Fish & Chips (Cut & Run 3)

“Che cazzo stai facendo?” one of them demanded.

Ty leaned forward slightly, as if listening closer might actually make him understand the foreign language. It was definitely Italian.

Which was f**king awesome, because Ty still didn"t speak Italian.

Dolce and Gabbana here could threaten him all day long. He still wouldn"t understand what they were saying.

“I don"t….” Ty shook his head helplessly, just barely remembering his own fake accent.

“Do not play stupid with us,” the second man said irritably. He had thin brown hair and a sickly complexion, as if the sea didn"t agree with him. Ty had seen it before. “Why did you miss the meeting?”

Gabbana demanded.

Ty blinked at him rapidly, his mind whirring as he tried to decide how to play this. He had no idea who they were or what they were talking about, and sometimes the best thing to do was just… play dumb.

The first man rolled his eyes and reached into his cheap suit, extracting a small Berretta and stepping forward to shove it into Ty"s stomach. His other hand held Ty"s shoulder as he spoke to him in low tones. “You will not f**k around with us, chiaro?”

“I understand,” Ty answered hoarsely with a jerky nod. The muzzle of the gun dug further into his ribcage, and he winced as his hands gripped the railing behind him. The wind was much stronger here by the edge, and it whipped at Dolce"s black hair and tugged at the sleeves of Ty"s thin shirt.

“Where is the information you were to bring us?” Gabbana asked in a bored voice.

“Information,” Ty repeated as he shook his head. Of course they wanted information. This was exactly what Ty had been worried about: Del"s handlers coming to collect. At least they didn"t seem to know Del Porter personally. Ty wasn"t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing for him.

The man with the gun pushed into Ty hard, using the leverage and the height of the railing to lift Ty"s feet off the deck and push him backward. Ty gasped and gripped the railing harder, reaching with his other to grab onto the lapel of Dolce"s suit.

He was beginning to think his cover wasn"t worth the effort.

“The tapes, frocio,” Dolce whispered into his ear. Whatever that word meant, Ty knew he didn"t like the connotation.

“Tapes,” Ty repeated breathlessly. His toes just barely brushed the wood of the deck, and his fingers wound into Dolce"s tie. If he went over the edge, he wouldn"t go alone. He briefly wondered if Italian loafers could be used as flotation devices, but then the man put more pressure against his ribs, shoving him even farther backward, and Ty gripped the polyester tie tightly. “Tapes,” he said again quickly. They had to be talking about the recordings he"d heard on the iPod. “They"re in our cabin,” he told them quickly. If he didn"t get his feet on the ground soon, he was going to tear them both apart, cover be damned.

He was getting seasick.

Gabbana reached out and backhanded him, hard enough that Ty felt blood trickle down his chin from his newly split lip, and then the man pulled a gun and blatantly shoved it at Ty"s face. Ty felt his heart rate pick up even more, the adrenaline making him a little lightheaded as his upper body hung out over the open sea below. Of course, if the guy shot him in the face, it wouldn"t really matter how far the drop was.

Gabbana"s gun pressed against his cheek, and Ty didn"t try to regulate his reaction, his breathing becoming harsher. Del Porter would be scared shitless, right? Well, Ty figured he was doing that pretty well right about now. Two guns were hard to contest no matter how much ass you could kick.

“You had better hope they are closer than your cabin,” Gabbana said quietly. His gun moved until it was in Ty"s mouth, scraping against his teeth and sending a horrible shiver up and down his spine, like nails on a chalkboard. The man"s dead fish eyes didn"t give much away, and Ty believed he just might pull that trigger. He nodded against the gun, and the man pulled it back just enough for Ty to speak.

“In my pocket,” he said, cursing himself for handing over the one piece of information that might have been worth anything to them so far.

Dolce released his shoulder, and Ty felt himself waver. The railing was thick enough to stop him, though, and his feet hit the deck with a thump as the man dug into his pocket for the iPod. When Dolce pulled it out, the two men backed away, letting Ty"s knees go weak.

Again.

“Do not forget who you are working for,” Gabbana said as he slid his weapon back into the folds of his coat. Ty resisted the urge to ask the man to remind him.

“We shall be in touch,” Dolce said almost cordially, and then the two men turned and left him alone, slumped at the railing and breathing hard. He put his hand to his lip, wiped blood away from it, and looked down at it on his fingers.

“I hate this f**king case,” he murmured to himself.

A GOOD two hours after Ty"s interruption, Zane tucked a credit slip for a modest amount of money into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

He"d pretty much broken even at the table with Armen, Bianchi, and two other high rollers on vacation, staying enough to the positive that he"d not been able to shoehorn in an excuse to leave until now.

He"d used the time to study his supposed business partners, looking for tells and nervous twitches, tracking how much they won and how much they lost. Bianchi was eternally jovial and content, a personality quirk that almost took its toll on Zane"s patience. Armen was quite the opposite, approaching somber, even after winning a hand.

He was not delightful company.

Zane knew Armen had been watching him carefully; he"d been particularly attentive when Ty had shown up. Zane had been on a roll at the point, having won three hands in a row, and a whining spouse seeking attention simply wouldn"t register as important to a high roller.

Despite his show otherwise, the problem had registered with Zane after the fact. Ty just didn"t get that agitated without reason. But Zane had not been concerned until after he"d summarily dismissed Ty. At the time, he"d been more focused on the job, on getting Bianchi or Armen to talk about themselves or their mutual business than he had been on his partner"s state of mind.

So now he walked out of the casino, forcing himself to make his way casually back to their cabin as he grew more and more worried.

The warmth of the expensive Scotch lapped through him, making everything around him false and bright. Zane had nursed the first glass as long as he could, but there had been a second, and a third, and then it had been too late. He could still taste it now, the burn of the ultra-premium liquor on his tongue and at the back of his throat.