Cut and Run 3 - Fish and Chips

asked him in a casual tone. He still held Corbin’s cuff link between his thumb and forefinger. “You were doing your job. Playing poker. Examining your opponents. Looking for tells, details that could give you clues to their personalities,” he said. “What did Bianchi’s cuff links look like?”
    Zane opened his mouth to answer and found himself grasping. He could see Bianchi’s face. His black tuxedo jacket, the white sleeve fastened by…. He frowned.
    Ty watched him expressionlessly, finally lowering his hand as he pressed his lips together and nodded. “That’s what I thought,” he muttered, and he tossed the cuff link to Zane.
    Zane caught it awkwardly, still preoccupied. He should have known that detail; he was sure he’d seen those cuff links. He looked at the one in his hand, turning it over, feeling a resurgence of annoyance. “So tell me why cuff links are important to notice at a poker game.”
    “Other than the fact that he rubs his finger over them when he’s nervous?” Ty asked quietly. He pointed at the one in Zane’s hand. “It’s a bug. And from what I learned tonight, I’d bet Bianchi’s are too. Armen wasn’t wearing any.”
    Zane glanced down at the jewelry, suspicious, and skimmed his memory for seeing Bianchi do that. Ty couldn’t have been there for more than three minutes, and he’d noticed that? Concern Zane didn’t want to feel prickled down his spine, and he hated it. “So it’s a bug. That’s no good to us if we’re not the ones listening,” he said, tossing the cuff link onto the bed.
    Ty shook his head and turned away.
    “You’re not seriously going to tell me that I’m negligent because I don’t remember what his cuff links looked like,” Zane said coldly.
    “We’ll talk about this when you’re sober,” Ty told him with finality as he knelt back down to continue going through the pile of trinkets on the floor.
    “If I’ve committed such a terrible mistake that you’re this upset about it, I should probably know,” Zane said, even though he could feel his control over his emotions slipping.
    Ty stopped and remained still as he knelt, his head down. When he looked up, his entire body was tense. “I needed your help, Zane,” he said softly. He looked over at Zane and stood. “Your partner needed you. I had the key to the case in my fucking pocket,” he said in frustration, holding out his hand. “You think I don’t know how important what you were doing was? You think I would have interrupted you if it hadn’t been something huge?”
    Zane struggled to parse Ty’s reply, his own annoyance and doubt and now a revived nausea throwing him off kilter. He swallowed hard, trying to pull it together, trying to refocus and find that cold space again. Ty was great at giving guilt trips. “All right,” he said. Fuck, he needed a cigarette and a drink.
    “All right,” Ty echoed. “That’s all you have to say? All right?”
    Zane was sick from the mixture of frustration and upset that Ty’s accusations caused. It was giving him a headache. “There’s no point, is there? I was wrong. You’ve made your point very clear.” He pushed his shirt off his shoulders and dropped it on the bed.
    Ty watched the shirt hit the bed, then looked up at Zane. Something in his eyes sparked suddenly, and he moved toward Zane quickly. “You want to go for a swim?” he asked as he moved on Zane and grabbed him, taking his forearm and pulling and turning it, jerking Zane around to face the opposite direction. His fingers dug into Zane’s shoulder from behind as he held his other arm and shoved at him, using the twisted arm to guide him toward the door. “Let’s go for a fucking swim,” Ty snarled as he slammed Zane’s chest and face against the cabin’s door. He held him there with the weight of his body as he reached for the door handle.
    The unexpected sudden spin made Zane dizzy, and he was so shocked by Ty’s abrupt manhandling and his head thumping hard against the door that he couldn’t even pull himself together to throw him off. Ty wasn’t gentle as he pushed him down the corridor that led out to the outer deck. He didn’t mind running Zane into walls or doorways anytime Zane gathered himself enough to resist, and Ty kept wrenching the twisted arm painfully to keep Zane from being able to struggle. When they burst outside, the cool evening air hit them; the brisk wind carried the smell of the sea. Even along the Florida coast, it was cool