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

I was about to head up the stairs when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.

I managed to duck out of the way of the man’s fist just in the nick of time. I hadn’t even noticed him approaching me.

I lifted my gun instinctively, but to my surprise, the man didn’t try to hit me again. On the contrary, he immediately began to run in the opposite direction. I was about to take off after him when something large and heavy slammed into me from behind. I fell to the ground but was rolling over instantly, ready to combat whatever had just hit me.

“It’s me!” Junior yelled as I swung my fist.

“Why the hell did you knock me down?” I yelled.

“That one was about to shoot you,” Junior replied as he nodded toward my right. I turned and found two Garda grappling with one of the suspects, attempting to disarm him.

“Thanks,” I muttered as I got back to my feet. As soon as I did, I heard a loud crashing noise, like glass breaking. I turned to see what it was and spotted the man who’d attempted to hit me weaving through the throng of people and into an adjacent room.

“Over here!” I yelled to Junior as I changed course and took off in the man’s direction. By now, the fight was in full swing, and the house was so crowded that at times I wasn’t sure who was friend and who was foe.

Finally, I broke my way through and caught sight of the man just as he was climbing out of a window.

“This way!” I yelled to Junior, who was a few steps behind me. I made it to the open window that he had disappeared through. Outside, I could see him and several other men running off, away from the house and toward the edge of the steep cliff.

I didn’t think twice before leaping through the window myself, determined not to let the men get too far away. Junior climbed out just behind me, and together we made our way swiftly toward the cliff.

The edge of the cliff wasn’t a straight drop down, as I’d expected, but rather a very steep, rocky slope. The two men were obviously more used to this terrain than we were because they were scaling down the side of the cliff fairly quickly.

I started down the steep face and almost immediately slipped on the uneven terrain. I struggled to keep up but kept losing my footing and slipping in my attempts to catch up to them.

“Damn,” I swore as I tripped and sliced my leg open on a jagged rock. Pain lanced through my shin, and I could feel an unpleasant wet sensation as blood began to seep into my pants leg.

“Come on,” Junior huffed as he pulled me up by the arm. “We’re almost to the bottom.”

About halfway down the cliff, one of the men turned to look at us. I braced myself for incoming fire, but to my surprise, it didn’t come. Rather than pulling out his gun and shooting at us, the man just turned back around and continued his descent. I was so shocked that I actually stopped running.

“What are you doing?” Junior snapped.

A tiny voice in the back of my mind was screaming that something was amiss, but between the sharp pain radiating from my leg and the urgency of the situation, I couldn’t concentrate enough to voice what it was.

“Nothing,” I replied hastily. “Let’s go.”

We made it to the rocky beach at the base of the cliff just as the two men turned and disappeared around a large boulder. I blocked out the pain in my leg and sprinted after them. I drew my gun as I went, ready to fire as soon as I turned the corner.

I didn’t get a chance to, though, because the moment I rounded the corner, something dark filled my vision, and pain exploded behind my eyes as something struck me in the head. Stars sprung up before me, and for a moment, I couldn’t see or hear anything past the ringing in my head.

Something knocked my gun out of my hand, and a moment later, I felt someone grab me from behind, forcing my arms behind my back.

“Charlie!” Junior screamed from somewhere in front of me. My vision was still swimming, but everything was slowly coming back into focus.

I could hear Junior yelling, but his voice sounded distant and was echoing in my head, as though we were underwater. My vision began to clear, and as it did, I realized the gravity of the situation we were in.

I was standing in some kind of cove. The ground and roof were a dark gray stone, and I could hear the sound of ocean waves somewhere behind me. In front of me, all I could see was darkness, and I could tell right away I was staring at the wall of a shallow cave.

Someone was behind me, holding my arms behind my back in a painful grip. I could see Junior standing a few feet away from me to the left, in a similar position.

Four men were standing in front of me, which meant that there were at least six, including the ones restraining us. Suddenly I realized what had seemed so off about the man earlier. He’d had the chance to shoot me twice, once back at the house and then another time while we were climbing down the cliff, but he hadn’t. We’d walked right into a trap.

“I have to thank you,” one of the men in front of me said in an obnoxiously smug voice.

“What are you talking about?” I asked calmly.

“Your agency did such a good job ruining my latest two business ventures,” the man continued. “I was angry at first, of course. I knew I needed to deal with you somehow, but then I thought: Why not kill two birds with one stone?”

I still wasn’t sure what he was talking about, and by the look