She frowned to herself. They only spread their hoods when they felt threatened, when they wanted to appear more menacing to their enemies. And she wasn’t his enemy.

Something was wrong.

She spun around.

A man was standing right behind her. Burly, with olive skin, dressed in a dark suit. He had silently appeared out of nowhere.

A surge of cold panic shot through her. For this stranger to be inside her flat, she knew something somewhere had gone very wrong indeed.

Reacting with animal speed, she hissed like one of her snakes and swiped at his eyes with her long nails. He evaded her with a deft backwards step and settled into a gladiatorial stance, giving her a look which challenged her to try and get past him and out of this room.

She didn’t know why he was here or exactly what he wanted, but she had a very strong feeling his intentions weren’t good.

Turning swiftly, she flipped the lid off the vivarium behind her and expertly grasped the rearing cobra, holding him just behind the head as she’d done so many times before in a way that ensured he couldn’t bite her. She whipped him out of the vivarium and held him, whirling and twisting, in front of her, thrusting his bared fangs at her unwelcome intruder.

‘Normally he just kills mice,’ she said, ‘but today I think I might give him a human being. A special treat. One bite from him and you’ll be dead in fifteen minutes.’

The man’s eyes widened as he warily regarded the snake.

‘Well, if you’re going to get all feisty on us…’ he said, pulling a small, strange-looking device from the pocket of his suit jacket. She recognised it as a Taser.

She flung the snake at him. With surprising agility, the man ducked to one side, the cobra sailing harmlessly over his shoulder to land on the floor, where it slithered away. At the same time, he pulled the trigger of the Taser. The twin barbed darts whistled into her chest, the electric shock instantly paralysing her. She collapsed to the floor, unable to control the agonising spasms which gripped her body.

As she lay there convulsing in pain, she saw through blurred eyes that another man had entered the room. Very short, dressed in a grey suit and a black polo-neck sweater, he had a strangely smooth and baby-like face… and he appeared to be holding a large roll of silver duct tape.

Smiling unpleasantly, he strode over to her incapacitated form, knelt down next to her, ripped off a big piece of tape and placed it across her mouth.

78

Frank lay in the hospital bed, heavily sedated, his eyes closed, his upper torso extensively bandaged, tubes protruding from his mouth and his chest, a life-support machine bleeping next to him as it ventilated his damaged lungs.

It was now Thursday evening, three days after he’d been shot. After being rushed to hospital, he’d gone straight into surgery, and his condition, although initially critical, was stabilising now that he was being ventilated. Bailey was sitting by his bed in the intensive care unit, watching him intently. She’d been there on and off for the past few days, mounting a vigil of sorts, closely monitoring his progress, desperately praying that he would pull through.