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

informed me. “Howard managed to attack her before I could intervene. Her clavicle is broken, but I’m not sure what other injuries she might have.”

“Are you serious?” I demanded angrily. “Why didn’t you call for an ambulance?

“I didn’t want them to hurt Howard,” she argued. “Or for him to hurt anyone else.”

I let out a frustrated sigh before leaning down to examine her. Fiona was kind and selfless to a fault. I couldn’t believe she’d prioritized the well-being of her attacker over her own medical needs.

The office was dark, but even in the low light of the room, I could make out a distinct lump just beneath her right shoulder. A large patch of skin spanning from her neck to her chest was an angry red color, and I had no doubt the entire area would be a mottled, ugly purple by the next day.

“I’ll call an ambulance.” I frowned as I stood up to fish my phone from my pocket. As I did, I doubled back toward the open door to check on Howard and Naomi. She was still speaking to him calmly, and it looked as though Howard was crying. The fact that he was calm now made me suspect that maybe it wasn’t the cough syrup that he took but a dose of rush. Penny, the girl who’d attacked her boyfriend, had similarly lost control but then later felt remorse after she’d come down from the effects of the drug.

“Nine-one-one, where is your emergency?” A voice cut through my thoughts as the call connected.

“Hi,” I responded. “I need an ambulance at the MBLIS Las Vegas office.”

I rattled off the address of our building and gave the woman on the other end of the line the details of Fiona’s injury.

“Is the assailant still there?” The nine-one-one operator asked. “Do you need me to send police as well?”

I hesitated before answering. My knee-jerk reaction was to say yes. Of course we needed the police. But Fiona had sat there suffering so that she wouldn’t have to call them, and Howard himself seemed to feel genuinely remorseful over what he’d done if the fat tears currently rolling down his face were any indication.

“No,” I lied. “He’s not here anymore. We just need an ambulance as fast as possible, please.”

“It’s on its way,” the woman replied. I ended the call and stepped back out into the bullpen to speak to Miranda.

“You need to get him to the hospital.” I nodded toward Howard. “I told emergency services he wasn’t here anymore. If he’s gone by the time the ambulance gets here, then they won’t have to know I’m a liar.”

Howard and Naomi both turned to look at me with surprised expressions.

“Thank you, Agent Castillo,” Howard mumbled, unable to look me directly in the eyes as he did.

“Whatever,” I huffed. “Just go already. I need to focus on Fiona.”

I turned and walked away before he could say anything else. I wasn’t going to pretend that I wasn’t angry at him. If he’d gone crazy as a result of taking rush, then it was highly likely that he’d taken it deliberately. It was a designer party drug, after all. It wasn’t like he could have accidentally taken it. Even if he hadn’t explicitly meant to hurt Fiona, he still had, and as a direct result of his own stupid actions.

Ever since I’d met Howard, I’d always suspected there was something off about him. He was always very twitchy and nervous, and he spent all his time sitting in that dark lab of his and never hung out or chatted with the rest of us. I’d wondered to myself on more than one occasion if he was taking drugs or doing something else sketchy. Heck, there were times he just wouldn’t show up to work, but no one else said anything about it, so I didn’t bring it up either. It seemed like such a nasty accusation to make of someone when I didn’t have solid proof, so I kept my mouth shut. Now, as I looked around at the destruction he’d wreaked on the office, I wished I hadn’t.

“Hey,” I called as I walked back into Nelson’s office. “Ambulance should be here any minute. Naomi is taking Nelson to the hospital, too, by the way.”

“That’s good,” she smiled. “I hope they can do something. Most of the other people who’ve taken the cough syrup died, right?”

“It wasn’t the cough syrup,” I informed her as I dug through my work bag to retrieve the baggy I’d taken from Penny earlier. “I’m fairly certain it was this. Naomi and I found out about it just today. A new designer drug called rush coincidentally has all the same side effects as the tainted cough syrup. It also, coincidentally, first appeared in Las Vegas three months ago, right around the time when the first attacks were occurring.”

“So it’s being distributed via multiple avenues?” Nelson asked, the alarm clear in his voice.

“I’m not sure,” I shrugged as I handed him the bag so he could examine it. “Naomi and I had literally just learned about it when Fiona called to tell us that Howard had gone nuts on you. We didn’t really have time to discuss it. The girl we spoke to, Penny, told us that it suddenly disappeared off the street but that people could still find it if they really wanted to.”

“Alright,” Nelson nodded. “We need to call Wallace and let him know what’s going on. He’s out collaborating with the police right now, but he needs to come back. If we’re dealing with two sources, then we need to rethink our strategy.”

“Okay,” I agreed before turning to look at Fiona. “I’ll call Charlie and Junior, then. This might help them in finding the distributor, and they should probably know about what happened with Howard, too.”

“Do you have to tell them?” Fiona groaned. “Junior’s going to freak out.”

“Yeah, understandably,” I retorted. “And I kind of do. Even if I left that part out, surely they’d put things