Rong fixed her with a bulging cross-eyed stare. ‘Don’t try and wriggle out of it.’

‘You’re always making all these phone calls all the time,’ said Toni.

Keisha leaned in with an aggressive grimace. ‘Like you were just now.’

‘Who are you talking to exactly?’ snarled Toni, prodding her hard in the chest with each word.

‘My lawyer.’

‘And who’s that who comes in to visit you?’ said Rong.

‘My brother.’

‘Not much of a family resemblance.’

‘Yeah. His nose is too big,’ grunted Keisha.

‘He’s my half-brother. Same father, different mothers.’

‘Bullshit!’ hissed Toni, leaning in close so their faces were almost touching.

Bailey swallowed and tried to maintain her composure.

She cursed herself for underestimating how closely they had been watching her.

‘And you’re always trying to get out of hurting people,’ said Keisha. ‘There’s definitely something wrong with you.’

In any other situation Bailey would have laughed at Keisha’s logic, but there wasn’t much to laugh about right now.

Toni reached behind her and pulled out her shank. She held it up to Bailey’s face so she could absorb every tiny detail of the home-made blade – the roughly filed edge, the vicious point.

She brushed back Bailey’s hair from the left side of her face to reveal her scar.

‘That’s a nasty scar you’ve got there. I think we’ll start by giving you one on the other side of your face to match it. They always say symmetry is an important factor in physical beauty. Shall we make you beautiful?’

Bailey tried to writhe away from the blade, but Muscles was holding her too firmly. Toni grinned in her signature shark-like way, her gold tooth winking from the corner of her mouth as she pressed the sharp tip of the shank against Bailey’s right cheek.

‘I’m not a cop!’ gasped Bailey. ‘You have to believe me!’

‘Too late for that,’ growled Toni, dismissing her protests.

Bailey closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, bracing herself for the pain, feeling the beads of sweat rolling down her face, her heart hammering inside her ribcage.

The flashback hit her right there and then.

…Hanging chained up from the rafters… the burning cigarettes… the smell of her toasting flesh… the razor blade… the blood dripping…

The name…

The name…

The name…

‘No!’ she screamed, her eyes popping wide open.

Toni recoiled in surprise.

‘Well, well… a little more squeamish than I’d bargained on.’

She lowered the shank.

‘Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning on giving you a scar. Too messy. And inconvenient. And anyhow, we’re beyond all that now.’

What did she mean exactly? Bailey’s bad feeling got that little bit worse.

Without breaking eye contact with Bailey, Toni smiled and held out her hand. ‘Rong?’

Rong stepped forward and held up a hypodermic syringe. She depressed the plunger slightly to make a small squirt of liquid come out of the top.

The syringe must have been stolen from the medical facility or smuggled in somehow.

Bailey hated needles at the best of times. And this was far from the best of times. This didn’t bode well at all.