“Thank you for shutting him the fuck up.” Bailey winked at me before shoving Newton against one of the legs of the scaffold. The two of us wound the tape around him a few times so he couldn’t get away.
I stepped up to him and glared into his frightened eyes. “You start screaming again, and I’ll knock your fucking teeth out. We have a few questions, and we know the shuttle leaves at eleven. You have twenty minutes to answer, or we’ll make you unfit for the camera. Can I trust you not to scream if I remove this tape?”
“If you scream after he takes off the tape, I’ll break your fucking neck.” Bailey stood to my left with his fist raised. Newton nodded, so I ripped off the tape.
“You motherfuckers are in so much trouble.” The kid actually thought he had the upper hand? That was fucking priceless. I’d be happy to show him he didn’t.
Before I could say a word, Bailey slapped him across the face, not as hard as I was sure he wanted to. “Shut up. Who did yousend to pick up the duffel of money my brother left in Carriage Park after you sent that blackmail text to him?”
“I didn’t send him a blackmail text. Someone stole my phone while I was filming. I promised Thomas when we broke up that I would never blackmail him. I love him.”
Bailey looked skeptical. “Who did I beat the hell out of the other night? It obviously wasn’t you.”
“I believe it was a guy from Glory Hole Studio. He’s my body double for shots they want where it looks like we’re going bareback. It’s in my contract that I won’t do bareback because I never wanted to put my health, or your brother’s, at risk. Like I said, I love Thomas.
“Danny Bolls is the guy you beat the hell out of that night in the park. He was picking up the money for someone, but I don’t know whose behind it. Obviously, Danny’s in on blackmailing the governor. He was working out with me the day my phone disappeared at the gym.”
“Who knew enough about you and my brother to blackmail Thomas?” Bailey was shaking with anger. I almost pulled him away so he could calm down, but I was afraid the kid would start screaming again.
“I don’t know. I haven’t told anyone about us. Someone is obviously following me— Well, someone besides you.” The kid seemed sincere.
“Boyd, do you owe something to someone? Money or something else? Who did you piss off?”
He looked at the dirty floor of the parking garage. “Marcelo worked with a guy in the Viper Kings when it came to the drug shit. He came to me about dealing to make some extra money because he knew I had family troubles. My mom’s sick— Well, you don’t care about that. Anyway, the guy with the club offered a seventy-thirty split, and I needed the damn money, so I took it.
“I dealt a special cut of X and Molly at Glory Hole because it ain’t easy to get it up for some of these guys. It’s cut with ED pills and caffeine. After we started our arrangement, Marcelo suggested I start dealing the same shit on The Old Strip and he’d give me a fifty-fifty split of my thirty percent. I couldn’t turn it down.
“I got picked up a few times on The Old Strip, but some narco detective approached me when I was in jail, Detective Spitzer, and promised to get the charges dropped if I snitched for him. They want the Viper King guy I deal for because they think he gets the drugs from the Víbora Cartel.”
That matched our working theory, but something was missing. If Boyd was telling the truth, we still had one question: who threatened the governor?
Chapter Nine
Bailey
After we cut Boyd loose from the beat-up orange scaffolding, he ran out of the garage like an Olympic sprinter. Hell, I couldn’t blame him and was surprised he hadn’t pissed himself. He was lucky I didn’t pound on him because of all the screaming.
My head was spinning over what Boyd had told us about the drugs and being a snitch for LVPD. There was a lot to parse through—that was, if I even believed the little fucker in the first place.
“Come on. Let’s go—” Jagger’s phone rang. He pulled it from the pocket of his jeans, staring at the screen. “Shit. I gotta get this.”
“Hey, Denise. What can I do for you?” He pointed toward the garage exit, so I followed him. “Okay. I’ll come by the office and pick up the information in a few minutes.” Jagger ended the call and turned to me. “We’ve got a woman in the wind. She hada court date today and didn’t show. She’s got an aunt in Jean who has a place off I-15 South. I need to ride out there to see if Maria’s there.”
It wasn’t like I had a lot going on. “Can we go by the Intercontinental so I can get my bike? I can meet you at your office and leave it there for now. We can get it later and take it home.”
Jagger smirked. “Sure. It’s nice to hear you call it home. Will you still call it home when all this shit is behind us?”
I chuckled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Are you planning to stay, or are you going back to Carson City?”
That was a good question. My brother was in Carson City, and I had a few personal things I’d left at my shitty apartment because I hadn’t been planning to get drawn into a one-percenter motorcycle club and a drug cartel pissing match.
“I came to Vegas to try to help my brother crawl out of this shithole he’s gotten himself into.” I wanted to find out what Boyd was doing, but now, I needed more intel from someone who knew that world much better than us.
“Can I get back to you on that? There are still a lot of unanswered questions, and until I know what the hell Thomas got himself into, I can’t make any promises on anything.”
What I didn’t say was that I could fall hard for Jagger, though I suspected that if I gave it more thought, I already had fallen for him. That was too much to admit, and way too soon.
