CHAPTER 6
He shoved open the emergency exit door, pulling her out onto the rain-slicked roof of the hotel where the cold October wind roared across the Manhattan skyline.
The torrential rain immediately soaked through Clare’s cheap polyester maid uniform, plastering her dark hair against her skull as she gasped for cold air.
A massive, twin-engine matte-black helicopter hovered low over the rooftop helipad, its rotor blades creating a deafening wind that whipped the rain into a blinding mist.
The side door of the aircraft slid open, revealing two heavily armed bodyguards in tactical gear who lowered a metal boarding ramp toward the rooftop edge.
"Get inside!" Leo shouted over the roaring thunder of the rotor blades, guiding her up the slick ramp into the warm, leather-scented cabin of the private helicopter.
Clare stumbled into the cabin, collapsing onto the plush leather seats as the tactical guards immediately pulled the side door shut and sealed the pressurization latch.
The helicopter banked sharply, lifting off the roof just as a team of Moretti gunmen burst onto the rooftop below, firing futile rounds into the night sky.
Leo slid into the seat directly opposite her, taking a white cotton towel from a side cabinet and tossing it onto her lap without saying a word.
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Clare sat frozen, watching the sparkling, rain-streaked lights of New York City shrink beneath them as the aircraft flew rapidly toward the dark horizon of Long Island.
She looked down at her hands, realizing that her yellow rubber cleaning gloves were still clutched tightly in her cracked, bleeding knuckles.
