Chapter 17: Answers
Behind them, in the compound a world away, a guard would soon notice the heir’s empty bed, and the long, sharp silence would begin to shatter.
The forest swallowed them whole. Every snapped twig was a gunshot. Every rustle in the undergrowth was a guard’s boot. Kinn moved with purpose, his city-bred senses sharpened by adrenaline, but Porsche was a ghost, slipping between shadows Kinn didn’t even see. He followed Porsche’s lead, the mountain reclaiming its son.
“Here,” Porsche whispered, pulling Kinn down into a shallow culvert choked with ferns. They pressed together, hearts hammering a frantic, syncopated rhythm. The earthy smell of decay and Porsche’s sweat filled Kinn’s lungs. Distant, the whine of a dirt bike cut the morning stillness. One. Then another. They weren’t using the roads.
“They’re sweeping the low trails first,” Porsche murmured, his lips brushing Kinn’s ear. “They think you’re an idiot who’d follow a map.”
“I am an idiot,” Kinn breathed back. “I came back.”
A flicker of something—pain, acknowledgment—crossed Porsche’s face before it shuttered again. “Yeah. You are.” He pointed to a nearly invisible game trail leading up a treacherous scree slope. “We go up. They hate going up. Their boots have no grip.”
For hours, they climbed. The sun burned away the mist, baking the rock. Kinn’s palms were raw, his breath a ragged scrape in his chest. Porsche moved like a goat, agile and relentless, but Kinn saw the tremor in his hands when he stopped for water, the way he cradled his abdomen as if remembering a phantom weight.
They stopped at a trickle of water seeping from a mossy cliff face. Porsche dunked his head, drinking deeply. Kinn watched the water trace the vertebrae of his spine, the old scars, the new lean hardness. He was a map of everything that had been done to him.
“Your father,” Porsche said, not looking at him, voice hollow. “He paid the elders. A ‘donation’ for the village school. A new irrigation pump. My uncle asked me if I was proud. My little cousin asked if the rich man from Bangkok was my friend.” He finally turned. His eyes were black with a fury too deep for shouting. “They sold me for a water pump, Kinn. And you were the payment.”
Kinn had no defense. The ledger’s words blazed in his mind: procured the catalyst. “I didn’t know.”
“But you know now.” Porsche stood, looming over him. “So what’s your move? You steal me back, like property? Does that balance the ledger?”
Kinn stood to meet him. “I’m dissolving the fucking ledger. I’m burning the bank. But first, I need to get you to a safe place. I need to get our son.”
“‘Our son,’” Porsche repeated, the words a fragile, dangerous thing. “You saw him?”
“For a minute. He’s in the north wing. It’s a… clean room. Not a nursery.” Kinn reached out, grazing Porsche’s arm. He felt him shudder. “He has your scowl already.”
Porsche’s throat worked. He looked away, toward the endless green valleys below. “If we get him… we can’t stay here. Thailand is your father’s country.”
“I know. I have a plane. Papers. Money he can’t trace.”
“And then what? We live happily ever after in… Switzerland?” Porsche’s laugh was a short, sharp burst of pain. “You think this just ends? He’ll burn the world to find that child. You read what he believes my boy is.”
“Let him try.” Kinn’s voice dropped, low and final. “But he has to go through me first. And I am not the man he left in this mountain.”
The sun dipped, painting the sky in bruises of purple and orange. They reached the abandoned hunter’s shack Kinn had scouted from satellite images. It leaned precariously, smelling of damp wood and animal musk. It was shelter. It was a trap if they stayed too long.
Inside, the tension shifted, compressed by the close, dark walls. They ate sparingly from Kinn’s pack. The silence was a live wire. Every glance was a spark. The brutal, reclaiming sex against the table in Porsche’s home had exorcized nothing; it had only made the hunger more acute, more complicated.
Porsche sat on a moldy bunk, cleaning the blade of his knife with systematic intensity. Kinn watched the firelight play on the muscles of his forearms. The need was a physical ache, a throbbing pulse that lived below his belly.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Porsche didn’t glance up.
“Like what?”
“Like you want to eat me alive and put me back together again.”
“Maybe I do.”
Porsche finally looked up. The raw challenge in his eyes was an invitation to a fight, or a fuck, or both. Kinn crossed the tiny space in two strides. He knelt, putting himself below Porsche, a deliberate gesture of surrender. He pried the knife from Porsche’教育部 grip and set it aside. He placed his hands on Porsche’s knees, pushing them apart.
“What are you doing?” Porsche’s voice was tight.
“Something I should have done the first time,” Kinn said, and leaned forward.
He mouthed at Porsche through his trousers, feeling the hard heat beneath the fabric. Porsche hissed, his hips jerking minutely. Kinn worked open the buttons, freeing his cock. It sprang out, thick and full. Kinn didn’t hesitate. He took Porsche into his mouth, swallowing him down deep in one slow, wet glide.
“Fuck,” Porsche gasped, his hands flying to Kinn’s hair, not pushing him away, but holding on.
Kinn worked him with a singular focus, his tongue tracing the vein underneath, his lips tight. He used his hand to cradle Porsche’s balls, feeling them drawn up tight. This wasn’t about domination. It was atonement. It was worship with a filthy mouth. He could taste the salt of the day’s sweat, the unique, musky flavor of him. Porsche began to move, shallow thrusts into the welcome heat.
“You’re gonna make me come,” Porsche warned, his voice strained.
Kinn hummed in response, the vibration making Porsche curse and buck harder. His control unraveled quickly, starved for so long for anything that wasn’t fear or loneliness. His climax hit him, and he spilled into Kinn’s mouth with a choked-off cry, his body bowing taut.
Kinn swallowed, taking it all, the bitter taste a covenant. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking up.
Porsche was breathing heavily, his eyes wide with a stunned, vulnerable shock. He pulled Kinn up by his shirt and kissed him, tasting himself on Kinn’s tongue. It was desperate, messy.
“Your turn,” Porsche mumbled against his lips, and his hands went to Kinn’s belt.
“No,” Kinn said, capturing his wrists. “Later. We need to move before first light. The tracker I planted on the perimeter line will have sent its pulse by now. They’ll have a direction.”
Porsche stilled. “What tracker?”
“In the fuel pump relay. It’s how they found us so fast last time. I replicated the signal. It’s currently broadcasting from a monkey headed toward the eastern border.” A cold, dark smile touched Kinn’s lips. “Let them chase it.”
For the first time, a real, genuine light flickered in Porsche’s eyes. Not forgiveness. Not yet. But a kind of savage满意. “You’re learning.”
“I had a good teacher in treachery.” Kinn stood, pulling Porsche up. “Get some sleep. Two hours. I’ll keep watch.”
Porsche lay on the bunk, his body spent. As Kinn turned to go to the doorway, Porsche’s voice, sleepy and rough, followed him. “Kinn.”
“Yeah?”
“If you’re lying… about any of it… I’ll kill you myself. And I’ll use that knife.”
Kinn looked back at the shadowed form on the bunk. “I’d expect nothing less.”
Outside, the mountain night was alive with a thousand sounds. Somewhere far to the east, his father’s men would be closing in on a confused and angry gibbon. And in a sterile room in the north wing, a child who was both prophecy and revenge slept, unknowingly waiting. The silence had shattered. Now the war began in earnest.