then decide what I want to do.”

Our plan worked great for the first several weeks. Her friend Mia even let us use her address as our own and Lilah filed a change of address form.

It worked until school let out for summer break, that was. That next week a weather system settled over our area and dumped 100 years’ worth of rain on top of the region and flooded where we’d been staying.

We’d just showered at the gym and Mia let us out the back door at closing time, so we could chill under the overhang there. She told us there weren’t any video cameras back there and that we would be okay for a day or two.

She couldn’t bring us home with her because her father was a cop and would most likely turn us in for running.

My stomach growled as I got a whiff of something good from the pizza place next door to the gym.

Lilah heard it. “Eat something, Em.”

I shook my head. “I’m okay until morning.” We’d both earned a little cash writing and re-writing papers for classmates during finals, and we’d tightly held on to it, but we were down to maybe twenty dollars between us.

We both looked over when the restaurant’s back door opened and an older guy walked out with both hands full of garbage bags. He headed to the dumpster and flung them in and I spotted the resolution on Lilah’s face as she watched.

Before she could move I grabbed her arm. “I am not so desperate I’m willing to scrounge in a dumpster. Yet.”

“No,” she said. “But restaurants usually need people to do grunt work.” She left her stuff with me and darted over to the restaurant’s rear stoop just as the screen door swung shut behind the guy.

I huddled there in the dark, trying to stay dry, and couldn’t hear what she said.

But then she smiled and waved me over, so I joined her.

The older man was probably in his early sixties and scowled at us, taking in our bags and backpack. “Why aren’t you two at home?”

Lilah was the communicator, the bullshit artist, the one who could win anyone over no matter the circumstances.

Within minutes I was curled up with our stuff in the back of the tiny storeroom and reading pre-assigned books for my summer classes on my cheap-ass tablet while Lilah worked in the kitchen.

Washing dishes, bussing, prep—she’d done it all apparently.