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

“You’re Liam O’Sullivan,” I surmised, unable to keep my face from twisting into a disgusted scowl.

“Of course,” the man smiled. His short blond hair was slicked to the side, and his gaunt, sunken face gave him the look of a grim reaper. “And you did such a good job getting rid of Finnian for me. To be honest, I had hoped that you would have ended up killing him, in some dramatic shoot-out, perhaps. I’ve heard about that temper of yours.”

He smirked at me, and I glared back at him as menacingly as I could from my current position.

“But I guess I’ll have to settle for jail.” He shrugged with a dramatic sigh. “In any case, I have friends within the prison system. It won’t be difficult to arrange a little accident for him once he’s behind bars.”

As he spoke, I racked my brain as I tried to figure out a way out of this situation. I could probably use my body weight to knock the man behind me off balance. He was holding both of my arms behind his back, which meant he wasn’t currently carrying a weapon. I had no doubt that he had one, though, so it really came down to whether I could gain the upper hand before he managed to pull a gun or a knife in retaliation.

I glanced around the small seaside cove. My eyes widened as they landed on my gun, lying just a few feet away. Whoever had knocked it out of my hand hadn’t bothered to retrieve it. They were probably so confident that they’d be victorious that they hadn’t deemed it necessary.

O’Sullivan was still monologuing like a villain out of a children’s cartoon, and I tried to get Junior’s attention as subtly as I could. He happened to glance over to me just as I looked at him, and I tried to draw his attention to my gun on the ground.

“Honestly,” O’Sullivan sighed before I could attempt to convey my plan to Junior. “I thought you agents were smart. I can’t believe how easy it was to lure you down here. Of course, I could have just let my men deal with you, but I knew it would be much more satisfying to eliminate you myself.”

“Damn, you talk a lot,” I groaned, half in an attempt to distract him and half because I was just unable to listen to his drivel for a moment longer.

“You have a lot of nerve,” he snarled at me.

“Yeah,” I scoffed. “And you should have let your men kill us when they had the chance.”

I snapped my head back as hard as I could and struck the face of the man behind me with a satisfying crunch. He screamed and loosened his hold for just enough time for me to slip free.

I didn’t waste any time. Before the man could regain his composure, I leapt forward and retrieved my gun from the floor of the cave. My head was throbbing again, both from the headbutt and from moving so quickly, but I pushed past the queasiness I felt rising in my gut. I spun around to face O’Sullivan and the rest of the men and fired my gun at the man nearest to me. He fell to the ground with a short, pained grunt.

The man who’d been holding Junior slackened his grip in shock at my actions, and Junior seized his own chance to pull free. He turned and punched the man once before reaching down from his gun. Unfortunately, it wasn’t there. He, too, must have dropped it when we were ambushed.

The man reached into his jacket, but before he could do whatever he was planning, I lifted my gun again and shot him square in the chest.

The other men in the cave raised their guns as he fell to the ground, and I aimed my gun at them, ready to go down fighting if I had to.

“Stop!” O’Sullivan suddenly yelled, his voice echoing in the small, cavernous space.

Junior and I were standing on one side of the cave, facing down O’Sullivan and the men standing on the other.

“Do you really think that you have a chance?” O’Sullivan drawled as he tapped his gun casually against his thigh. “It’s two against four.”

“We’ve faced worse odds,” I bluffed.

We didn’t have any cover, and Junior didn’t even have a gun. If we got into a shootout now, we were almost certainly going to die. Our only real chance at survival would be to stall until Seamus or the other officers arrived to help.

“Look at the mess you’ve made.” O’Sullivan grimaced down at the two bodies on the ground. “Just who do you think is going to clean this up?”

“That’s what you call your own fallen men?” I growled. “A mess?”

My brain was moving at a mile a minute as I tried to figure out a way out of this. I turned to look at the three men standing beside him.

“Is that the kind of man you want to work for?” I yelled expectantly. “Someone who’ll just treat your deaths like an inconvenience?”

“Shut up,” O’Sullivan barked, and for the first time, his nonchalant mask slipped.

“Isn’t that why you turned your back on Gallagher?” I continued with ferocity. “He was treating you all as disposable, but isn’t O’Sullivan exactly the same? He put your lives at risk by sending you into the house to lead us here!”

“I said shut up!” O’Sullivan screamed before turning to address his men. “Shoot them. Now!”

Every muscle in my body tensed at those words, but it seemed like my plan had worked because the men hesitated.

I took that as my opportunity and began to fire. I managed to hit two of the men before they’d regained their wits.

“Dammit!” O’Sullivan yelled as he fired back.

I threw myself to the side and fired again, though my shot missed and embedded itself into the cave wall behind him. The last of the goons left standing started firing as