Page 75 of His Virgin Romance Series
“I… What?” I said, in complete disbelief. “You’ve got the wrong person.”
“We found the drugs in your apartment.”
“Then it was planted there,” I said immediately. “I don’t do drugs. I don’t deal drugs. That’s not my life.”
“There’s no point talking to us,” the shorter cop said to me. His tone was not unkind, but it was clear that I wasn’t going to get any help from them. “You’ll have to find a lawyer.”
I could barely speak. I had no idea what to do or who to call. I didn’t have the faintest idea how to retain a lawyer in the first place.
“Don’t worry, Jared,” Sarge said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll find you a lawyer—we’ll get this mess sorted out.”
“Sarge,” I said desperately. “I didn’t do it… I don’t do drugs.”
“We’ll sort it out.” He nodded, though I noticed he didn’t tell me that he believed I was innocent.
Then I was walked out of the station in handcuffs, in front of all my colleagues, and pushed into the back of a cop car. It was the most humiliating experience of my life, and I could barely process it all. This day had started out pretty well, and right after putting out the fire at Linda’s house and saving her beloved dog, I had felt every bit the hero.
But now my life had turned upside down, and I had no idea how. The cops said that they found pounds of drugs in my apartment. I knew for a fact that wasn’t possible. The only way it could be possible is if someone had planted them there. My mind was spinning… If it was true, who had done it?
“Am I allowed a call?” I asked the cops.
“One call,” the taller cop replied.
Even as he said it, I wondered what my options were. I had no family to contact and my friends were all the men I fought fires with. There was Brent, but he wasn’t the kind of friend who was good in a crisis.
Then there was Rachel. She was more than just a friend. She was my partner, my girlfriend… I would even go so far as to call her my soul mate. I supposed that put her under the category of family.
Then I thought about the reality of calling her and telling her I was in jail. I was wrongly accused, true, but I was still embarrassed about admitting where I was. I hoped against hope that this was all just a crazy misunderstanding and it would be cleared up by evening so that it could be the kind of story I shared with Rachel that we could both laugh about later.
But as we drove up to the police station, I couldn’t help thinking that I didn’t see myself laughing about this for a while. I was angry…but I was scared, too. Someone had set me up, and if they had done a half-decent job, I could be looking at up to a decade in jail. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Fear of this very situation was what had driven me to change the path I was on.
I had worked so hard for so long and now I found myself in the same place my brother had been in a few years ago. Thinking about my brother made me feel even worse. Paul had been taken away in much the same way… He must have felt the same things that I did. Except in my case, I was truly innocent.
Still, I understood now the importance of having a support system around you at a time like this, and I was willing to admit that, innocent or guilty, I had let my brother down when he needed me the most.
I thought about Rachel, and I desperately craved her presence. At the same time, I wanted to avoid having her see me like this. As we pulled up to the station, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that the court systems were designed to weed out the innocent from the guilty. I prayed that that was enough.
