They accelerated through a red light, speeding past a wall of traffic shooting across the junction towards them, causing a roar of screeching brakes and horns, and into the tangle of streets north of East Russell Road.
"Keep your head down," Rocco told her as he slammed the car around corners, allowing the steering wheel to spin beneath his lifted fingers.
He pumped his foot hard on the accelerator, the brake, the accelerator, one after the other, as he swerved between cars, on the inside of the lane, then the outside. Rocco's shaggy dark locks flew around his forehead as he jerked the car left and right, speeding, then braking.
They slowed down on New York-New York, the engine purring as they turned slowly down a narrow street, slipping into the stream of traffic heading towards Roy Square, then seemingly back the way they'd come.
Rocco nodded at the dash compartment. When Elodie opened it, she saw a baseball cap and dark sunglasses.
"Put them on."
Elodie heard sirens then; racing away from them, sometimes towards them.
Gunning the vehicle, Rocco swerved onto the wrong side of the road, and straight towards lanes of oncoming traffic.
Heart in her throat, Elodie clung onto the dash with one hand, and the oh-shit handle with the other. Eyes flicking from the rear mirror to the wing mirror, and squinting into the sky—checking for helicopter and trails—Rocco was apparently oblivious they were about to smash into a car that was swerving in panic in front of them.
"Rocco!" Elodie screamed, hunching her shoulders and gripping the handle in her right hand until her knuckles cracked; braced for impact.
Rocco jerked the wheel, skidding ninety degrees to perfectly negotiate the narrow entrance to a news street, and sped up. They were in one of the busiest city in the world, Elodie wanted to tell him, and one of the most heavily surveilled; it was insane to think they could evade capture.
The police was probably looking for them—her, specifically—right now.
But a garage door opened up halfway along the mews and a Corvette pulled out of it ahead of them. Rocco slammed the brakes, Elodie was flung forwards, to swing into the garage behind it. Shards of glass fell from hair as a brick of wall rushed towards them—but the car stopped dead.
Elodie's heart leaped to her throat, a scream caught halfway in her windpipes.
Hana's fatal pirouette was still imprinted in her mind's eye; echoes of the automatic gunfire still juddered her bones. Again, bile rose to her throat.
"Get out." Leaving the engine running, Rocco climbed from the car, but leaned back and pointed at the pen, which was on the floor. "Pick it up!"
Elodie snatched it up, and followed him to the other car. A man and a woman with similar builds as she and Rocco, both wearing sunglasses and baseball caps, appeared from nowhere and jumped into the car they'd just abandoned in the garage. It pulled out and drove the opposite way.
When Rocco drove the Corvette onto a main road, Elodie tried to get her bearings. They were somewhere in Utah, or maybe Arizona, she wasn't sure.
A helicopter flew above a building. A moment later, a pair of police vehicles sped past in the opposite direction, sirens wailing as they went.
Moving into a creeping stream of traffic, Rocco rested his elbows on the window of the driver's side. His surprisingly manicured nails tapped on the wheel. They crawled slowly along for a few minutes, Elodie's nerves screaming;it seemed to her that they were going in circles, continually doubling back towards the square.
YOU ARE READING
THE ESCORT
Romance*** Explicit +18 Mafia romance*** Elodie Evans has been an escort for over five years. It's a nerve-wracking job, but she needed the money to pay for her brother's hospital bills as well as her own bills. A waitress by day, an escort by night, life...
