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

I gathered my wits quickly before making the split-second decision to follow him and jumped off the edge of the roof. The next building’s roof was only a few feet below, but it was still a terrifying and exhilarating experience.

I noticed as I moved that people on the street were beginning to look up at us. It wasn’t surprising, considering we were in a fairly touristy part of the city. We weren’t exactly being quiet or subtle either.

The man was already pulling himself up onto the roof of the next building by then, so I pushed the muscles in my legs even further in an attempt to catch up to him. I could hear people gasping and yelling on the street below as they watched us, but I tuned their voices out.

The roof of the next building was actually a few feet higher, so I had to clamber up using my arms. At this point, the man was only a few steps ahead of me, and the look on his face when he turned around and found me hanging off the left of the roof behind him was one of pure anger. He lifted his gun and attempted to shoot at me, but his shot sailed wide, and the bullet struck a chimney to my left with a dull crunching sound.

The man growled in frustration and picked up his pace as he hurtled toward the next building. I finished pulling myself up and hurried after him. This one had a sloped roof that ended in a peak, and my eyes widened in shock as the man jumped without hesitation. He immediately began to slide down as the roof shingles splintered and slipped out of place beneath him, but he held on and began to scramble his way up.

I stopped at the edge of the roof and drew my gun. I couldn’t bring myself to fire, though. If I did and he really lost his grip, he might tumble completely off the roof, and I didn’t want to kill him if nothing else than to be able to question him.

I swallowed my trepidation and holstered my gun before leaping onto the roof behind him. The shingles felt unsteady and fragile beneath me, and I scaled the side of the roof as quickly as I could without losing my balance.

The man turned to look at me as he reached the apex of the roof and smirked as he pointed his gun at me. I scrambled to the side and cut my hand against a broken shingle in my haste to get away, but I managed to get out of the way of his shot in time. Unfortunately for him, the recoil from shooting the gun caused him to lose his balance, and I watched realization dawn in his eyes as he tumbled backward.

“Help!” I heard him shout from the other side of the angled roof. I could hear the crowd on the ground screaming more loudly as well.

“He’s going to fall!” someone shouted, and I realized why everyone was suddenly more panicked. This building was on the street corner, which meant nothing on the other side of the roof would stop him from falling to his death.

I climbed to the peak of the roof as quickly as I could, and sure enough, I could see the man dangling precariously off the edge, with nothing but cobblestones several stories below him.

“Please help me,” the man begged. His hands were bright red with strain as he fought to maintain his grip.

I struggled internally for a few seconds as I tried to decide what to do. On the surface, it would be wrong to let him fall to his death, even if he was a criminal. I wasn’t judge, jury, and executioner, after all. On the other hand, I didn’t trust this guy, and I had no guarantee that he wouldn’t toss me off the roof the second I helped him up.

“Please,” the man pleaded pathetically as one of the shingles cracked beneath his hand. My sympathy won out then as I carefully lowered myself toward the edge of the roof. I pressed myself flat against the shingles before grabbing him by the wrist and using one arm to pull him further up onto the roof until he could get a better grip using his elbows. Once his upper body was back on the roof, I gripped the back of his jacket and hoisted him the rest of the way up.

“Don’t move,” I warned once his entire body was back on the roof, lying face down. The people below us were cheering, but my mood was anything but celebratory. “Put your hands behind your back.”

“You don’t have to worry,” the man replied calmly as I clicked a set of handcuffs into his wrists. “I won’t resist. I owe you, after all. I may be a lot of things, but I’m no ingrate. I’m not about to hurt someone who just saved my life.”

I eyed the man suspiciously. He didn’t sound like he was lying, but I wasn’t an idiot, either. I wouldn’t just easily trust someone who had just shot at me multiple times.

I looked down to inspect the wound on my arm as I remembered that he had actually managed to graze me at one point. I took off my jacket to better examine the injury and was relieved to find that it wasn’t terrible at all, relatively speaking. It was bleeding a little, and the surrounding area was mottled and red, but I’d definitely had worse.

“Sorry about that,” the man smiled sheepishly as he lifted his head to look at me. “Nothing personal. Just my job, you know?”

“Really?” I deadpanned. “And what job is that?”

The man stared at me blankly, surprise etched clearly across his face.

“You’re joking, right?” he asked. “Isn’t that why you’re here? To arrest the lot of us for being mobsters?”

“Mobsters?” I repeated, unsure what he was going on about. “We’re here because of