Mason: The Lost Billionaires, Book 1

by Allison LaFleur

  Blinking, I sat back. I didn’t realize how isolated we were. It was kind of daunting. I had been hiking and backpacking many times before, once for months straight on the Appalachian Trail, but even then I was never more than a day’s walk from a city or town. I could always bail if anything went sideways. This was different.

  “I think we should spend one more night here. We have plenty of food, water, and shelter, and it will give us both a little more time to heal.” He stood and walked to the end of plane, looking out past the parachute. “Let’s get ready tonight, and we can leave at first light in the morning. I don’t want to be walking around in the jungle at night.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I think that is a good idea.” Hopping up, I flipped my hair over my shoulder and wiped my hands on my pants as I approached the keep pile we’d made. “Here. Let me get the backpacks.” I grabbed the two we had emptied from the crew’s luggage. “How are you feeling? You were unconscious a while.”

  “My ankle should be fine tomorrow. Most of the swelling is already gone, and my head is a lot better. You?”

  “My headache is better.” I rummaged through the pile and started filling the bags.

  “Put the heavy stuff in mine.” he said, watching me.

  Turning, one hand on my hip, I glared at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Put the water and other heavy stuff in mine. I’m bigger. I can carry more.”

  “I will do my share. We’ll split it.”

  “Kinsey—”

  “No. If something happens to you, if we get separated, if anything, I want to be able to take care of myself. I won’t be dependent upon you.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He let out a huff and walked back to the bedroom. After a few minutes, he came back and stood there, feet spread, hands on his hips. His unshaven face, messy hair, and dirty clothes gave him an old-world machismo. Ruggedness flowed out from him and wrapped me in a feeling of safety. I knew if I let him, he would protect me, keep me safe, fight off all the dragons, and save the world. The problem was, after my falling out with my dad, I wanted to learn to save myself.

  “Mason, go clean up and get some sleep. I will be in when I’m done with the bags.” I turned back and fit some more water bottles in the one I was holding. “I’ll set some food aside for the morning. There is a gallon jug I’ve been using for washing in the bathroom.”

  Mason

  Digging graves is hot, sweaty work. I never thought I would be a grave digger, but there I was, covered in dirt and digging a hole in the jungle floor the day after waking up from a plane crash.

  “We can’t just leave them here Mason; not like this.” That’s what Kinsey said to me two hours earlier, and that’s how I ended up shirtless, sweat streaming down my back, sunburned and digging graves in the jungle. I was rethinking agreeing with Kinsey. Is it too late to change my mind?

  I sure hoped Ricardo and Matt were looking down on us and appreciating the work we put into burying them. Unfortunately, I had a feeling Ricardo was pointing and laughing at me, wondering why in the hell I was digging a friggin’ hole in the middle of the jungle instead of hiking my ass out of there. He was way too practical for that. He’d have said, “Mason, I’m dead. Who the hell cares where my body decomposes? I’m in an airplane, which was my favorite place to be. Planting my ass in the ground for flowers to grow on is for you, not me.”

  “I think that about does it,” I leaned on the makeshift shovel I’d made from a chunk of palm frond and the emergency axe. My hands were red and raw, but I had three person-sized holes in the ground for my three dead friends.

  “Ugh,” Kinsey said. She flicked her wrists and tried to shake off the squishy bits sticking to her hands as we dragged the last body into its grave. “Some of his skin came off on me.”

  “We got them into the ground just in time. Any later and we would be moving them in pieces.” Stinky, gassy, gross pieces we’d toss in the ground for the jungle to eat. With the proliferation of bugs and other decomposers, the high heat, and oppressive humidity, the bodies would be recycled back to earth very quickly.

  “I just met them, but I didn’t want to remember them like this.” Kinsey sniffed, wiping away a tear, “But I’m glad we did this. I hate to think what would happen to them if we left them out in the open.”

  Scooping the last of the dirt on top of the three piles, Kinsey ceremoniously placed three small crosses and flowers on the top of each mound. She had used Ricardo’s eyeglasses to burn their names into the bits of wood she had fashioned into crosses of sorts.

  I tossed the hated palm-frond shovel off into the bushes. I never wanted to dig anything again.

  Mason

  “I think it’s too late to leave today,” I said. “We should start out at first light.” I was still cleaning up after the hot, sweaty work of burying my friends. “And I need to patch up my hands. I don’t want the blisters to get infected, and in this mess, they could.”

  “Let me take a look,” she demanded. I held them out for her to see, and she took them in hers, flipped them over, and winced. “You are a mess. I guess that palm frond wasn’t the best shovel.” Pouring a little of our precious water over them, she carefully dabbed at my wounds with a clean towel, wiping away the dirt bit by bit, exposing the blisters.

  Her big blue eyes looked up at me through the thick fringe of eyelashes as she worked. I shivered; even in my exhausted state, I wanted her. I felt a connection to her—a connection I seemed to have with her and no one else.

  “Have you figured out where we are yet?” Her innocent question woke me from my dreamy desire. “Are we close to a town, you think?”

  “I’m having a hard time figuring anything more specific than ‘somewhere on the Nicaragua-Honduras border.’” Gently pulling my newly wrapped hands from her grasp, I picked up the compass I had removed from the cockpit dash and held it up. “We watched the sun rise over there this morning, and the compass agrees that is east.” I pointed through the jungle.

  I laid out a close-up section of an aviation map and spread it out on the dirty carpet. “This shows where all the airports are in this part of Central America. See those magenta circles and those magenta runways?”

  “These?” she asked, touching several spots on the map.

  “Yes.” I paused and let her look a little more. “Now, see this big empty space over here?”

  “Yeeeeesss....?” This was a slower, more drawn out agreement, and I could see the question in her eyes.

  “That’s where I think we are.”

  Raising her eyebrow even further, she said nothing. She just looked at me to continue. Instead, I pulled out Ricardo’s cell phone and held it up.

  “We have no service Mason, what is that going to do?”

  “Well, look at this.” I pulled up one of the aviation apps Ricardo used and showed her the basic map on her phone. “Both apps show us smack in the middle of the reserve in the northern part of Jinotega, here on the north border of Nicaragua.”

  “I don’t know much about that area,” Kinsey said, laser focused on the maps in her hands.

  “Neither do I, but it’s my understanding this is a largely unexplored area.” I was trying to downplay my concerns, but it looked like I shouldn’t have been worried. The scientist in Kinsey was emerging.

  “Looking at the map, it’s pretty hilly, probably a rain forest—most of this area is.” She settled cross-legged on the floor and zoomed in on the area. “And that’s a significant chunk of Nicaragua. What is that—ten percent? Twenty percent of the country?”

  “It’s a big part. We are slightly to the east, and that seems to be the best direction to go.”

  “Yeah,” she said and added almost as an afterthought, “and if we head downhill we have to hit water some time.” She looked at the phones again. “Neither one is fully charged. They aren’t going to last long.”

  “I know, but at least they confirmed my suspicions. It looks like if we go far enough east, we will eventually hit a ri
ver we can follow to the sea.”

  She thought about it, and replied, “Yeah, we should do that. It will be easier to follow than the compass.”

  Kinsey never ceased to surprise me. She seemed to instinctively know my thoughts.

  Finishing with her study of the two maps, she shut both phones down. “Let’s get one more good night of rest. We should probably leave first thing in the morning.” She tossed me the phones to tuck in my pack. “And we should both check each other out for injuries.”

  “You just want me naked again!” I said, wiggling my eyebrows lasciviously.

  Laughing, she playfully smacked my arm. “You are terrible. I know I hurt, but it’s hard to tell if anything is serious. We might want to do that daily, so like you said, nothing gets out of hand.” She pointed at the backpacks. “And I want to repack our bags to make sure the weight is distributed properly.”

  “I’ll take care of the bags.” I wanted to shift some of the heavier items into mine. She didn’t need to carry that much weight.

  “Have you ever backpacked before?” Kinsey asked me, raising one eyebrow in question.

  “Not really. I mean, I’ve carried a backpack before… back when I was in school.”

  “That’s not the same,” Kinsey replied. “I’m talking about carrying 30 to 50 pounds on your back for ten hours a day, day after day. Have you ever done THAT?”

  “No.” I hated admitting I wasn’t good at something.

  “Then it’s settled. I will pack the bags so they carry the best. We are taking a lot of heavy stuff and those aren’t hiking packs. They are going to be uncomfortable, but I don’t want to leave anything behind.”

  “Why don’t you just let me carry it all? I’m bigger.” And stronger, I thought, although I didn’t say that.

  “No, Mason. I will carry half. Neither of us is in top fighting form. We really have no idea where we are, how far we are from where we are going, and God forbid if we get separated. I need to be able to take care of myself.” She stood there, eyes blazing, hair in a wild golden halo around her head. She reminded me of an Amazon—a short Amazon, but an Amazon. Fierce, strong, determined.

  Chapter 17

  Kinsey

  Mason infuriated me. Just like my father, he insisted on treating me as if I was a child who didn’t know anything.

  Of course I didn’t know everything, but I could read a map and the writing on the wall. The maps from the plane were designed to be used from the air. They would be little help on the ground. The phones would die within 24 hours, maybe 48 if we used them sparingly. They had less than half a charge as it was, and we had no way to power them. Forget phone apps, there would be no following the blinking blue ball in this jungle.

  In the past, I may have been content to rely on others, to let them take care of me. I may have played at college, at getting my degree, telling myself I was going to show my father what I was capable of and make a splash in the biotech world, but I didn’t even know what I was capable of back then. Having only recently been cut off and forced to grow up, I was just beginning to discover myself.

  This situation in the jungle—I could do this. I wasn’t going to die in the middle of nowhere, dirty, tired, and sore. No. I was going to get out of there. With Mason’s help, we were going to survive. I wasn’t going to be dependent on him, though. My background in science and my time rock climbing, hiking, and backpacking had provided invaluable knowledge for the situation we were in. He was smart, but racquetball and gym workouts were no match for Mother Nature. He may not have realized it yet, but he needed me just as much as I needed him.

  Snuggling down with Mason, I burrowed into his side. His arm around my shoulders, and my hand smoothed over the light dusting of dark hair on his chest. Twirling my fingers around his belly button, I roamed his body as my mind wandered. I thought about everything we had already been through and wondered what was to come.

  “If you keep doing that, Kinsey, we aren’t going to get much sleep.” Mason chuckled, and his voice rumbled in my ear.

  “Mmmmm.” I wriggled in his arms, my fingers dancing lower and lower, dipping below the sheet to bury themselves in the thicker curls surrounding his manhood. “Do we really need to sleep?”

  “Maybe not,” he said, his hand caressing up and down my shoulder and arm. I continued my explorations, and his hips began to move in time with my ministrations. The next hour we didn’t do much talking.

  Kinsey

  Waking up our second morning in the jungle, the day started much like the first. The jungle was just as wild, just as noisy, just as hot, and just as humid as the day before.

  Lying with my arm draped over Mason’s waist and my head resting on his shoulder, I tried pretend we were waking up on a lazy Sunday morning in my apartment, but I couldn’t. The fantasy just wasn’t enough to make me forget our brutal reality.

  Everything hurt, and I felt sticky and dirty. Dragging myself out of bed, I pulled on my dirty, sweaty clothes from the day before. I hadn’t packed a whole lot of jungle trekking attire, so I just had what I was wearing. The saving grace was a pair of clean underwear I was saving.

  I think the aches and pains from the crash hurt more that morning than they had the day before. I didn’t have any adrenaline running through my veins this morning to help me forget. Moving like I was 61 instead of 21, I gingerly walked to the jagged edge of the plane, pulled back the parachute curtain, and sat down to look out with my legs dangling over the edge.

  The jungle really was beautiful in a wild, untamed way. Parakeets flitted from tree to tree, their bright green bodies blending in with the lush green foliage. I heard a troop of howler monkeys go by. It was probably the same family that went by us yesterday about the same time. I heard the crunching and clicking of millions of bugs and beetles, feasting on jungle decay.

  Scooting back just a bit so I was on the carpet, I sat cross-legged, my hands resting on my knees, and closed by eyes to center myself. I sensed the day growing brighter through my closed eyelids, and I could feel the sun rising through the trees as I silently performed my morning yoga routine.

  What started as a way to deal with stress, recommended by one of the many shrinks my dad had sent me to over the years, had become a way of life. I started every day stretching my muscles, lengthening and strengthening, while silently meditating. I found it energized me. I started the day more alert, calmer, and a much happier person overall. It helped save my sanity when Dad cut me off a month ago, and hopefully it would keep me grounded now.

  I sensed Mason’s presence when he came out of the bedroom. Quietly, he came up next to me and began to imitate my sun salutations. Not a word was exchanged as we moved together in perfect harmony in the middle of the jungle. Stretching, posing on the ratty airplane carpet a million miles from home, the familiar movements calmed me, giving me a brief taste of normalcy in my now-chaotic, unpredictable world.

  Slowly finishing my routine, I came back and settled into my cross-legged starting position. Mason and I sat like that for a few minutes before breaking the silence.

  Mason

  Moving with Kinsey, imitating her poses, I had never felt so in tune with a woman before. Yoga isn't my thing. I enjoyed more competitive sports like racquetball, lacrosse, and rugby, but doing yoga with Kinsey in the early morning light felt spiritual. It was an intimacy I had never shared before. Closer than sex, it felt like a form of love making. Our bodies were perfectly synchronized.

  If only my mother were here to see me now.

  That’s when I, Mason Alexander, confirmed bachelor, realized I was in love with spunky, quirky, klutzy Kinsey Hendrix, daughter of my mentor. If we made it out of the jungle alive, Noah was going to kill me.

  Shivering, I remembered the slow, painful death Noah had always described for any man who dared touch his daughter.

  Mason

  She handed me a bottle of water and a two day old roll stuffed with a limp piece of cheese and a pre-cooked sausage patty. Then Kinsey shoulder
ed her pack and looked at me expectantly.

  “Yes, yes. I’m ready.” Who would have expected pampered princess Kinsey Hendrix to be an avid backpacker? I know she told me that was something she did on weekends, but I had no idea she spent summers on the Appalachian Trail and had once hiked almost 1800 miles of it. Giving her a chaste kiss on the cheek, I tucked the sandwich into a pocket and helped her hop down out of the plane.

  I held up the dash-mounted compass I had removed from the cockpit and oriented myself to east. “We walk that way.” I pointed through the trees.

  Kinsey focused on the compass in my hand and nodded. “East.” Aimed in that direction, she hitched her pack a little higher and hiked out of the clearing and into the wilds of the jungle. “How about I lead for a while?” She called back over her shoulder. Her footsteps were sure and unwavering, setting a pace I was going to have trouble keeping up with. This was clearly not her first time walking in the woods.

  Kinsey

  Nervously leading us east, I walked ahead so Mason wouldn’t see my unease. The sun was high and brutal, and the air was almost thick enough to chew. We were flanked by a chorus of howler monkeys. I was used to the wilds of New York City, but this was new and frightening. I noticed a long skein of leaf-cutter ants running in a line, each carrying a piece of leaf larger than itself. Marching in the direction we were traveling, they were fascinating to watch.

  Within an hour of leaving the shelter of the plane, we encountered our first mud hole. “Careful, Kinsey.” Mason moved to go ahead of me.