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

laughed. The one in the passenger seat was still on her phone, and I wasn’t sure if she’d even heard any of the conversation.

“Well, thanks for the riveting story, anyway,” Felton chirped. “It made the drive much more entertaining.”

“No problem,” I replied as I glanced out the window. I leaned back in my seat and watched the scenery go by as I thought back to those wild days. That wasn’t to say that my life now was that much calmer, but at least now I was acting as a law enforcement agent. Back then, I was just a kid doing what I needed to do to survive. How things had changed.

“Alright, we’re here!” Felton piped up some time later. I’d gotten so lost in my own thoughts that I’d barely noticed the time passing by.

We weren’t surrounded by open green fields anymore, but we clearly weren’t in the city either. The buildings were still tall and wide, but unlike in Dublin, they weren’t packed as tightly together. On the contrary, there was plenty of space between them, so there were still no alleys but rather wide open spaces filled with sunlight. The buildings were all brightly colored as well, and we passed a green, a red, and a blue building all in the span of just a few seconds. The cheerful colors and wide-open spaces granted the entire town a pleasant and inviting feel.

The Tinahely police station was an adorable building. At the end of a short driveway sat a baby pink building with an arched entryway trimmed in brown bricks. Pots of flowers lined the outside of the building, hung beside the windows, and white lace curtains draped over every window. The only thing that set it apart from the surrounding cottages was the wrought iron post at the front of the building that bore the national Garda symbol.

“Here we are, then,” Felton chirped as he parked the car in the middle of a patch of grass to the side of the building. There was no parking lot around the building, and it was clear that this was just an ordinary house that had been converted into a police station for the tiny town. “I have to say, it’s not often we see a case this serious. Usually, the only ones in lockup are the local drunks.”

“I can tell,” I nodded. “This seems like a peaceful town.”

“I like to think it is,” Felton nodded proudly. “Maybe I can show you around after you’re done with your interrogation?”

“Marc,” the officer who’d spent the entire drive staring at her phone snapped. “No one wants a tour of this boring little town. Let the agents do their job in peace.”

“I’m just being friendly, Amanda,” Felton frowned. “No harm in having a little look-see after they’re finished with their investigation, right, fellas?”

“We’d like that.” Junior smiled at the man before I could say anything.

The man lit up immediately.

“Wonderful,” he beamed. “We’re a small town, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get tourists. We’ve been getting more visitors in recent years, you know. We have the kind of architecture you just can’t get up in the city. Oh, you’ll have to see the church, of course, it’s the town’s jewel. The botanical gardens might not be up to snuff this time of year, but maybe…”

He continued to ramble on as he led us into the station.

“There they are!” someone exclaimed as we walked in. I looked up to see Officer Murphy from before sitting behind a desk. He got up as we approached. “Great to see you again, agents. Did your search go well?”

“Sort of,” I nodded. “We found three rooms full of guns that we presume they were intending to traffic illegally. The fire department will be by later to drop off a couple of filing cabinets containing evidence as well.”

“Not a problem,” Murphy smiled. “I’ll make sure it gets to you. Anyway, the suspect is just in that room back there, right past the water fountain. You can speak to him whenever you’re ready. We tried talking to him, but he stonewalled us. He hasn’t got any identification on him. We did find a credit card with the name Lawrence Daly on it, but it came up as belonging to a bloke that’s been dead some eleven years now.”

“So it’s clearly a stolen identity,” Junior concluded.

“Yeah, looks that way.” Murphy nodded. “And we didn’t get anything when we ran his fingerprints through the system. At the very least, he hasn’t got a record.”

“That’s difficult to believe,” I replied. “People don’t usually go from law-abiding citizens straight to having gunfights with federal agents.”

“That’s true,” Murphy agreed. “Regardless, we don’t know who he is. I’ll leave you two gentlemen to do your work, then. We’ll monitor through the CCTV from the next room over, so just give us a holler if there’s anything you need.”

“Thank you,” I responded before heading off in that direction. The police station, unsurprisingly, looked like a typical house on the inside. I could see a kitchen at one end of the hall, and the room he’d pointed us toward was obviously built to be a bedroom.

“Why did you agree to a tour?” I asked Junior once I was confident we were out of earshot.

“He was just so nice,” Junior shrugged. “And he looked so sad when his partner scolded him. I didn’t have it in me to turn him down.”

“He was nice,” I agreed. “Everyone we’ve met so far seems really nice, actually.”

“Except for the people that shot at us,” Junior muttered darkly. “And besides, it probably won’t take that long to have a look around. The town is pretty small.”

“That’s true,” I conceded. It might not be so bad to take a break and have a breather, anyway. We needed to interrogate the suspect first, though. “You ready to talk with this guy?”

“Ready.” Junior nodded.

I turned the doorknob and walked into the room. It was, by far, the most pleasant interrogation room I’d ever been in, considering it