Fish & Chips (Cut & Run 3)

Zane was sitting back, relaxed in his chair, mostly sideways to the table, legs crossed primly as he"d taken to doing when acting as Corbin.

There was the faintest of cold smiles on his lips, but his dark eyes were hooded and blank. The look was intensified by his now standard all-black suit ensemble. He held a snifter of something that was a rich caramel color in the hand away from the table—the other men had glasses as well, and the bottle was there on the table. There was a decent amount of chips stacked in front of him. If he saw Ty, Zane gave no sign of it as he watched Vartan Armen, who was considering his own cards.

Ty slowed, looking around the table. He"d never had occasion to play poker with Zane, but he could imagine his partner was good at it.

He was a hard man to read and almost obsessively observant of small details. He continued to move closer, carefully coming up on Zane, hoping he looked suitably embarrassed to be interrupting.

He put a hand on Zane"s shoulder, letting it slide up to his neck as he bent next to him. Both Armen and Bianchi looked up at him, as did the two other men at the table, but Zane didn"t acknowledge him.

Ty waited a moment, watching the other players. Armen frowned a bit under Zane"s scrutiny and looked at the stacks of chips in the center of the table. Each chip was labeled as $1,000—and there were a lot of chips out there. Armen smiled, set down his cards, and added two more even stacks of chips to the pile.

Ty watched the game briefly. If it had been Zane"s money, he might have waited, but it wasn"t, and Ty"s hair was blond until they could get out of here. He put his mouth closer to Zane"s ear and whispered, “I need to talk to you.”

Zane"s attention had transferred to the next man around the table, who had just as much a poker face as Zane. “Not now, doll,” Zane drawled as he set down his glass in front of him.

Ty blinked at him in surprise. He looked down at the cards in his hand and then over at the other men at the table. He had a fair hand, but nothing worth writing home about. His eyes strayed to the glass on the table near Zane"s chips. It was nearly empty, and Zane certainly smelled of alcohol. Ty let his hand slide over the back of Zane"s neck, looking up at him as he put his other hand on Zane"s thigh and squeezed.

“It"s important,” he insisted, the accent feeling strange on his tongue as he tried to convey just how important this might be.

“I"m sure it"s not,” Zane replied easily, nodding as the man across the table folded. The next gentleman, an older man wearing a finely tailored smoking jacket, tapped his chips on the table idly as he considered his cards. Zane would be next, if he hadn"t started the betting.

Ty didn"t care about the game, though. He stared at Zane, willing him to look up. In his pocket was possibly their plane ticket home, or more probably a bull"s-eye painted on Ty"s back, and Zane wouldn"t even look at him? Ty fought not to grit his teeth as he dug his fingers harder into Zane"s thigh.

“Darling,” he said pointedly, hating the polite accent and the fact that even cursing made him sound like he was sitting at tea with the Queen.

Zane"s head tipped to one side, and he laid his cards on the table face down. “Excuse me, gentlemen. I"ll be right back,” he said pleasantly. And he was out of the chair, yanking Ty up by his upper arm and marching him the fifteen feet over to the door.

“Don"t tell me you"ve run across something you can"t handle,”

Zane growled, a clear note of annoyance in his voice.

“Not exactly, but—”

“Then go handle it. Armen, Bianchi, and I are talking business between rounds, and I won"t be distracted. I"ll deal with you later.”

With that, he gave Ty"s arm a slight shove, turned his back, straightened his jacket, and strolled back to the table, retaking his seat smoothly without a glance back. The men at his table similarly ignored Ty.

Ty watched his partner go, struck speechless by his careless dismissal. He thought briefly about following him back to the table and kicking his ass, or at least announcing the cards Zane held in his hand, but the urge passed as he convinced himself their cover was more important.

As he stared at the table, he saw Armen throw down his cards with a sniff and Zane rake in the chips, stacking them as he toasted the table with his glass before taking a drink. Bianchi laughed merrily, wagging his finger at Armen before lifting the bottle and starting to refill the glasses.

Ty clenched his jaw, anger welling inside him at the sight of the expensive bottle of Scotch. He turned on his heel to leave the room before he got any angrier. He didn"t need his partner"s help to get something done on this f**king ship. All he had to do was head to the computer center and a nice private corner to tap into the secure server, call it in, and inform someone back home of what he"d found. He"d have a translation of the wire taps by morning, and when Zane came stumbling in from his poker party, Ty would tell him all about it then.

He stalked through the casino, pushing through the crowd as he muttered to himself in the British accent he was beginning to hate. He"d just barely stepped out of the casino into the causeway when he was grabbed from the side and pushed with a hand that gripped his elbow tightly.

Another man came up on his other side as the two strangers flanked him, marching him toward one of the doors that would lead to an outside deck.

Ty didn"t protest. He remained calm and forced himself to wait until the situation clarified itself. The moment he saw a weapon he"d be breaking bones, though.

“Taci e vieni con noi,” one of the men said to him under his breath.

More Italian. Ty didn"t understand it, but he was fairly certain the man had just told him to keep his mouth shut and move. The tone was pretty much universal.

They pushed through the exit doors and out onto the deck, where the spray from the sea and the wind assaulted their senses and blew their ties into their faces. Ty almost took the opportunity to break away from them. He even flinched in preparation of the attempt, but he stopped himself. Whatever this was, it had to do with Del Porter, and that was who Ty was right then. Del Porter wouldn"t leave these men bleeding on the decks, and Ty wouldn"t either, if he could help it.

The grip on his arms tightened, and the two men led him to the left, toward one of the lesser-traveled causeways on that deck.

They finally released him once there was really nowhere to run, shoving him toward the railing. Ty stumbled toward it, gripping the slick wood before turning around to look at them warily.