They skirted the edge of Cao Bằng city and kept to the forested surroundings following dirt roads which curled around hills, dipped into valleys and passed by terraced slopes, through a tiny village chasing goats and skinny dogs out of their way with blasts of the horn, then along a bend of the river, trees on one side, brown water on the other. Locals waved at Tom as they belted past, rooster tails of dirt and stones kicking up behind the Jeep.

Tom turned off the main track and into the trees, followed another dirt road, taking the narrow corridor at speed. He sang along to an eclectic mix of music, though his words never quite matched the singer’s. Sometimes, he’d stop singing and prattle at Jack in a mix of Vietnamese, which Jack didn’t know, and movie quotes, some of which Jack did know. Not that Jack really needed to understand what the kid was saying. Tom wasn’t expecting a two-way conversation: it was talking just to be talking, probably how he expected a tour guide to be. As such, he pointed out presumably interesting spots of trees as he hurtled them along a road that rose up into the mountains.

They passed into true jungle between one curving incline and the next. Trees dripping in thick foliage and strangling vines leaned in so close Jack could touch them as they went past. The air cooled and grew even thicker with moisture. The caws and squawks of birds could just be made out over the sound of the engine and the music.

It was strange and beautiful and as crazy as anything Jack could have expected when Ethan was involved.

Then Tom barrelled over a peak in the road and slammed on the brake with both feet.

Thrown forward, Jack caught himself on the dash and when his brain stopped reverberating, he saw nothing but dark, boiling sky in front of them.

“Holy shit.” Another couple of feet and they would have been flying off the bloody mountain and describing a nice arc into the valley far, far below them.

“Whoa,” Tom said, eyes wide. “Game over, man!”

Inching back in the seat to keep the weight away from the drop, Jack asked, “Did we take a wrong turn?”

But all Tom said was, “Tour over, Mr. Reed. Out!”

“What?” Jack demanded. “This is it?”

Tom nodded. “Mr. Saint said be here. You here. Out!”

Christ. Did he trust Ethan enough to get out of the only vehicle he’d seen in this remote, wild place? Shit, even if this turned into one big joke or trap, Jack had some of the best survival training in the world. And there was a road right here he could follow back to civilisation.

Jack got out and fetched his bag from the back. He was barely clear when Tom had the Jeep screaming backwards down the mountain, using only the rear vision mirror as a guide. If anyone had ever been taught to drive by Ethan Blade, there he went.

Half an hour later, Jack wondered just how long he should wait. Or even if he was supposed to. Or if he was even in the right place. As cute as he’d found Tom, he had to wonder if the little shit had actually known where he was going.

Jack was studying the abrupt end to the road—a jagged edge where part of the mountainside had washed away at some point in the recent past—when Ethan finally appeared. He stepped up beside Jack, dark glasses following Jack’s line of sight to the distant river in the valley. Jack waited, to see if Ethan would make the first move, but as the silence stretched out, he knew he would cave first, so he just gave in.

“Ethan.” He kept his voice neutral. The hurt still prickled under his ribs, but the edge of his anger had been taken off by the long journey and young Tom’s driving. For a traitorous moment, his body wanted to turn to Ethan, to touch him, hold him, bury his face in his hair and breathe as if he’d been under water these past four weeks.

Then he remembered Harry’s funeral.

“Hello, Jack.” Ethan’s voice was rough with some emotion he kept tamped down. “I wasn’t certain you would be here.”

For once, Jack thought he might actually have the upper hand. He was the one who’d come all this way, the one who could threaten to leave if things went bad. But even as he thought it, Jack was disgusted with himself. This wasn’t a competition. He wasn’t here to make Ethan feel bad. He was here to find out why he’d been silent in the wake of Jack’s need. To find out just what the fuck Ethan Blade wanted from him.

Jack sighed, hands shoved in the front pockets of his jeans. “I wasn’t sure I’d be here, either.”

After a long moment, Ethan said, “I’m glad that you are.”

The only response Jack had was a sour grunt.

Ethan turned to him. “Jack—”

“No. Don’t ‘Jack’ me.” The bitter tone was a surprise to Jack as well as Ethan, but all Jack cared about was answers. He was going to get them. “Where the fuck did you go? You disappeared when I ne—” He’d said the words back then, in grief and pain, but now, angry and confused, they stuck in his throat. “Christ. You didn’t have to leave.”

“I did, Jack.” The barely hidden emotion was gone, his tone low and steady.

“No, you didn’t. Your part in the job was sanctioned. No one was going to arrest you.”

Jack finally had the strength to face him and, thankfully, found he could resist the usual allure. It was like the first days in the desert, when Jack had been wary about Ethan’s intentions toward him. When the admittedly hot body meant less than the fact he’d taken out a small army mostly on his own.

Right now, all Jack could focus on was the memory of Mrs. McGill’s face, smiling through her grief, as she assured Jack he hadn’t failed her son. How, in that moment, he’d wanted, needed, someone to lean on and the only person he’d wanted to lean on in a very long time was thousands of miles away, doing fuck all to help anyone but himself.

As if seeing it in Jack’s eyes, Ethan took a small step backwards. “Jack, I don’t think this is the right place for this conversation.”

Gesturing at the wilderness all around them, Jack asked, “What? It’s not secure enough for you?” He regretted the words as soon as they were out. Using Ethan’s issues against him was something Jack had never wanted to do. He didn’t even have the excuse of burning up with a fever this time. Yet, he couldn’t take the words back. Couldn’t say he was sorry, because Ethan spoke before he could.

“It would be, except for the fact that if we don’t get going now, we’ll be caught out in that storm.” He nodded toward the low, dark clouds inching ever closer. A nearly opaque curtain of rain blocked the far side of the valley from view.

And didn’t that make Jack feel like a dickhead. He’d been staring at the approaching rain all this time, not even seeing it through his inner turmoil.

“Will we make it in time?” A little rain never hurt anyone, but that wasn’t a “little rain.” It was the sort of rain that could wash out mountain roads.

“We should, if we go now.”

Jack hefted his bag to his shoulder and grudgingly followed Ethan into the trees. A short distance in, two horses waited. They stood close together, heads hooked over each other’s necks. Both looked over when Ethan approached, murmuring to them in a soft tone. The grey untangled itself from the roan and turned to greet Ethan, lipping at his hip pocket.

“More?” Ethan scratched the horse’s forehead. “Do you know how much trouble I’ll be in if you’re fat and lazy when I leave?” Still, he produced a couple of sugar cubes from his pocket and let the horse snuffle them up. “Do you ride, Jack?”

“I can,” he admitted. “At least it’s a horse this time, not a bloody camel.”

The corner of Ethan’s lips quirked up. “And you get your own mount, as well. This,” he said, untying the grey’s reins and mounting in a single, smooth motion, “is Smith. And the roan is Jones.” Some of his tension had vanished, though that was probably the effect of the animals. He stroked Smith’s neck and smiled at the way it tossed its head, transferring that smile to Jack as if he’d forgotten the sharp tones of moments before.

What a waste of a good head of steam. One smile and Jack was crumbling from the inside out.

After a brief negotiation with Jones, Jack had his bag secured and mounted. Ethan and Smith moved out, Jack and Jones trailing after.

The light dimmed dramatically the deeper into the trees they went, and the buzz of insects increased. Birds chittered around them and a soft breeze shushed through the lush greenery, doing nothing to help ease the heavy humidity. The horses’ hooves thumped mutely on the springy ground covering, the creak of leather tack muffled by the thickness of the air.

There was a sense of reverence amongst the dense foliage. An undeniable presence of something larger than Jack, something more profound than one man and his tiny thoughts. The concentration of so much life, like the weight of a warm, breathing shroud, wrapped all around him, compressed him until there was no room for anything other than existing. For the first time in weeks he wasn’t chasing the same thought around and around in his head: Harry’s dead and I couldn’t save him.

Its absence, after so long of infecting Jack’s waking and sleeping mind, left him a little aimless. His anger with Ethan was patchy at best, and now with his guilt fading, he found himself thinking clearly about the current situation.

Right at the start of this doomed affair, Jack had wondered what he would get out of it. Ethan got the opportunity to enjoy something with someone he trusted that had been denied him for so long. And it hadn’t been a hardship on Jack’s part to give him that. He’d jumped head first into the chance to keep Ethan around in any capacity he could. Great sex made brilliant because the other man was someone he actually liked spending time with. It wasn’t a mostly anonymous hook up with a guy picked up in a bar.

The problem was Jack had never thought—not allowed himself to think—that Ethan Blade would become an indelible part of his life. He’d known he wanted more than sex with Ethan for several months, but the absolute need for him had crystallised in that interview room at Duntroon, when they told him Harry hadn’t made it. Before he’d even completely understood what that meant, he’d been looking for Ethan. Reaching for him.

And it had taken over four weeks for Ethan to reach back.

Encapsulated in the close environment of the jungle, the approach of the storm was muted. A very distant, muffled rumble of thunder every now and then, what might have been the drumming of heavy rain when the wind gusted enough to break through the trees. It got darker, even though Jack’s implant informed him it was barely three p.m. So dark Ethan removed his glasses, tucking them into the front of his shirt.

Not long later, they broke out of the jungle into an open area. It wasn’t much brighter out of the trees, the light grey and the air dense and warm with the coming weather.

They’d come around the mountain so that the plateau they emerged onto was facing east and unlike the other clearings they’d passed through, this one was manicured to a golf-course quality. There was even what appeared to be a vegetable patch, surrounded by a wood and chicken-wire fence under a shade cloth. Beyond that was a small paddock attached to a stable made of big bricks that had the slightly asymmetrical look of handmade about them, but the structure was finely crafted.

Hopefully, they wouldn’t be bunking in the stable this time, because the dark building looming at the edge of the plateau was surely a house. It was made of the same expertly crude bricks as the stable and two storeys high with a sloping roof, lower on the side closest to Jack. It had a solid exterior with a few narrow windows covered in ornate grating cemented right into the bricks. The only door Jack could see was heavy, steel-reinforced and barely wide enough for him to pass through without scraping his shoulders.

Fortified was the word that jumped out at Jack. No one was breaking in there without some heavy assault equipment. Maybe this was one of Ethan’s lairs.

Ethan directed them through stabling the animals. As he brushed Jones down, Jack found an odd calm in the long, sweeping strokes across the beast’s back and sides. Jones almost purred at the attention.

When Jack looked up from his work, Ethan was leaning on the door to the stall, smiling at him like there was no argument hovering over them like a Sword of Damocles. Somehow, the distance between them vanished and Jack pressed against Ethan, palms dragging down the firm shapes of his arms. They didn’t embrace, didn’t hold hands, just leaned into each other and rested. Ethan tucked his head into Jack’s shoulder, making small, contented sounds that settled into Jack’s chest like a smouldering coal, sending delicious licks of warmth lower, as well.

Unless Jack had lost all ability to read Ethan—or never had it in the first place—this was a good sign. Whatever had kept Ethan distant and silent for the past month wasn’t due to a lack of want for Jack. The realisation settled the lingering wariness in Jack’s heart. Whatever else was going on, they’d work through it, as they had before. He just had to remind Ethan, and himself, that questions still needed to be asked and answered.

“This doesn’t mean we’re okay,” he whispered into Ethan’s hair.

Shivering, Ethan replied, as quietly, “I know.”

Neither of them moved.

God. Jack missed this. Not the physicality, though he had missed that too. It was more the presence of Ethan, the simple fact of him being there. They didn’t have to be touching, didn’t even need to be talking, but just knowing he was there if Jack decided he needed those things had been comforting.

Which was why Ethan’s silence had hurt so much.