Finding Lily

37- Alex

We decided to wait until it was light out. The possibility of traps was too high and nothing would be going on till first light anyway so we chilled by the beach, sitting ten feet apart. It didn't feel as awkward as before but there was still a lingering discomfort. To fill it, I broke the silence.

"How many girls do you think Ray has kept here?"

"I'm not sure." Luke said. "It's estimated that Sebastian kidnapped over a hundred girls before he was finally brought down."

"A hundred?" I didn't expect a number that high.

"That was over the course of ten years. Most of them would end up being sold as sex slaves. I'm not sure how many he would have kept for himself."

"Does Ray kidnap people too?"

"We have no proof of it but he's definitely using the island for something illegal. We're just not sure what."

"Ah."

We returned to silence. I started thinking about all of the young girls taken from their homes, imagining Jane's face on each of them, feeling how scared they must have been. Their normal lives would have ended that day. Maybe they got forced to take drugs to remain compliant. Maybe physical domination was used instead. Either way, they had it way worse than I did.

I had one night of pain. They had an entire lifetime.

"I'm sorry about your dad." Luke broke me out of my depressing train of thought to start another. I looked in his direction, curious how much he knew. Instead of having to ask, he answered it for me. "He told me he killed Sebastian. And that you were Ray's vengeance."

"Did he tell you how he treated me after mom died, too?"

"Not really."

I sighed. "He stopped being a father a long time ago."

"You miss your old life? With Jane?" Luke asked me. I was thankful for the change in subject. It was a question I thought about often. Going back to Barrio's Edge the other day reminded me that I didn't really fit in there. Even after six years of living with that kind of wealth, surrounded by people I called friends, deep down I knew I didn't belong.

"I didn't have a future there." I admitted. I had been twenty-two years old, jobless, with one year of college left after already completing four. I didn't have the kind of connections most kids had and would probably end up kicked to Cori when I couldn't pay the wealth tax.

"Why not?"

"If things kept going as they were, I would have ended up drunk in an alley somewhere."

Luke laughed. "I highly doubt that."

"You didn't know me back then."

"I may have investigated your social media after hearing about your case."

"Oh god." My eyes opened wide in horror. I deleted it all as soon as I became Alex, hoping that no one would ever know that part of me again. Except Jane, who unfortunately had to witness it.

"You liked to party, huh?"

"Understatement of the year."

"Everyone deals with grief in different ways." Luke reasoned. "I didn't judge you for it, by the way. Even then."

"Why not?"

"I recognized the pain you were trying to cover up."

I couldn't see him through the darkness. I was glad for that fact when my cheeks lit up redder than a firetruck. No one had understood what was happening to me back then, except Jane. Regina didn't get it. My friends didn't. Even Daniel didn't fully understand the consequences of his actions.

Jane knew. She was always there to hold my hair back while I huddled over the toilet. She was a shoulder to cry on when I felt out of place, or when I was pissed that I didn't have a dad. She knew my pain without me ever having to talk about it.

Apparently, Luke did too.

"Do you live with your mom?" I asked, suddenly too uncomfortable to keep talking about me.

"No. I have an apartment five minutes away from her place."

"Any roommates?"

"My old partner."

"Quitting must have been hard."

"The chief saw it coming. I've been frustrated with the police department for years now." Luke explained.

"And now you're gonna work for my father?"

"Haven't decided yet. I haven't thought much past this island."

"Me neither."

The conversation dissolved into comfortable silence. I leaned my head back against a tree while wrapping my arms around my knees, resting my body before the sun rose. I could hear Luke's faint breathing in front of me. I was suddenly glad I wasn't alone. Maybe, as a team, we could finally take down Ray Malone.

As soon as light started filtering through the trees, we stood and stretched our limbs. Luke led the way around the mountain, the same route we had taken a couple of hours before. We stopped before we were in the line of sight of the camera, each of us taking cover behind a tree ten feet apart.

We stood like that for over an hour, waiting, listening. My back had grown stiff by the time footsteps started to approach. Peering through the woods, I saw a man in the direct line of the camera. He stopped in front of the rocky wall of the mountain before disappearing inside. Finally, we knew where the entrance was. I didn't realize how camouflaged it was until I saw it swing open, revealing a realistically detailed cutout of the mountain.

Nothing happened for two hours. No one came or went. The door stayed closed. It wasn't until Ray came into view that I felt any sort of hope for our plan. He was walking less than ten feet away. And he was alone.

Luke acted first. Before I could shoot him a look of warning, before he realized that it had been a trap, he had sprinted out of the bushes and tackled Ray to the ground. They rolled around for a bit as I waited behind my tree for the rest of the men to come out of hiding.

Five of them descended on Luke. And one on me.

I heard him a split second before he grabbed me. It was his loud breathing that warned me of his presence. Instinctively, I ducked, and the gun in his hand missed striking my skull by an inch. I took my knife out and sliced the arm holding the weapon, causing him to drop it. He clutched the deep wound, stumbling back before lunging at me again. His stomach was met with my blade, and I stuck it deep inside. Twisting.

He tried to cry out, but his words were silenced by the pain. As the man slunk to the ground, I turned back to Luke.

I watched from the shadows as they beat him on the ground, kicking, punching, pulling, until finally, they dragged his unconscious body away.