With the threat hanging over us, we changed tactics. We became ghosts ourselves, moving in silence and secrecy. Our new mission was to identify the man in the sketch.
Leo used his skills to create a digital cleaned-up version of the angry, half-finished face from Luna's sketchbook. It was still blurry, lacking fine detail, but the expression of rage was clear and unsettling.
"I'll run it through a facial recognition algorithm I found online," Leo said, uploading the image. "It's a long shot. It'll compare it to publicly available photos from around that time."
We didn't have to wait long. The algorithm churned for an hour before spitting out a list of potential matches with low confidence percentages. Most were useless. But one, a grainy black-and-white photo from a society page of the Manila Chronicle, 1996, made my heart stop.
It was a group photo at a charity gala. On the far right, standing next to a younger, sharper-looking Don Ricardo Alcantara, was a man in a tailored suit. He was smiling for the camera, but the set of his jaw, the coldness in his eyes, and the distinctive hawk-like shape of his nose were a perfect match for Luna's sketch.
The caption below read: "Don Ricardo Alcantara with his head of security, Mr. Arturo Vega."
Arturo Vega. We had a name.
A quick search revealed nothing. Arturo Vega was a ghost in the digital world. He had no social media, no digital footprint. He had vanished from public record after the late 1990s.
"Head of security," Leo whispered, the implication clear. The man paid to protect the Alcantara family—and to handle their problems. The man with the angry face, seen by a girl who knew too much on a night she wasn't supposed to be there.
We weren't just uncovering a tragedy. We were uncovering a crime.