Page 46 of The Hardest Hit

An hour later, Jackson came in and laughed at him through the bars and then took a picture.

“You’re putting that in the Christmas card, aren’t you?” asked Evan.

“Brat moya,” it was Ukrainian formy brother. “I wish I could. Meanwhile, you already have five thousand hits on YouTube,” Evan groaned, “and you’ll probably be on the local news tonight.Fuck Nazisalways plays well. Way to keep it classy.”

“Grandma is going to be so pissed.”

“Oh, yes,” agreed Jackson. “But don’t worry, Aiden’s on it. He has discovered that your arresting officer is a racist asshole who didn’t cuff half the skinheads and already let some of them go.”

“Seriously?” demanded Devonte, sitting up straighter on the bench.

“Yup,” said Jackson, leaning comfortably on the bars.

“Fucking cops,” said one of the guys at the end of the line, and he spit on the floor.

“Don’t sweat it,” said Jackson. “Once Aiden found that out, and saw on the video, he got fucking pissed. Seriously, I haven’t seen him that mad since he planted Charlie MacKentier’s face into the conference table. Anyway, now it’s all holy war up in there. I expect you guys will be released in the next hour or two. No charges.”

There was a sigh of relief from down the line.

“Oh,” said Evan, repressing the desire to go hug Jackson. “That’s good. Hey, Jacks?”

“Yeah?”

“Where am I? I mean, what do they call this?” He gestured around the room and Jackson laughed at him again.

“It’s holding. You could also call it the drunk tank.”

“Oh, OK. My criminal vocabulary is lacking.”

“Yeah, you need to work on that if you’re planning on taking my title as the family jailbird.”

“Well, this wasn’t what I was planning when I woke up this morning,” said Evan.

“Which is what I said almost every time I landed in holding,” said Jackson. “I’ll be back around in a bit. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Ha. Ha,” said Evan.

“Your brother was in jail?” asked one of the other men.

“Jackson did a couple of years for armed robbery,” said Evan.

“And you were raised by your Grandma?” asked Devonte.

“Yes.”

One of the other men chuckled.

“Why is that funny?”

“I was just thinking the rich peopleareexactly like poor people. That is exactly the family story of about half my neighbors.”

“Not really,” said Evan. “Rich people have a lot more money.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” said Devonte.

Evan sat quietly and tried not to do anything else stupid. He was not sure how he was going to explain this to Olivia. She might think it was funny. He wasn’t sure.

“OK,” said Aiden, striding into the room an hour later, “here’s the deal, the ADA is going to come in and ask you all a couple of questions in a minute. Evan, you were acting in self-defense. The rest of you were afraid for Evan’s safety and helped defend him.”