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

“Okay,” I nodded as I walked past the officers and pushed open the door to the room. There were two beds in this room, but only one was occupied, obviously a safety precaution considering the suspect’s unpredictable and violent state.

Kyle was lying on the bed furthest from the door. His hands and ankles were strapped to the sides of the bed, likely for his own protection as well as the hospital staff. If he was going through withdrawal, he might try to hurt himself to get drugs.

His face was red and twisted into a pained grimace, and he was clenching and unclenching his fists. He turned to glare at us as we entered the room. The blank, faraway looked I’d seen in his eyes earlier was gone, replaced instead by a mixture of anger and despair.

“Hello, Mr. Mosley,” Naomi said calmly as she took a seat in the chair by the side of his bed. I took a standing position near the foot of the bed instead. I’d managed to calm this guy down for a moment, but in the end, he’d been convinced I’d tried to trick him, and I had shot him in the leg. It’d be better for everyone involved if I just let Naomi do the talking.

Kyle regarded Naomi for a long moment before his gaze slid over to me.

“You’re the one who shot me,” he spat accusingly. His voice was low and raspy, nothing like the pathetic whine I’d heard at the top of the Ferris wheel.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” I grimaced. “In my defense, though, you were trying to attack me.”

“Ha!” Kyle croaked as the short bark of laughter caused him to break into a coughing fit.

“Have some water,” Naomi cooed as she lifted a plastic cup of water off the bedside table and guided the straw into his mouth.

“Thanks,” Kyle rasped as the coughing fit subsided, and he drank from the cup gratefully. “I guess that’s true. Can’t really blame you when I was the one going nuts up there.”

My eyebrows shot up into my hairline at his words. I hadn’t expected him to agree with me and admit that he was the one in the wrong.

“Mr. Mosley,” Naomi prompted him. “Can you tell us what you were doing on that Ferris wheel?

“I, uh…” he trailed off, fidgeting uncomfortably as he did. As he shifted, the sleeve of his hospital smock rode up, and I could see needle marks littered along the purple, mottled skin of his elbow. Kyle was clearly no stranger to drug use. “It’s kind of embarrassing. I took some of that cough medicine I heard about on the news, and I guess I just lost control.”

“Deliberately?” Naomi blinked in surprise. “You took it on purpose, knowing what would happen?”

“I didn’t know that would happen!” Kyle protested. “I heard rumors that it was made of the same stuff as rush. That stuff’s impossible to get now, so I thought if I took just a little of the cough syrup, I’d get the same high without going too crazy.”

“That obviously didn’t work,” I scoffed, unable to contain myself after hearing how stupid he’d been. To his credit, Kyle actually flushed with shame.

“Yeah, I know,” he muttered. “Nothing happened for a long time, so I thought maybe I didn’t take enough. So, I took some more. Then still nothing happened, so I took some more, and, well, obviously, it just took a while to kick in, and by then, I’d downed like half the bottle. It was fun, at first. Everything was bright colors, and I could see stuff that I knew wasn’t there, but it wasn’t scary because it was cool stuff like dragons and eagles. Then I saw my girlfriend, Lilly.”

“But she wasn’t really there, was she?” Naomi asked.

“I guess not,” Kyle muttered. “I thought she was, though. She’s in Colorado right now, visiting her sick mom, but I suddenly saw her right there in my living room. At first, I was happy, thinking she’d come home early, but then she started telling me what a loser I was for doing drugs and that she wanted to break up with me. She ran out of the apartment, and I chased after her. The whole time she was telling me how much she hated me and how she was going to find a new, better boyfriend. I saw her go into that Ferris wheel car with those guys, and I just got so angry. You guys know the rest.”

“For goodness’ sake,” Naomi sighed. “You’re lucky you were brought to the hospital so soon. You understand that, right? The vast majority of the people who’ve taken this drug are dead. The only reason you’re speaking to us right now is that your stomach was pumped before the drug could finish you off.”

Kyle’s face went white, and he stared down at his own lap, unable to look Naomi in the eye as he spoke.

“I know it was dumb,” he muttered. “I just didn’t know what else to do. It’s so overwhelming when the craving kicks in. It’s not like it was meth or anything.”

“Actually,” Naomi clarified, “both rush and the cough syrup contain fairly large amounts of methamphetamines, along with a host of other substances. Just because it’s called something different doesn’t make it any less dangerous.”

“No way!” Kyle squeaked. He looked like he was about to cry.

“How did you get ahold of the cough syrup?” Naomi asked. “Did you just happen to have it at home?”

“No,” Kyle sniffed. “I got it online. Ever since that video went viral a few days ago, people have been treating bottles with that specific serial number as, like, collector's items. The guy I got mine from auctioned his off.”

“What video?” I asked. I didn’t spend that much time trawling the internet, so I probably wouldn’t have seen it if it wasn’t on the news.

“The one of the dude in the bathrobe,” Kyle answered. “He went crazy and bit a girl’s face off, then