Authors note: - This is a follow on to the previous series, Becca XXX Dangerous Cargo. Please read it before reading this or you will not understand the plot or characters
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You never get used to that slam of a prison cell door. It's spine chilling the first time you hear it and it doesn't get any easier over time. It's not so much the sound that gets to you; it's what it means that's terrifying.
All of your freedoms and liberties are gone - stripped away.
You become another inmate; a number; a criminal who can't be trusted to be in society with other people. All that remains of you is your mind, body and spirit.
Being locked up can break all three of them if you let it.
As I was escorted along the prison corridor, I tried to recall how I'd gotten here.
It had all started when I'd been called to a meeting with Ethan to discuss my next assignment. He'd asked me to meet him at a café so that he could brief me about how we were going to track down Charles Hamilton. Hamilton was a high-ranking member of The Generals who'd tried to cripple our country by using dirty bombs at key motorway intersections. We had foiled his plan, but were finding it difficult to locate him. The guy was like some sort of invisible man, controlling things from the shadows. I'd been looking forward to bringing him down now that Ethan and Lexa had come up with a plan to find him, but I hadn't gotten that far.
As I'd waited for Ethan in the café, he had failed to show up. Instead, a police SWAT team had arrived and arrested me for the murder of a known drug dealer. The guy they were talking about was called David Banks and he was a member of a ruthless drug gang. I'd killed him because he was threatening to execute someone and I couldn't allow that to happen. I'd been given free reign and immunity from prosecution during my last assignment, but all of that seemed to have evaporated once we'd found out who David Banks was.
As well as being a drug dealer, he was also the son of an influential business man, Ronald Banks, who was extremely friendly with the Deputy Chief Constable of Manchester police. Ronald wanted justice for his son's murder and I'd been thrown into the firing line. As the arresting officers had thrown me into the back of the police van at gun point, I told them that they needed to call Ethan and straighten this whole thing out. Unfortunately for me, the lead officer had spoken some chilling words in reply.
"Ethan? Who do you think told us where to find you?"
he'd replied in a sinister tone.
Had I really been betrayed by the very people I'd been working for? The Facility had always been very cloak and dagger, but I refused to believe that they would have given me up to the police so easily. They'd spent thousands of pounds training me to be a deadly seductress so why would they suddenly cut me loose?
The police officer's words had been echoing around my head since I'd first heard them and I was still no closer to figuring out why this had happened to me.
Things had moved quickly from there. After a night in a cell at the local police station, I'd been presented with the charges against me and I'd been allowed one phone call. That's when my dilemma had really started. Ethan had previously warned me that the police wanted to question me about the incident. He'd also said that I should call him if there was a problem and that he'd try and straighten everything out. That was all well and good, but he seemed to be the reason I'd been arrested in the first place so there was no way I was going to call him.
Instead, I called one of the only people whom I truly trusted.
Lexa.
I dialled her number from memory, expecting her to answer after the third ring like always, but she didn't. In fact, the number just beeped with an automated message telling me that the number I had dialled had not been recognised.
My heart had sunk.
Had she betrayed me too?
I'd given this woman my very soul, not to mention the months of dangerous undercover work. I thought she loved me as much as I loved her, but maybe all of this had been a lie. The way I'd been coerced into working for them in the first place hadn't exactly been above board.
If I couldn't trust Lexa or Ethan, that only left me with a couple of options, neither of which were viable. I didn't want to drag Natalie into this and I knew that Tony was out of the country on a new mission.
For now, I was on my own.
Due to the severity of my crime, bail hadn't been granted and I was to be remanded in custody awaiting trial until further notice. That would allow both the prosecution and the defence councils time to build their cases. The only thing was, I hadn't even been appointed a solicitor yet. This certainly wasn't going to be over any time soon.
After having my fingerprints and DNA taken, I'd been shipped out to the nearest Category A women's prison which happened to be full of some of the hardest and most evil women in the country.
HMP Bronzefield.
It was in Kent and had taken a lot of bad press about the living conditions and care of some of the more vulnerable prisoners. I'd heard a lot about it on the news and I certainly wasn't looking forward to becoming its latest house guest.
However, there was nothing I could do about my predicament right at that moment. It didn't matter how I'd gotten myself into this situation, dwelling on it wasn't going to help me. I couldn't change the past, so I needed to push forward and make the best of it until I could figure it all out.
I snapped back to reality as I heard the first of the many doors slam behind me. I was being escorted by two female prison officers and every door I had walked through had to be unlocked and then locked again behind me.
Jangle... creak... slam... jangle.
I was sure that the doors were made to creak on purpose to put the fear of God into me. They were also deliberately slammed hard for the same reason.
I ended up at the reception desk where a large male officer sat behind a glass screen. It was like being at a bank only much more intimidating.
"Name?" said the Custody officer in a curt tone.
It was a simple enough question for most people to answer, but not if you had multiple identities. My real name was Rebecca Mansfield, but I'd been arrested as Rebecca Sloan -- my cover name for my last assignment. All of my details would be on the national database as Rebecca Sloan to ensure my cover story was water tight. For all intents and purposes, I was Rebecca Sloan. My fingerprints and passport numbers would match the database. There was no point in me protesting that I was someone else; not yet anyway. I thought that I'd need to mention it to the solicitor when I finally got to meet one, but for now I went along with it.
"Name?" he said again impatiently.
"Rebecca Sloan," I replied.
I also gave my false address and date of birth. My date of birth was actually real as it always paid to keep your cover story as close to the truth as possible. It made it easier to remember.
"Do you know why you're here?" asked the custody officer.
He was following protocol from a tick sheet to make sure they'd be no comebacks. I was just another bad person for processing as far as he was concerned.
"Yes," I replied.
There was no point arguing with him, I'd already tried all that at the police station and it had gotten me nowhere.
