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

to calm her, but it hadn’t been until I lied and told her that her yelling was making my headache worse that she’d finally calmed down. She’d been silently storming around ever since, though, and it was clear that she didn’t plan to forgive Howard any time soon.

I sighed as the coffee machine beeped to indicate that the pot was ready. We had enough to deal with without having to worry about infighting, too, especially now that our case had been thrust to the forefront of every major news outlet in the world. It was going to be a lot harder now that all eyes were on us and every whack job with access to a telephone was calling in to confess to being behind the broadcast or to report fake leads.

I walked back through the empty office and plopped into my chair. It was pretty evident now that Junior’s suspicion had been correct, and whoever was behind this was trying their best to get MBLIS’s attention. If all they wanted was to cause fear and chaos, they would have just blown up a building and watched as people scrambled. No, whoever was behind that broadcast had left too many clues that he was directly provoking us.

First, there was the fact that he’d come right out and addressed the broadcast to “agents” who had disappointed him. He’d also mentioned something about hacking and Japan and the remarkably unsubtle reference to the bomb that had been sent to me just a few months ago. This person couldn’t have known about that unless he was intimately familiar with us and our cases.

I stared at the audio files I’d ripped from the news station’s online systems. The message had only been broadcast through a local station in the northern part of Dublin, which narrowed down the area where the original broadcast had aired, but that didn’t actually tell me anything about how he had hacked the transmission. It could very well have been someone from outside Ireland, for all I knew. It wouldn’t have taken top-notch hacking skills either, as the station was still using the same network security it had been using since the seventies. Which was to say practically none.

The hacker had probably done that because it would be much easier to break into a small, local station’s network than a larger corporation. Even if Junior and Charlie didn’t see the broadcast right away, there was no doubt they would have seen it soon enough as it exploded and went viral.

I pulled my headphones on and played the audio clip again, listening closely to every word.

“After those hacking skills I observed in Japan, I’m certain this won’t be a problem for you,” the voice taunted.

“Why did he say that?” I muttered to myself as I slipped my headphones back off. Obviously, he was trying to intimidate us by proving he knew about our past cases, but I had a hunch there was something more to it. He could have chosen plenty of ways to demonstrate his power to us, yet he’d specifically mentioned that we’d be able to find the bomb via “hacking skills.”

“Was he talking to me?” I muttered as I followed my hunch and opened the clip in an audio editing program. I really didn’t like the idea that whoever this was had thought far ahead enough to know that I’d hack into the station’s network and analyze the audio clip.

My eyes widened as I searched through the audio files and realized my hunch had been correct. There was something encrypted in the files.

I quickly ran the file through a decryption program and tapped my foot anxiously as I waited for the result. I was glad to have finally found something, but I was annoyed that the perp had clearly expected this to happen. We were playing right into his hands, but we didn’t really have any other choice at the moment.

“Yes,” I smirked triumphantly as the program produced the decrypted file. To my surprise, it was another audio file. I yanked my headphones back into place and quickly played it.

At first, I didn’t hear anything, but then, gradually, a repetitive chiming noise began to play through my headphone speakers.

“Is that a railroad crossing?” I murmured out loud. There was no doubt about it. It was definitely the melodic sound of a train crossing coming through my headphones. “Is he going to bomb a train station?”

I ripped the headphones back off my head and rushed out of my office and toward Wallace’s. This clip hadn’t been embedded into the audio file accidentally. I wasn’t completely certain what it meant, but this was the most significant lead we had so far, and we couldn’t afford to lose any time.

24

Charlie

I woke with a start from an unrestful sleep. I was lying on a hard metal bench, and harsh fluorescent lights were bearing down on me unforgivably from above.

“Get up,” Junior shook my arm again. “I just got a call from Wallace. We may have a lead about where the bomb is.”

It took me a minute to regain my bearings and remember exactly where I was and what was happening. Junior and I had come back to the castle police station immediately after watching the broadcast, and we’d been collaborating with the police in an attempt to figure out where the bomb might be. A few hours in, I’d laid down on a bench to rest my eyes, and I guess I’d been more tired than I realized.

The back of my head ached where it had been pressed against the cold metal, and my back felt stiff.

“How long was I out?” I asked as I rubbed the grogginess from my eyes.

“A few hours,” Junior replied. “The sun’s about to come out.”

“What?” I snapped my eyes open and looked out the window. Sure enough, the sky was beginning to turn purple as the sun peeked out from below the horizon. “How much time do we have left?”

“Seventeen,” Junior answered. “Assuming the