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

you think I deserved it?” I retorted. “We needed to question her about the case we’re working on, and she mistook me for a reporter. She sprayed me down with a hose.”

“I wish I’d seen that!” Harry laughed even harder. “I had a lot of people tell me to get off their property when I was on the force. Heck, I had people shoot at me. But I never had anyone spray me with a hose.”

“I’m glad it entertains you so much,” I replied sarcastically.

“Well, I’m glad it was just a hose,” he asserted after he’d calmed down. “As I said, I had more than one person shoot at me for trying to come onto their property. It could have been a lot worse.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I replied dismissively. I’d been shot at trying to speak with suspects too, but I probably shouldn’t bring that up right now when Harry finally seemed to be in a good mood again.

“So tell me about this case,” Harry said as he popped open one of the beer bottles. “Must be something major if you’re getting sprayed with hoses and shipped off on such short notice.”

“I’m assuming you haven’t been watching the news,” I replied. “We held a press conference about it earlier.”

“Nah,” Harry shook his head. “Too depressing. Eliza’s been badgering me about keeping my stress levels down, and all the news does is cause me stress, especially when I hear about things like your office getting blown up. I figure if it’s something really important, one of you will let me know about it.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” I nodded. “Anyway, there’s a new drug circulating around Las Vegas.”

I told Harry everything I could about the case and the recall issued for the cough syrup.

“Well, I’ll be,” he muttered darkly. “I think I might have some of that stuff.”

My heart beat forcefully as he left the den and went into the bathroom. He emerged a moment later, holding a bottle of red syrup.

“Where did you buy this?” I snapped as I took the bottle from him. It looked identical to the ones we’d recovered from the assailants’ homes.

“That grocery delivery service that Eliza set up for me,” he answered. “I think everything comes from the superstore twenty minutes from here.”

I relaxed at that. All the tainted bottles had been from a small convenience store on the Las Vegas strip. It was doubtful that this bottle was laced with anything if bought from a typical store an hour away from where the rest of the bottles were found.

“Throw it away, just in case,” I said. The risk was small, but I didn’t want to take any chances, even if I was just paranoid.

“Of course,” Harry nodded. “I should call Eliza and let her know, too. Amber just started kindergarten a few months ago, and those kids are always passing germs to each other. I’ll let her know to toss whatever she has, too.”

We were probably being overly cautious, but he was right. The brand that the perp had knocked off was the most popular one available. It was a household name, and probably every family in Las Vegas had a bottle of it in their medicine cabinet.

As I watched as Harry left to room to call Eliza, I couldn’t help but wonder how many other innocent, unsuspecting families out there might fall victim to the laced drug. As I thought that, my resolve to put a stop to this organization became even stronger.

14

Junior

I watched the clouds drift by beneath us through the window of the airplane. When I’d first started this job, flying had made me extremely anxious. Just the idea of tearing across the sky in a giant hunk of metal that had no business being up there filled me with fear. What if a bird flew into the engine and we crashed into the ocean? What if our pilot had a heart attack, and we crashed into the side of a mountain? What if we mysteriously disappeared over the Bermuda triangle and no one ever heard from us again?

Of course, nothing like that ever happened, and after taking flights regularly as a part of my job, the anxiety had gradually ebbed away. It had actually become a little boring. I did like looking out the window, though. It was mesmerizing to think that we were soaring high above the clouds, something that seemed so impossibly far away when you were on the ground.

“How much longer until we get there?” Charlie asked, breaking me out of my thoughts. He was sitting in the aisle seat, his arms folded across his chest and a grumpy look on his face. To be honest, I was surprised he was even awake since he usually spent the majority of flights asleep. However, we’d had to leave on such short notice that we’d ended up taking a commercial flight out. It had already been several hours since we’d left, including a three-hour layover in New York, and I guessed even Charlie couldn’t spend that much time asleep.

“About six hours,” I sighed. The flight from Las Vegas to Dublin was about twelve hours long, not including the layover, which meant we were about halfway there. However, we’d still have about two hours of driving to get to the address we’d found on the shipping box the tainted bottles had arrived in.

Usually, I would have spent the flight reading up as much as possible about the country’s local language. Fortunately for us, people in Ireland spoke English. Unfortunately, that left me with very little to do for the long flight.

“Don’t you think this is all too easy?” I asked Charlie after a few minutes of silence.

“What’s too easy?” Charlie glanced at me in confusion.

“The whole case,” I responded. “I mean, we just started investigating two days ago, and we’re already on a flight to Ireland. It took Fiona no effort to trace where the bottles came from, and we found a box full of evidence with the bad