She frantically pressed the button on the key-fob she was still holding in her hand. Her doors unlocked and the headlights turned back on. She suddenly wished she had a car alarm, one of those panic buttons. She turned to run to the car, but he grabbed her arm.

‘Where you going?’ he asked. ‘I thought we were friends.’

‘Fuck off,’ Nikki said. ‘Get out of my way.’

Nikki attempted to push past him, but he held her in place by her shoulders.

‘I’ll scream,’ she said. ‘Let me go or I will scream. They will be out here in a second.’

‘No, they won’t,’ he said with a grin on his face. ‘Hate to tell you, but we own this place. How do you think we found you? Got your new address? Nice place, but you have to do something about that fucking sensor light. Fucking thing goes off every time I get close.’

Nikki went limp, all the fight sucked out of her slight frame.

‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘What do I have to do now?’

Nikki already knew the answer. Riley’s promise wasn’t worth shit. He wasn’t the one making the rules.

CHAPTER 21

Long Bay Correctional Complex, Sydney, NSW, Australia

JAX grabbed a buy-up sheet before going back to his cell. He’d been hoping he wouldn’t have to make this order, had done everything in his power to avoid it, including killing the actor. But now, with freshly delivered drugs in his stomach, and traces of the tears he had wiped from Nikki’s face still on his hands, he didn’t have a choice. Nikki’s second visit to Long Bay had made that clear. At least this time she’d remembered to buy a can of drink. Sunkist.

If he thought about them, he could almost feel the round packages – four this time – making their way through his digestive system. In the eight days since he had done the unthinkable in the cage, he’d barely left his cell. It was only today, after being summoned to the visits centre, that he’d finally emerged.

As he’d made his way there, a hard knot of dread had formed in the pit of his stomach, and when he’d stepped onto the path leading to the cage, he’d begun to dry-retch. Waiting in the cage had been like torture – partly because what he’d done there kept playing through his head, but also because he knew it could only be Nikki on the other side of the wall.