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

from letting people sober up, so I’m used to calling it that. That does remind me that I need to contact the city Garda to have him transferred. We really can’t keep him in our tiny jail indefinitely, after all.”

He turned and left then, and Junior and I followed him out toward the police station’s lobby.

“Marc’s in the bathroom,” Amanda snickered from her seat in the lobby. “Now’s your chance to run if you want to get out of that tour.”

“I think it’ll be nice,” Junior insisted. “We have to head straight back to Dublin after this. A little more time in the countryside might be nice.”

“Suit yourself,” Amanda shrugged. “Though I suppose if someone had to pick a little town in the middle of nowhere to visit, Tinahely’s a pretty good choice.”

I fell into one of the plastic chairs in the lobby as I waited for Officer Felton to return.

“How’s your arm?” I asked Junior as he took a seat beside me, lowly enough that only he could hear. “It was shaking during the interrogation.”

“I think I hurt it,” Junior sighed. “Well, hurt it worse. When I dragged Callahan out of the road. It’s been hurting pretty badly since then.”

He raised his right hand to his left shoulder. I could tell it was still trembling, though it was less obvious than it had been during the interrogation.

“I’ll be okay,” Junior insisted. “I can make it through this mission. I’m not sure what’ll happen after that, honestly. But you can count on me to see this through.”

“I know I can,” I assured him.

“Ah, agents!” Felton exclaimed as he suddenly emerged from the hallway. “Ready to go, then? I’ve got a whole itinerary planned out for you.”

“Sure,” I smiled despite my extreme trepidation. Honestly, the idea of driving around some tiny village in the middle of nowhere for any length of time sounded awful, but Junior actually seemed excited by the idea, and I figured a little time to relax wouldn’t hurt. “We could use a break about now. Let’s go.”

Felton beamed as Junior and I stood and followed him out the door. The sun was still high in the sky, and going for a little drive would give Junior time to rest his arm before we resumed our mission. As we settled back into the back of Felton’s patrol car, I slipped my phone out of my pocket to give Wallace a report on everything that had happened.

21

Junior

I was right about the tour not taking very long. Scarcely an hour had passed before we’d seen pretty much the entire town, some parts twice as we doubled back to go in a different direction.

“Well, that’s about it,” Felton announced as we pulled up to the church at the center of town. It was a large, stark white building with a blood-red door. It was easy to see that the town cared about it very much by how it was well taken care of. “It would have been better if you’d been able to have a walk around town, but I understand that you’re busy.”

“It was nice,” I responded honestly. “Maybe we’ll come back if we have time at the end of the case.”

“Well, you’re always welcome.” He smiled. “Can I give you gentlemen a lift anywhere? Your own car took a beating back at the castle, didn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah,” I responded. “That would be really nice.”

“Where to?” Felton asked.

“The hospital,” I responded immediately. “We should check on Callahan before we do anything else. Could we stop back at the police station first, though? We need to pick up the files that the fire department was dropping off.”

“Alright then.” Felton nodded before pulling away from the church and back onto the road. We were back at the police station in just a few minutes, and I hoped that the files had been dropped off by then.

I left the car as soon as Felton parked. The tour had been nice and relaxing, but my legs felt cramped after sitting in the back of a patrol car for an hour. My arm was feeling much better, though, fortunately. I shivered as the cold, slightly damp air bit at my skin. I had used my own jacket and sweater as makeshift bandages to stop Callahan’s bleeding, and it was just cool enough that walking around in just a plain undershirt was uncomfortable.

I felt the tension easing out of my shoulders as I stepped into the police station and was hit with a wave of warm air.

“Hello there, agent,” Murphy greeted as he looked up at me. “How was your tour, then?”

“It was nice,” I replied, unable to keep the chatter out of my teeth as I spoke.

“Poor thing,” Amanda snickered as she stood up from her chair and walked briskly into a backroom. She’d been sitting in the exact same position when we’d left, and I wondered if she’d even moved in that entire time.

The door opened behind me again as Felton and Charlie stepped inside.

“You ran in here like someone lit a fire under you, lad,” Felton remarked.

“Well, just look at him,” Amanda scoffed as she walked back into the room holding a bundle of black cloth. “Poor kid must be freezing.”

She handed me the bundle, and I realized as I unraveled it that it was actually a sweatshirt with “Tinahely Garda” printed across the front of it in blocky white letters.

“Thank you,” I breathed in relief as I pulled the sweatshirt over my head.

“Ah, sorry about that,” Murphy frowned. “I forget you Americans aren’t used to the weather here. It never gets very hot even during the summer months, so we’re all accustomed to the cold.”

“It’s fine,” I assured him. “It wasn’t unbearable or anything. I definitely appreciate the sweatshirt, though.”

“No problem.” Amanda smiled before sitting back down in the same chair and refocusing on her phone.

“Anyway,” Charlie interjected. “We just stopped by to ask about the files the fire department was supposed to drop off. Are they here yet?”

“They’re not,