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

partner, Callahan. Don’t let that surly demeanor fool you, now. His bark is a lot worse than his bite.”

Callahan glared at Seamus, but there was no force behind it, as though this was something he’d just gotten used to.

“Pleased to meet you, agents,” he smiled politely before moving to shake our hands. His accent wasn’t nearly as thick as Seamus’s, and he had a much colder attitude. He was a little thinner and shorter than Seamus, with a pale, hooked nose and unfriendly-looking, beady eyes. “Should we be off, then? Even without traffic, it’ll take us a solid two hours to get out there.”

“Yes, we should,” Junior nodded. The address we’d found on the mailing package was located out in the middle of the countryside. Fiona hadn’t been able to find much about it during her search, not even any property records, which was odd in and of itself. The faster we got out there, the quicker we could progress our investigation.

“Let’s get going, then!” Seamus declared jovially. “I can introduce you two fellows to some fine Irish music on the way. Oh, and I can point out some landmarks as we’re leaving the city.”

“They didn’t come here for that, Seamus,” Callahan grumbled. “We can’t afford to waste time.”

“We won’t waste any time,” Seamus brushed him off casually. “It’s on the way. Nothing wrong with pointing out a few historic buildings on our way out, right?”

Usually, I didn’t like people who fooled around and refused to take things seriously. It was one of the reasons Miranda and I had clashed so often during the brief time we spent dating. I liked something about Seamus’s cavalier attitude, though. He seemed incredibly confident and self-assured without being arrogant, so I didn’t really mind if he wanted to give us a quick tour of the city while we made our way south toward the countryside.

Callahan, however, was crabby as the four of us made our way outside and into one of the police vehicles. Seamus ended up being right about the tour not distracting from our mission, as he zoomed by everything so quickly that I barely had time to figure out what I was supposed to be looking at before we’d already passed it by.

“Ah, well,” Seamus sighed as we finally left the city limits and broke into an open green field. “You two gents will just have to come back and have a better look once you’re finished with your mission. Ireland’s a beautiful place. Not just Dublin, either. And there are a lot of fall festivals and such this time of year. There’ll be a big Halloween parade in Dublin in just a couple of days. Though I have to caution you to be careful. There’s a lot of crime in that part of the city on a regular night, but Hallow’s Eve brings out the malice and trickery in everyone. Not saying you should let that deter you, though. It’s a lot of fun so long as you keep your head screwed on straight and don’t do anything stupid.”

“Seamus is the most patriotic person I’ve ever met,” Callahan remarked. “He could take the crappiest little town and in Ireland and make it sound like an oasis.”

“Well, excuse me for loving my country, then,” Seamus retorted. “And there aren’t any ‘crappy’ towns in Ireland. There’s something beautiful about each and every one of ‘em.”

“See?” Callahan chuckled.

“How long have you been working together?” Junior asked, echoing my thoughts aloud. They had a very comfortable back-and-forth banter, and despite the acerbic words being traded, I could tell there wasn’t any ill-will between them.

“Too long,” Callahan muttered.

“Quiet down now, you wee pup,” Seamus replied. “Let me see now. It’s been about eleven years, I think. Since Callahan joined the Garda. It’s been about that long, aye?”

“Yes,” Callahan sighed. “And Seamus is still acting like I’m a green twenty-year-old still learning how to use a gun.”

“You’ll always be wee little Callahan to me,” Seamus laughed boisterously. “Anyway, enough of all that. Do you boys mind if I roll the windows down? The air out here in the fields is always so lovely, especially right before it rains.”

“Go ahead,” Junior nodded. I just shrugged my shoulders in agreement.

He rolled all four windows down, and the car was immediately filled with the fresh, almost sweet scent of grass and wildflowers. Unlike Dublin, which had been beautiful but also cramped and confined, the countryside stretched as far as the horizon. There were trees here and there, but for the most part, all I could see were rolling green hills all around us, interrupted only occasionally by fields full of crops or flowers. Once in a while, we’d pass by a lone cottage or farms covered in herds of sheep lazily grazing.

Back in Las Vegas, I’d never seen so much peaceful greenery. Las Vegas was full of noise, pollution, and the ever-present sun as it bore down upon the city and filled it with relentless heat. The sprawling desert outside the city limits was the exact opposite of what I saw now, all dusty brown and scorching air that made it difficult to even breathe during the summer months.

Here, all I could hear was the thrum of the car as it traveled down a narrow dirt road through the cool and quiet fields. I wondered, for just a moment, what it would be like to live somewhere that was the exact opposite of Las Vegas. Always cool and rainy instead of hot and dry, with streets that were cramped but straightforward as opposed to the dizzying, interconnected metropolis that was Las Vegas.

“Looks like we’ll be coming up on it any minute now,” Callahan remarked before I could dwell on the thought for too long.

“That’s a bit odd,” Seamus replied. “There’s not much out here aside from little cottages and old abandoned houses. You agents did say that you believed this was the place the drugs came from, right?”

“This is the address that was on the package,” Junior responded