Cut and Run 6 - Stars and Stripes

chaotic bar room. Zane turned to follow.
    Annie called out from behind him. “You gave yourself away, you know. To everyone in the bar.”
    Zane stopped in place and turned to stare at her. “What? How?”
    Annie grinned and nodded toward Ty. “He’s wearing your Stetson.”

    Zane had a hard time keeping his eyes off Ty, and the lingering scent of Old Spice on his clothes and skin helped to combat any urge to drink that cropped up as the night carried on. Ty made it so very easy for him to stay on the straight and narrow.
    By midnight, the place had calmed. No one was dancing, and though plenty of people were still drinking and eating, it was an older crowd. Ty and Zane sat at a table, talking with the others about everything from how they had met on their first assignment to theories of what was going on at the ranch.
    “I still think it’s drugs,” Cody said as he sipped at his last beer.
    “A valid theory,” Ty said. “What about rustlers? Does that even happen?”
    Joe nodded. “It does, but not much, and not around here. There’s just nowhere to take the livestock and no way to get it there after you’ve rustled it.”
    “Rustled?” Cody asked.
    “It’s a thing.”
    “If you say so.”
    Ty smiled, and Zane chuckled at them. Joe and Cody were two of Harrison’s best hands. They’d been around since high school, and they were the only two of the dozen ranch hands who’d been invited to meet Ty who had actually come.
    Annie slid back onto her stool, carrying a new bucket of beers. Marissa and Jill had called it an early night, both claiming they had to be at work in the morning. Marissa worked with Annie at her veterinary practice, and since Annie rarely saw Zane, Marissa had drawn the short end of the stick. Annie would get to call in hung over for work the next morning, while Marissa opened up.
    Ty reached for another beer as Annie told them about her practice and her tentative plans for helping the sanctuary. He opened the bottle on the edge of the table, then stuffed the cap into his pocket. “So, did you want to be a vet, or was that something you got steered toward for the benefit of the ranch?”
    Annie blinked. “Wow. You are good.”
    “Ty was briefly trained as a profiler,” Zane told them. “I hate it.” They all laughed at him.
    “Just a lucky guess,” Ty told Annie, modest as ever when it came to his more impressive skills.
    “Mother thought it would be good to have a veterinarian in the family. Turns out she was right, and I do love it, so . . . I didn’t fight it. Not like Z did.”
    Ty glanced at Zane, his smile softening. He wasn’t drunk, but he was just buzzed enough to be sweet and affectionate without being self-conscious. “Zane is a fighter.”
    Zane rewarded him with a fond smile.
    Ty threw back the last gulp of his beer and set the empty bottle on the table in front of him. A shadow fell across their table, and Zane started at the sight of four men standing behind Ty.
    “You’re Garrett, right?” one of them said, voice hard and almost slurring.
    “That’s right.”
    The man looked at the back of Ty’s head. Ty was looking down at the table, face expressionless and shoulders relaxed. If being approached from behind was making him nervous, he wasn’t showing it. But Zane knew he was looking down so he could see with his peripheral vision and be ready if anything happened.
    “That makes you the queer, huh?” The man reached out and poked Ty in the arm.
    “Hey!” Annie shouted. Mark put a hand on her shoulder to calm her.
    Ty remained seated, but he looked up to meet Zane’s eyes. He still appeared calm, which was shocking, because Zane was roiling with anger. Thinking these men were coming at him hadn’t bothered him, but to see them go at Ty was too much.
    Ty lifted his broken arm, his fingers raised toward Zane in a calming gesture.
    “I’m talking to you, faggot,” the man sneered as he poked Ty harder.
    Ty reached for his new beer. “Yeah, I heard you.” He took a drink and met Zane’s eyes again. Zane wanted to bash the man’s skull open; he had no idea why his usually short-tempered partner hadn’t already done so.
    “Why don’t you just go away, Stuart? We’re not looking for trouble tonight,” Mark said, as unruffled as Ty. Zane attributed it to their Marine training. It wasn’t easy to prod a seasoned Marine into a bar fight.
    Stuart laughed, and his buddies all chuckled. “We ain’t looking for trouble. We just come over