Mason: The Lost Billionaires, Book 1

by Allison LaFleur

  “Fine. I’ll pretend I believe you.” Chuckling, Mason rolled away and sat up, running a hand through his dark hair. After two weeks in the jungle, it had grown longer, curling on the ends that stopped just below his collar. Dirty and tangled as it was, the long hair made him even more ruggedly handsome. He’d lost the crisp cut he usually sported with his business attire, and the relaxed look suited him.

  We made a great team, so breaking camp didn’t take us long. We’d gotten into a rhythm; I’d roll up the blanket as Mason filled our water bottles, and we’d split a bag of peanuts as we put our shoes on. We could be up and on our way in under ten minutes. It seemed silly—we weren’t facing deadlines, and there were no clocks or watches for miles—but every minute we walked was a minute closer to making it out of there.

  I saw pain flash across his face as he slipped his shoes on, but he doesn’t complain. I saw the shutters drop over his eyes, hiding his emotions, His face went flat. Always the macho man, he took the pain with a stoicism I could never pull off. The flesh on his feet was red, angry, and oozing from countless festering wounds. He needed more medical attention than I could provide with our meager supplies. Sighing, I looked away. There was nothing I could do about his feet.

  Untying the bandage on my arm, I looked at my own injury and was pleased to see it scabbed over. It didn’t look infected. Down at the edge of the water, I washed the blood out and wrap my arm again.

  “Why don’t you lead today?” I knew his pace would be slower than mine. Our rolls had reversed. He had been taking care of and protecting me since we left the plane, but it was my turn to care for him.

  He looked at me but said nothing before he turned and started picking his way along the riverbank, sticking to the softer soil and trying to avoid the rocks. I’m sure the rough terrain was killing him. He’d been quiet since that first exchange when I woke him. This experience had affected us both. I think it’s changed us. I just hoped we were both changing for the better.

  Once a care-free party-boy, interested only in making more money, this new Mason seemed much more serious, more grown-up. New lines had appeared on his face, and more gray streaked at his temples. I was sure I’d changed, too. I felt more confident. Just thinking about my father no longer made my blood pressure rise. And while I would have loved his blessing on my life, I no longer felt like I need it to be whole.

  Mason

  Lower and lower we descended, making slow but steady progress down the mountain to a valley. The river we followed slowed more the further we walked, flowing gracefully over large round rocks that mountain runoff had worn smooth over the years.

  Every few hours, we stopped and I soaked my feet, re-wrapping them with clean strips of fabric we rinsed and hung from our packs to dry for the next time we stopped. I think it helped keep them clean and reduce the swelling. The last thing we had time to do was stop walking, but those breaks were the only things that kept me going. We had to push on no matter how bad my feet hurt. We were down to the last few bags of peanuts from the plane, and neither of us had a clue how to hunt or fish.

  We continued our descent down the mountain, and the air around us ripened with the briny scent of the ocean. The last two days we hadn’t talked much. The reality was we might never make it out of the jungle. It had been almost three weeks with no sign of the sea or civilization. I knew it was there, though, and if we kept going in a straight line, we’d have to reach it eventually.

  We’d been pushing hard since we’d escaped the guerillas and were running out of food. Kinsey was totally freaked out, and we were both worried about getting caught again. Who knew what else is hiding in the jungle with us.

  “Mason, what happened back there?” Kinsey asked me again, but I didn’t want to tell her. She didn’t need to know the gory details.

  “What do you mean?” I played dumb. I was so tired I didn’t know what else to do.

  “I mean, how did we get away?” Dropping her head to watch her feet as she walked, she said, “I really thought he was going to catch us. One moment I was running through the jungle, and I could practically feel him breathing down the back of my neck, I half expected to feel a bullet in my back at any second. Then, the next moment, he was gone.” She lifted her eyes to me. “Just gone.”

  I didn’t say anything. How do you explain killing someone? Even though it was in defense of us both—he was intent on killing me, and that would have left her all alone and in danger—I worried what she’d think. Would she look at me differently? Would she still want to be with me?

  I had never done anything like that before, and I never wanted to do anything like that again. I felt dirty. Up to now, my life had been predictable. Boring, even. I had everything I ever wanted, and after growing up poor, that felt really good.

  This, though, I hadn’t been prepared for. Not the plane crash. Not Kinsey coming into my life. And not how far I was willing to go to protect her.

  “I did what I had to do.”

  Kinsey

  Weak and exhausted from days of traveling in the muggy 90-degree jungle, we didn’t speak much. We picked our way along the river, putting one foot in front of the other, just trying to eat through the miles of tropical terrain that still stood between us and the safety of civilization. I drank cool river water as much to convince my empty belly it was full as to keep hydrated. I brushed my hand across my stomach, feeling its new concave shape. Even the strictest yoga regimens had never managed to eliminate the last bit of pudge there, but the jungle had.

  I was just slipping into another bout of self-pity when something strange caught my eye up ahead in the water. “Mason! Is that a fish trap?” Squinting into the rising sun, I could see rocks damming the width of the river and funneling the deeper water into a bamboo fish cage. “It is! Mason, look!”

  Suddenly reenergized, I splashed through the water toward it and ran my hands across it. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. “You know what this means?! This means people!”

  He smiled and nodded wearily. “If there’s fishing, we can’t be too far from civilization. Lead the way,” Mason gestured ahead as I steadied myself on a slippery rock and hopped back to the riverbank. “I’m ready for a hot shower and a juicy steak.”

  “Me too! And shampoo! I’ve been dreaming of shampoo, and body wash, and a hairbrush. Oh my God, I can’t wait to run a brush through clean hair…” I got totally lost in the fantasy, I could almost feel the hot water coursing over my body, the warm drops hitting my face, running down my chest, over my breasts and pattering on the tile around my feet.

  “Careful, Kinsey. Don’t slip.” Mason offered me a hand as I crossed the last few rocks and headed downriver again, hiking with renewed vigor, my hope restored.

  Mason

  When we finally limped into the little fishing village four or five hours later, I was barely keeping on. I had started to think we had imagined the fish trap.

  A dark-haired woman in a brightly colored skirt stared at us as we walked in with our soiled designer jeans and trendy sneakers, now all covered in mud and muck.

  “Um, hi!” I tried to appear harmless as I approached her, but it was a struggle given how excited I was to see an unarmed person. “Can you help us, please?”

  Hacking open tortoises for stew, she paused at our words, bloody machete in the air. She turned toward a hut in the distance and shouted, “José! José! Hay gringos!” Then she returned to her gruesome work, rendering the turtles to stewable chunks.

  A short, stocky man in a dirty tank top and board shorts came from a small thatched building nearby, shack-rattling salsa music thumping from inside.

  “Ah, hello?” He wiped his hands off on a greasy rag, “Can I help you?”

  “Oh thank God. Can you help us, please?” I skidded to a stop in front of him, babbling some more. “We were in a plane. We crashed in the jungle. We’ve been walking for days.”

  “Ah… my English not so good… you like eat?” He led us to a ring of stumps around
a central fire pit in the middle of the small village. It was really more a collection of a half-dozen primitive shacks than a village, maybe a family compound, but to my eyes, it was the most wonderful place in the world.

  “My mother… she cook.” The older woman we’d first met brought us two steaming coconut-shell bowls of some type of stew. I’m guessing it was tortoise. It was the most delicious food I’d ever eaten. The flavors exploded on my tongue. The tortoise was rich and meaty. The potatoes were soft and fluffy. The vegetables were full of life, and it all came together in a spectacular medley of flavors.

  “Do you have a cell phone we could use?” I asked when José came back. “We really need to call home and let them know we’re alive.”

  “Ah… no phone in village. Must go to Bilwi for phone.”

  “Bilwi?” Kinsey sat up and raised her eyebrows. “Where is Bilwi?”

  “Bilwi… two day walk… down river.”

  I tried to stand, but stumbled. A low groan escaped me as I struggled to brace myself with one hand on a stump. Finally, I managed to right myself enough to wobble over to our packs.

  “Man hurt?” José looked at Kinsey and waved at me as I slowly hobbled my way back to my stump.

  “Yes,” Kinsey said, her eyes damp with concern. “His feet are really bad.”

  “Feet?” He looked over his shoulder, “Mamá!” Then he turned to me. “Man show Mamá feet.”

  The old woman waddled over, shoulders stooped and bent at the waist. Her wizened face, deeply grooved by years of hard work and unrelenting sun, cracked a warm and gentle smile.

  Still, I was worried. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You won’t be fine, Mason. Show her your feet.” Kinsey put her hands on my shoulders. “Please,” she whispered.

  I couldn’t deny her anything. As I unwrapped my feet, the bandages stuck to the open wounds before painfully tearing away. The ragged strips were soaked pink with blood and green and yellow with pus. I could from the rotting odor that they were really bad.

  The old woman leaned forward. I could almost hear her joints creaking as she bent to examine my injuries. She sniffed.

  “Tus pies apesta!” She called out, shaking her finger at me. “Están malos.” Tottering away, she went into a small mud and thatch hut.

  “Where did she go?” Kinsey asked José. A moment later, the old woman was back, carrying a bowl in her hands. “What—what is THAT?” Kinsey’s nose wrinkled and she backed away from the stench of whatever it was the old woman came out holding. “That is disgusting,”

  She was right. I turned my head from the smell as bile rose in the back of my throat. It took all my self-control to hold back the gagging and resist the urge to throw up all the stew.

  “Mamá fix feet,” José said. “You sit.”

  Kinsey stood behind me, her hands massaging my shoulders as the old woman went to work. She pulled a sponge out and ran water over my feet, sponging them off and wiping away the dirt. With great care, she cleaned my wounds. When she was satisfied, she began scooping the green goop out of the bowl and painting it all over the raw flesh. With my feet completely covered, she bound them again in fresh strips of cloth.

  “Wow.” I was shocked at the instant relief. I could feel the lines in my face smoothing out as the pain in my feet faded away. “They don’t hurt anymore. What is that stuff?”

  Chapter 21

  Mason

  I may never know what was in that green goop, but the overnight difference in my feet was astonishing. The swelling was gone. The violent red signs of infections and inflammation were replaced with pink, healing flesh. The skin was still tender and would require a lot of babying to prevent reinjuring them, but I was well on my way to recovery.

  José and his mother had given us a place to sleep and two more amazing meals. José was the only one in the village who spoke any English. The rest we did a lot of smiling and pointing with. Kids ran up and touched Kinsey’s blonde hair while the women giggled and hid. The men, except José, completely ignored us as they went about their lives.

  We left a few things behind: some spare shirts, the extra parachute material and netting, anything we didn’t think we’d need for the next two days. We were almost free of the jungle and had nothing else to thank them for their care and kindness with.

  The riverbank widened as we neared the sea, and Kinsey and I walked shoulder to shoulder, quiet as morning dawned. The sun rose and burned off the dew. Kinsey walked with her head high. She was thinner, her cheekbones more prominent, but it was the newfound confidence she exuded that captured my eye. God, she was beautiful.

  Her hand swung by her side in rhythm with her step. I reached over, wrapping my hand around hers, enveloping her delicate fingers in mine. They fit perfectly as if they had always belonged together, connecting us.

  We walked hand in hand from the shade of Mamá’s shack into the swelteringly hot morning. There was less cover from the sun along the river than there had been in the heart of the jungle, and we both started sweating immediately.

  Aside from the scorching sunlight, the river was beautiful. The bank was lined with flowers and fruit trees. Papaya, banana, and mango were all plentiful. They made for a tasty, if not terribly filling, breakfast and lunch.

  “How long do you think it will take us to get to Bilwi?” Kinsey asked as she skipped along beside me, swinging our arms and periodically snuggling up as we walked. Her 1000-watt smile shined brighter than the sun. We both possessed a renewed lease on life knowing the city was so close.

  “José said it was a two-day walk for him,” I said, “but he’s made the trek a hundred times. I think we should be prepared for it to take us three days.” I grabbed my water bottle and took a swig, looking at Kinsey for confirmation.

  “Ok. I can handle that.” She took a deep breath. “Just think—in three days, this will all just be a memory.”

  “A memory that will live with us forever.” I frowned, my lips pursing and my forehead wrinkling, “I keep thinking about Ricardo, Marie, and Matt.”

  “We can send someone back for them, right?” She looked up at expectantly.

  “I don’t know, Kinsey. I plan to try, but I don’t know if we could ever find that spot again. It’s been almost three weeks. By now the jungle will have claimed a lot of it. There might not be anything left to find.”

  We hiked quietly for a bit, the memory of the lost crew at the front of our minds. Then she asked, “Do you feel guilty?”

  I didn’t even have to think about it. “Yes. Every single day I ask myself, ‘Why did we live when they died?’”

  “I wonder that too. I just don’t know, Mason.” She sniffed and wiped beneath her eyes. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Growing up, I just wanted a place to call home. I thought if I could just make enough money to buy a house for my mom, that’s all I would ever want. And then I made my first million and bought my mom a house, and then I thought, ‘I just need a little more to be comfortable. This could all be gone tomorrow.’”

  My heart hurt thinking of my mom and how she probably thought I was dead. I could picture her crying alone for hours. I thought about Mark, Laurie, and the twins—my family, which I’d ignored so often for work. Will they miss me? I missed them. In fact, I missed them more than my work. They were the reasons I had to live… and Kinsey.

  “I feel like that now,” she said. “The fights with my dad, boarding school, the car—it’s all meaningless. All I want to do is live. This experience has shown me what’s really important… and how quickly it can all slip away.”

  Stopping in the middle of the trail, I turned Kinsey to face me. My fingers wiped the sweaty hair from her face before my hands settled on her shoulders. I looked her straight in the eye. “Thank God I have you, Kinsey. You have kept me going through all this. I couldn’t have done this without you. I never would have wanted these circumstances, but I have loved our time together.” I paused. “I love you.”


  Her lovely blue eyes sparkled as a soft, pink smile spread across her sunburned face. “I love you too, Mason. If I had to be stranded after a plane crash in the jungle, I would only want it to be with you.”

  Kinsey

  Cresting the hill after a strenuous climb through some challenging terrain, Mason and I were suddenly standing on the precipice of a cliff. The river reached the very edge of the ledge before falling hundreds of feet through the air and splashing into the turquoise pool below. The crystal clear water reflected the sky back at us, and in the shadows, we could see the depths of the basin hollowed out of the rock.

  “Oh!” I gasped. My arms wind-milled, my heart fluttered, and my breath came in short bursts as I caught myself teetering on the edge of the drop off. Before I could fall, Mason’s strong hand was on my shoulder, pulling me back from danger.

  “Gotcha,” he said.

  I stared down the incredible height of the cliff wall. “How are we going to get down there?” Standing on the tips of my toes, I looked out over the wide open space, searching for a path to the bottom, but there was none.

  “Careful, Kins.” Mason said, extending a steady hand out to me. “We’ll take it slow and easy. Follow me.” Mason pulled the crash axe from his pack and began to swing at the thick brush that blocked our way. He cleared a rough, painful path through the scrub down the cliff face. It took hours. We were both scratched and bleeding by the time we reached the bottom.

  A hot, tired and sweaty mess, I collapsed to the ground and yanked my pack off. I pulled the sticky fabric of my shirt away from my aching shoulders and massaged them for a moment before bending down and tugging off my shoes and socks. Padding barefoot to the edge of the turquoise pool, I plunged my feet into the cool water. Holy cow! The gorgeous waterfall was a lucky find, an oasis of calm beauty in a sea of chaotic jungle.