Page 124 of Cruel Elite (Princes of Ravenlake Academy 3)

“Where are they?” Caleb asks, game face on.

“I left them in the woods, straight south, but I don’t know where they are taking him.”

“How did they know we’d be here?” J.C. growls. “I swore everyone to secrecy.”

There will be time for me to confess my sins later, to admit to everyone how badly I sold Noah out.

But right now, we just have to focus on finding him.

“They’re going to beat him, maybe worse. I don’t know what they have planned, but it’s not good. We have to go.”

Caleb turns for the stairs. J.C. follows.

“What do I do?” Haley asks.

“Stay here,” Caleb yells back. “We’ll take care of this.”

J.C. and Caleb run down the stairs and head for the door.

It takes all of thirty seconds for Haley and me to look at one another and shake our heads.

There’s no way I’m staying here when Noah is out there fighting the Hell Princes off alone because of me.

This is my fault.

And I’m going to fix it.

By the time we get outside, J.C. and Caleb have already taken off into the trees. There’s no way to know which direction they’ve gone.

“What do we do?” Haley asks.

“Do we call the cops?”

“It will take too long,” she says. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. There isn’t time.”

I take a deep breath and try to think. “The Hell Princes were dragging Noah further south. What’s directly on the other side of these trees?”

“The road. The driveway is a mile long and wraps around the trees to connect with the road there. They were dragging him towards the highway.”

Jennifer and Anika picked me up at my house, so I don’t have my car, but I see Noah’s car parked off to the side of the house.

I run for it, praying he has his keys inside.

I yank on the handle.

It’s locked. “Shit!”

I cup my hands around my face and peer in the window, and I can see the keys in the cupholder. “The keys are inside, but the door is—”

Before I even get the words out, Haley calls for me to get back.

I step away just in time to see a massive rock from the cabin’s garden fly towards the back windshield.

It shatters. Haley scrambles inside.

She unlocks the doors for me and crawls into the passenger seat and retrieves the keys from the cupholder.

“Sometimes, coming from the wrong side of town has its advantages.”

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