Irish Throwdown (What Happens In Vegas Book 4) by Matt Lincoln (short books for teens .TXT) 📕

She suddenly cut herself off as the horrible realization dawned on her.

“No,” she muttered weakly. “You said that you thought he might have taken something that was laced. Did you mean here? It was in my home this whole time?”

“We need to see that bottle, ma’am,” Junior stated calmly.

She nodded blankly as she slowly stood up off the couch and headed further into the house. She returned a minute later carrying two bottles.

“I’m not sure which one he took,” she informed us nervously as she handed Junior the bottles. One was a generic discount brand, but the other looked exactly like the ones we’d found in the Evans and Montague homes.

“We’ll take both of them in, just in case,” Junior replied.

“Is that the reason my baby’s dead?” She whimpered as a tear rolled down her cheek. “Some evil monster spiked a bottle of medicine, and now he’s gone?”

Junior fell silent, clearly unsure how to respond to the woman’s anguished question.

“Ma’am, we need to know where this bottle came from,” I said. She looked so helpless and lost that it killed me to have to push her, but we came here to attempt to track down where the bottles were coming from, so I needed to ask.

“I-I don’t know,” she stuttered. “I think he was the one who bought it. I’m so busy with work, he would help me out when he could. Pick up groceries and such, now and again. He was such a good boy. Probably the grocery store? I’m sorry, I just don’t know.”

Junior placed a comforting hand on her shoulder as she broke into a fresh wave of tears.

“I’m sorry to have upset you,” I muttered awkwardly. In the end, we hadn’t come any closer to figuring out where the medicine was coming from, and all we’d done was upset a grieving mother.

“No,” she croaked. “Don’t apologize. Because of you, I can prove that my Aiden was a good boy. He wasn’t out doing drugs, like everyone said. Thank you for that.”

It felt wrong to receive thanks from the mother of a victim when we still weren’t anywhere close to solving the case, but I smiled and nodded graciously anyway. We’d figure it out eventually, and if we’d managed to bring comfort to this poor woman, I’d feel satisfied.

10

Fiona

I bit my nail nervously as I watched the press conference on my computer. Wallace was addressing the press over what we’d ascertained regarding the case just this morning, and things were beginning to get chaotic.

“Director Wallace!” a young reporter cried out enthusiastically. “Is this being treated as a terrorist attack?”

“We are carefully considering all possibilities before making any conclusions,” Wallace answered diplomatically.

“You’re doing great, boss,” I mumbled to myself. The press conference had only been going on for a few minutes, and already people were lobbing him difficult and sometimes outright hostile comments and questions. Wallace had maintained his composure the entire time.

“How widespread is this issue?” A different reporter shoved her way toward the front of the crowd. “Is it only affecting Las Vegas, or is this nationwide?”

“Our agents are working on determining that at this very moment,” Wallace answered calmly. I realized with a jolt that I was the one who was supposed to be figuring out the answer to that question. I suddenly felt as though a considerable weight had been dropped on my shoulders, and I quickly switched off the stream.

Charlie and Junior had called to say that they’d found identical bottles in all the assailants’ homes, and they were on their way back now. I’d run a search on the initial two bottles and had managed to trace them both back to a small, locally-owned shop in Las Vegas. What was curious is that the serial numbers on the bottles indicated that they were shipped from a factory on the east coast, which wouldn’t make sense considering there were much closer pharmaceutical manufacturing plants in Nevada.

I leaned back in my chair and sighed. Until Charlie and Junior got here with the rest of the bottles, I wouldn’t be able to do any further research to figure out what was going on. On the plus side, I couldn’t find any similar reports of sudden, unprovoked violence anywhere else in the United States. Hopefully, that meant that this probably wasn’t a very widespread issue yet.

I got up from my chair and headed into the break room for a cup of coffee. The office was eerily silent. Wallace was out, Nelson was in his office fielding questions from the press and law enforcement, and all the field agents were out busy with their own tasks. I didn’t like how empty and cold the office felt.

I was just finishing up a pot of coffee when I heard the office door unlock.

“Hello?” Junior called uneasily a moment later. “Wow, I’ve never seen the office so empty in the middle of the day. It’s creepy.”

“It is,” I agreed as I stepped out of the break room with my cup of coffee. “You guys got those bottles?”

“Right here,” Charlie answered as he held up his bulging work bag. I could see plastic evidence bags peeking out over the top as they threatened to overflow.

“Excellent,” I nodded as I took the bag from him and headed into my office, carefully balancing my coffee in one hand. “There’s fresh coffee in the break room if you guys want. I’ll get to work sorting through these.”

I vaguely heard them respond with something that sounded like confirmation, but I was already focused on my task. I quickly examined the expiration dates, serial numbers, and shipping codes of each of the bottles. The serial numbers were all exactly the same, which indicated to me that they had been falsified.

“That is so unlikely,” I muttered to myself as I ran another search just to be certain. Sure enough, all the bottles had been purchased at the same tiny store in Las Vegas, and all of them had,