The first one settles into focus.
Alejandro.
He’s in the left corner of the frame, half-captured, as if the camera wasn’t meant to see him at all. The angle is wrong, tilted slightly, cutting off his face at the edge. You can see his posture, though. The line of his shoulders. The familiar way he stands when he thinks no one is watching.
The rest of the image is useless. Ornate carpet. Patterned. Expensive. In the opposite corner, the tip of another man’s shoe intrudes into frame. Polished. Dark. That’s it.
No faces. No context. Just placement.
The second image loads.
It’s worse.
Another black-and-white still, higher angle this time. Rooftop security, judging by the perspective. Someone is climbing into a helicopter. You can see a bent knee. White pants. A dress shoe. The curved edge of the helicopter door. On a nearby handrail in the foreground is a hand. Someone else coming down to the helicopter maybe.
No faces.
No location markers.
Nothing that should matter.
I stare at the screen until my eyes start to ache.
Why these?
Why weretheseworth deleting?
They prove nothing. They don’t even tell a story. Anyone could look at them and shrug.
I zoom in. Out. Tilt the phone. Study shadow and grain like meaning might bleed out if I stare hard enough. I commit the images to memory, every useless detail, every absence.
Then I text Grim again.
SAINT: Anything else with these? Dates. Locations. Anything.
The response comes back fast this time.
GRIM: First image: September 7, 2023.
GRIM: Second: six months ago.
September 7.
Two years ago.
The night of the poisoning.
The night Alejandro became an exile.
The cold seems to sink deeper, pressing into my bones.
I exhale slowly, controlled, and look back at the first image. At the way he’s positioned. At the fact that he’s the only clearly identifiable person in the frame. The only one whose presence can’t be explained away as coincidence.
My frustration tightens into something sharper.
Why delete these?
Why risk exposure? Why scrub files that don’t incriminate, don’t threaten, don’t even clarify?
