I kept my gaze locked on the movement down the block as I stood dead still, holding the red balloon like the clown on the movie poster. But every few minutes, I’d jump or lunge to scare the fuck out of some unsuspecting tourist walking by. It was fun.
When I saw Boyd Newton heading my direction with a couple of guys I was sure I’d recognize from porn movies if I got closer, I took off in a dead run toward them. They then turned and ran the other way. Somewhere on South Fourth, I lost my fucked-up orange wig.
I chased Boyd Newton after his friends peeled off and went in different directions. I caught the fucker and had him against a wall, noticing one very important thing—the asshole didn’t have any bruises or busted lips like he should have from when I caught him at Carriage Square Park. He looked like the porn guy I’d seen in many movies with no bruises at all.
Who had I beaten the fuck out of in the park? I’d been so damn sure it was Boyd Newton, but now Thomas’s words were coming back to me: Was the guy you slapped around even Boyd? Now, I wasn’t so sure.
Next thing I knew, a bicycle cop rolled up on the two of us when I had Boyd Newton pressed against the back wall of a Harley-Davidson dealership. I’d punched him once in the head to try to calm him down so I could question him.
The bicycle cop didn’t buy that Newton hit me first, as evidenced by the white grease paint on his fist. If I were to guess, I’d say the officer had something against scary clowns.
As I expected, Newton was anxious to press charges because I’d pulled his fucking hair, the pussy. I’d been arrested for aggravated assault, and the cops wasted no time carting my ass to jail.
When I was given my one phone call around midnight, I reached out to my brother, asking him to find someone to bail me out. He simply hung up on me when I finished asking, so I hadn’t held out a lot of hope.
Based on the scowl the deputy at the cell door was giving me, he wasn’t thrilled that I was leaving his hospitality.
Never one to miss an opportunity to piss someone off, I gave him a snarky comment as I pushed my hands through the slot for him to attach the chain around my waist and cuff my arms to my sides.
“Your gourmet breakfast of a bologna sandwich, ketchup, and a bruised apple will get a one-star review from me on Yelp!” I think he put the leg chains on because I was a smart-ass.
I still had on most of the grease paint and clown makeup as I was led from the cell. The cops had forced me to change from the clown outfit I’d improvised from an old white bed sheet, taken from my hotel bed, and some ponytail elastics. The orange jumpsuit sucked balls.
I’d run my hands through my hair enough that it was white and disgusting from the grease paint. When I glanced through the window of the sliding door separating the jail from the intake lobby, I saw a familiar sight—the very sexy Jagger Hansen.
He’d been on my brother’s protection team the weekend Thomas and fucking Boyd Newton were at the lake house. Jagger had a particular scowl that alerted me he wasn’t exactly copacetic with my brother being involved in a possible honeytrap, but Thomas hadn’t listened to Jagger, just like he didn’t listen to me.
I kept my head down with my greasy hair around my face because I hated that Jagger would see me looking so disgusting. My hope was that he wouldn’t recognize me.
Jagger’s hitched breath when I looked up with my hair pulled back told me he definitely remembered me.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Bailey? Is this a joke?” Jagger was spitting mad.
“Let’s get out of here before you say anything else. His brother would rather not draw attention to his arrest or additional scrutiny from law enforcement. He doesn’t want it to hit the papers,” the guy with Jagger mumbled before they walked me out of the detention center.
The two of them mumbled between themselves as they led me to a battered old pickup truck, where Jagger opened the back door for me to get inside.
The older guy laughed at something Jagger said before he stepped away from him. “Did you think I wouldn’t vet your ass before I took you on? I called the governor, whom you worked for, like any smart employer would do. Not surprisingly, when he needed someone to bail out his brother, he knew he had someone at my shop he trusted.”
I chuckled. That meant he’d talked to my brother. “How is Thomas?”
The driver checked me in the rearview. “Sounded pissed. You got a hotel or a tent somewhere? You’re the governor’s brother, right?”
I held up my hands. “Guilty as charged.”
I rode along quietly, leaving the two of them to talk in the front seat. Fifteen minutes later, the old truck pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall. The driver circled around the building and parked in the first open spot. As I looked out the window, I saw a young guy leading a dog over to a patch of grass.
“Who’s that?” I pointed out the window to the back of the building where the young man was standing while the dog peed.
The driver turned to me and grinned. “That’s my son, Harden, and our company mascot, Dixie. Your brother, the governor, pulled some strings and got the chief of police to keep yourreal identity out of the police blotter, so hopefully, it won’t be splashed on the front page of the paper.
“The governor called me to pick you up so you wouldn’t be scrutinized too carefully by the Vegas cops, especially with your private investigating business. I asked if it had anything to do with his position as governor, and he said he’d rather not answer.”
Jagger stepped closer to his boss. “What’s his line of work now?”
I chuckled. “Now, that didn’t sound very friendly, Trooper. How do you figure into this mess?”
“They stopped calling us that in 2021. It’s Nevada State Patrol officer now, but you know I resigned from my job on the Dignitary Protection Team for your brother after he hooked up with that Newton guy two years ago. I investigated Newton and found out he had a couple of arrests for the distribution of narcotics, though he was never convicted for some reason.
