‘You wanna progress report, Swag?’ said a barrel-chested man with a whiny voice, whose chest hair curled up to his pointed chin.

‘Later, Mikey. When I ain’t got company.’

The tall guy looked at Kate and licked his lips. ‘See you got yourself breakfast already, Swag.’

Swagger nodded and slapped Kate’s butt. ‘And damn, am I hungry this morning.’ Their sycophantic laughter was sickening.

Kate gritted her teeth.

‘So, what’s with the new purse, Kes?’ Swagger demanded.

‘Hope you’re thirsty as well as hungry,’ said Kes, the tall guy. ‘’Cause we have brought back a treat.’ He opened up the case and pulled out a test tube. A thick, dark syrupy liquid sloshed inside. Blood.

The gang, Swagger included, all stared at the haul like it was solid gold.

Swagger seemed to snap out of the trance first. ‘What you even thinkin’ about, taking this?’

Mikey shrugged. ‘We can handle it, Swag.’

Kes looked suddenly uncomfortable. ‘Thought we’d have us a party to celebrate Friday night comin’.’

‘You ain’t got no orders to!’ Swagger advanced threateningly on his so-called generals. ‘Where’d you get this? And where’s Danno?’

Mikey looked at the others for support. ‘We saw some of Ramone’s gang taking it from Woollard’s place …’

‘And you couldn’t help yourselves, huh?’ Swagger bore down on him, imitated Mikey’s nasal Bronx accent. ‘We can handle it, Swag! Come on, what happened?’

Kate listened in horror as Kes and his buddies told Swagger about how they’d run what had to be Jasmine’s car off the road, and how the guy inside had turned ’wolf, and how Danno had slugged him with an iron bar while the rest of them took off. Danno was following on, but the ’wolf wouldn’t be going anywhere fast …

Exhausted, frightened now for Tom as much as for herself, Kate felt tears prickling the backs of her eyes. But she kept them inside. There was no way these animals would ever see her cry.

‘You dumb-ass son of a bitch,’ Swagger told Kes, suddenly dead serious. ‘These tubes were meant for Stacy Stein over at Park East Hospital. She needs ’em, man!’

‘We need ’em,’ said Mikey, and the others agreed.

Kes offered a tube to Swagger. ‘Hey, there’s two crates of these babies. We can just take some of ’em, and—’

‘You’re no better than that scum in the locker room!’ Swagger snatched the test tube away and smacked Kes in the face with enough force to floor him. ‘You don’t do shit like this again, none of you, y’hear?’ he raged. ‘I’m ruling here. Me.’ He stabbed his grimy finger into Chest Hair Man’s shoulder. ‘I say when you can pull this kind of crap, and when I tell you to do something straight, you don’t make no circus out of it. Get me?’