Cut and Run 3 - Fish and Chips

a temper tantrum, or they had a problem they hadn’t expected. Zane was inclined to choose option A, remembering the look on Ty’s face when Zane had turned his back on him.
    Zane winced.
    He moved on through the bedroom to check the balcony and then walked to the bathroom, where the door was ajar and one of the sinks was running.
    Ty was bent over the sink, shirtless, letting the water run into the palm of his hand and then repeatedly splashing his face. Relieved, Zane looked him over: Ty’s face was pale and drawn, and the shirt he’d been wearing when he’d come to see Zane at the poker table was on the marble counter beside him, a single drop of blood on the collar clearly visible.
    Ty abruptly jumped back, his hand going to the knife on the countertop. He jerked to a stop, his back against the marble tile of the bathroom wall, weapon in hand, breathing hard as he stared at Zane.
    Zane let out the breath he’d been holding and looked Ty over while slowly lowering his gun. He felt his focus snap into place: on Ty now, rather than Bianchi and Armen like before. “What happened? Are you all right?”
    Ty lowered his head slightly, glaring at Zane as his hazel eyes flashed with anger. “Had a party,” he answered in a deceptively calm voice as he straightened up and stepped back over to the sink to turn off the water. “Sorry you missed it,” he added as he set down the knife, picked up a washrag, and dabbed at his lip gingerly.
    “I should have been here,” Zane said as he reached out to lightly touch Ty’s chin and turn his head so he could look at the split lip.
    Ty flinched away from him and smacked his hand away, snarling wordlessly at him. The calm façade was gone just as quickly as it had come. He shoved Zane away from him and followed to shove him again, right out of the bathroom. He balled his fist as if preparing to take a swing, but then he gritted his teeth and flexed his fingers, snorting loudly. It always took Ty a lot of effort to rein in his temper once he’d lost it, and he visibly struggled with it now.
    Now Zane knew what had happened was serious. He tried to study Ty more closely to see if he was hiding an injury. He appeared to be unharmed aside from the bloody lip. “What happened?” Zane asked him again.
    “Fucking Italians!” Ty blurted with a wave of his hands, launching into another threatening temper tantrum, and Zane actually leaned back in surprise. Ty’s next words were shouted. “They tried to toss me over the railing! I don’t speak Italian, Garrett!”
    “The railing,” Zane repeated blankly. Then it clicked. “ The railing? As in into the ocean railing? What did they want?” Scenarios began playing out in Zane’s head, every one of them ending badly… because he wasn’t there. Zane felt ill, all that lovely Scotch suddenly threatening to make an appearance.
    Ty just seemed to grow angrier in the face of Zane’s belated concern. He stood fairly trembling as he balled his fists at his sides, trying to calm himself. That was an exercise in futility, in Zane’s learned opinion, but no way was he voicing that now.
    “They didn’t say anything to give you an idea of who they were?” Zane asked carefully.
    “I think they were Guardia di Finanza,” Ty said through clenched teeth, the Italian words rolling off his tongue as if he did speak the language. “Even Italian cops wear cheap suits. Del was supposed to meet with them, and when I missed it, they came looking for me.” He waved his rag at the trashed stateroom. “They took the fucking wire taps I found. I’m guessing they flipped the place, then came after me when they didn’t find them here.”
    “The wire taps were with you,” Zane concluded. He inhaled deeply and nodded, believing Ty must have had a hell of a scare for him to be this livid. Staying in character would have made him fairly helpless, and Zane felt a stronger pang of worry that he tried to quash. “That was what you came to tell me about,” he said, though he wasn’t sure what he’d have been able to do about it.
    “Not that it matters now,” Ty snarled.
    “It’s done, Grady. Let it go. We’ll find the wire taps,” Zane said as he walked over to the desk, put down the gun, and started to pick through the contents scattered across the top of it. He was having enough trouble focusing on anything besides his partner to worry about the past now. Ty was silent, and when Zane glanced over at him, he found Ty still standing