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

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I mumbled aloud.

“What doesn’t make any sense?” Charlie suddenly appeared at the door of my office. He and Junior were both there, each holding cups of coffee.

“According to what I’ve found,” I explained, “these bottles all came from the exact same batch. As in, they were literally all purchased from the same store. The odds of that alone are ridiculously low, but then there’s the fact that they were all apparently produced in New York.”

“Why is that weird?” Junior asked.

“Why would they make such a long trip?” I asked. “There are hundreds of drug manufacturing companies between here and New York. Dozens on the west coast alone. It would make way more sense for the store to have received their shipment from one of the plants here in Nevada. I’m not even sure stores get a choice where their merchandise is shipped from. That’s all up to the drug company. Financially, it wouldn’t make any sense to ship a batch of medicine all the way across the country when there’s a plant just a few miles away.”

“Unless that particular batch was shipped there deliberately,” Charlie asserted.

“That’s the only explanation,” I nodded. “I haven’t found any reports of violent attacks similar to the ones we’ve observed here anywhere else in the country, and as far as I can tell, only Las Vegas has been affected by these tainted bottles.”

“How did they pull that off, though?” Junior asked. “There wasn’t any evidence of tampering on the bottles we found, so we determined that the bottles were laced during manufacturing. How could someone do that to ensure that the bottles would only end up at this one specific store?”

“We need to find out,” Charlie declared as he took a long swig of his coffee. “Let’s head to the store and see what the owner has to say about it.”

“I’ll send you guys the address,” I replied as I turned to my computer to forward the information to them.

Junior nodded, and a moment later, the two of them headed out. I felt an odd mixture of relief and anxiety as they left. I was relieved that we no longer had to worry about this being a widespread issue, but I also felt worried about the careful planning that had gone into this. Someone had gone through a lot of effort to ensure that this specific store in Las Vegas would end up with tainted bottles of cough syrup, which meant that we weren’t dealing with some careless two-bit criminal.

I had my doubts that the drugs had actually been shipped here from the east coast plant the serial number seemed to indicate, so I decided to spend more time researching. If nothing else, it would keep my mind busy and prevent me from worrying.

11

Charlie

As we drove through Las Vegas toward the store, I noticed that traffic still seemed lighter than usual, even though it was now the middle of the day. I wondered if it had to do with the press conference. I could imagine that people might be scared after hearing what was going on. The sidewalks, which were usually bustling with both tourists and locals, also seemed significantly less crowded than usual. It was an unpleasant sight and one that I hoped we’d be able to rectify soon.

The store that Fiona had directed us to was a small corner shop tucked between a sandwich place and a fortune-telling store right on the strip. It was the kind of place that most people would walk right past without ever sparing it a second thought. There wasn’t much parking available nearby, so Junior and I ended up having to walk about five minutes from where we parked just to get there.

The inside of the store smelled like an essential oil diffuser, a scent I only recognized because a former girlfriend of mine used to keep one on all the time. The interior was similar to the kind of convenience store I’d seen a hundred times attached to gas stations, with aisles of various travel-sized goods and a small refrigerated section in the back of the store. It was the kind of small, mom-and-pop store that was rare to see nowadays, especially in the center of a big city like Las Vegas. The bright yellow price stickers dangling from the shelves all displayed unreasonably high prices, a necessity for a locally owned hole-in-the-wall store attempting to compete with the big-box retailers. They were probably able to get away with charging so much for the convenience of their location. Otherwise, people would end up having to drive miles outside the Strip to get their groceries. The ease of stopping here on their way to or from work or school was probably worth the markup for those living nearby.

“Welcome,” the man at the front of the store called lazily. He was leaning back in his seat and flipping through the pages of a magazine.

“Hello,” Junior greeted in response. “I’m Agent Chapman with MBLIS…”

I wandered toward the back of the store as he continued with the introductions. The very last aisle was marked “pharmacy,” so I headed straight there. As I turned the corner, I was surprised to find an employee in a bright blue polo sweeping all the cough syrup bottles off the shelf and into a small trash can with his arm.

“What are you doing?” I asked. The employee looked up at me, and I could tell by the pimples on his face that he was just a teenager.

“Uh…” he responded blankly. “My boss told me to toss all this. Because of the recall. Haven’t you heard? They were making people go crazy or something.”

“I’m going to need you to stop,” I instructed as I moved forward to collect the bottles.

“Hey, stop!” I heard Junior yell from the front of the store. I whipped around in time to see the man who’d been minding the front of the