Page 9 of Cruel (Brutal Academy)

"That was a bust." Hunter scratched at his thigh as best he could with cuffed wrists. "We—"

A flash of headlights shone through one of the windows.

I immediately dropped into a crouch. Hunter was only a fraction of a second behind me.

"Fuck," he swore. "I don't think they saw us."

"I fucking hope not." I stayed down as the gates clanged open. "Do you think whoever was here has come back?"

"No idea."

We got that answer a moment later when a car rolled past. It continued down the track towards the shed we'd woken in.

Before I could even suggest we make a run for the gate, it clanged shut.

"They're going to come looking for us pretty fucking quickly." Hunter rose and hurried towards the door. "It's not going to take them long to realise we're missing."

I followed him out and we hurried towards the gate.

"If I know Caleb at all…" Hunter bent down to scoop up a handful of gravel and throw it towards the fence. The moment it touched, the fence seemed to sizzle. The rocks rained back on us.

I threw up my wrists to protect my face. "Fucking hell," I growled. "Caleb is very quickly becoming my least favourite brother."

"I'm sure if he knew we were here, he wouldn't have the fence turned on." Hunter didn't sound so convinced.

"We need to figure out how to turn it off," I said. "How the fuck did they turn it off when they came in just now?" I jerked my thumb in the direction the car went.

"Remote-control." Hunter shrugged.

"Then there needs to be somewhere for the signal to go," I reasoned. "Look for a box on the side of the gate."

"You look for a box," he said. "I'm going to keep an eye out for the car, or someone coming after us."

I nodded and knelt down to scoop up a decent sized rock. You never know when a rock might come in handy for smashing boxes or heads.

I stepped out onto the track and approached the gate carefully. I was out in the open here, vulnerable. I wasn't used to the sensation and I didn't like it. People were going to die for what they did to me and my brother. People who weren't us.

It didn't take long to find a small metal box beside the gate. A red light flashed in the centre every few seconds.

Gotcha.

That was the easy part. The hard part was trying to position the rock in my hands so I could smash it against the box without touching the fence or smashing the crap out of my fingers. On a scale of one to a hundred, all of that would suck.

"You've got this, Park," I told myself.

"Get it quickly," Hunter snapped. "It sounds like they've found out we're not there anymore."

"They shouldn't be surprised, their hospitality sucks." I drew my hands back and smashed the rock into the flashing light. I pulled them back quickly, before any electrical charges could surge through me and fry the fuck out of my pubic hairs. That part of my body was on fire a lot of the time, but I didn't want it to burn like that.

The light winked at me like a teasing son of a bitch, then went on blinking.

I growled under my breath and smashed the rock into it again and again.

Finally, the sound of electricity shutting off buzzed through the air.

I lowered the rock and stood panting for a moment.

"You know what would have been even better?" Hunter asked. "If the fucking gate opened."

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