✏️ The Littlest Spy

30. Hidden Spaces

This chapter is dedicated to Darklord with thanks for all your support. And if anyone would like to see what I write outside of the regression space, my latest new story is going up completely unplanned on my other account.

Isadora padded quickly along one of many corridors, trying to work out where she needed to go next. The Arrencani house was large, with a veritable maze of corridors, and it didn't entirely match the plans the Agency had been able to obtain from the county. Money made a lot of things easier; and it turned out that Lorenzo Arrencani was rich enough that he could have internal modifications done to his home without government approval, so long as the contractors he used had the right qualifications. In addition to which, even in the parts of the house where Isadora had seen a map of the rooms and doors, that didn't necessarily tell her what each room was used for.

She could hear footsteps and conversation in the distance. The commotion caused by an angry man bursting into the Homeowners' meeting had scattered scared neighbours through the house and garden, and she was sure that many of them were starting to gossip, or already calling people who weren't there to share the latest news. And that meant Isadora could probably get away with being caught anywhere in the house, but only for a couple of minutes. Maybe, if she ran into some of Bercher's army guys, she could claim to have gone looking for the bathroom while everybody was panicking. But she didn't need to be thinking about that now. She had work to do.

A door stood ajar beside her, and glancing through the crack revealed books and box files. It looked like the room of a college student more than anything; someone who had a lot of things to read, but never had the time to organise it. She didn't know which member of the household would have been in there, and she didn't have time to properly check it out. Speed was of the essence here.

Isadora took a deep breath and stepped inside, then pushed the door almost closed behind her. Stepping up on an office chair gave her a different perspective on the room, and she crossed her fingers as she swiped across the screen of her phone, activating a customised sensor package. Passing it along the walls, she quickly located the power cables that ran to the light switch beside the door. Her luck was in; the position was perfect. She pulled out a powder compact from her bag, and extracted a short tack concealed in the back. Listening devices now were a lot smaller than they used to be, and wireless charging could keep them running undetected, just so long as they could be placed within an inch or so of a power cable.

She pushed the pin into the soft plaster of the wall, above the door on the side closest to the cable. To someone standing in the room, the tiny mark would be hidden behind the top of the architrave, minimising the chance of anyone finding the mic. Once she was sure it was deep enough, she twisted the head of the pin back and forth until it snapped off, leaving just a single pinhole in the plaster to betray her actions.

In all, she had been in that room for less than a minute. But she was starting to wonder now if the meeting had resumed. Nine bugs quickly added up to quite some time, and she was sure that an ex-navy head of security would be more than a match for one frenzied old man. She needed to show Brock that she was actually good enough for this assignment, and that meant more than just placing listening devices at random around a large house. She needed to know, as well, where was the best place to put them. This office was probably a good choice, because it seemed clear that some kind of business was done here. But there wasn't enough time to properly investigate every detail.

She was trying to visualise the plan of the house, wondering where a criminal would be most likely to talk about his illicit activities, when she turned a corner and stopped in her tracks. This wasn't anywhere she would even expect Arrencani to be; it was a narrow corridor which seemed more likely to be used by the domestic staff than the crime family. A shortcut connecting the kitchen to various storage rooms. But maybe it could also be a shortcut back to the garage, and a way to move illicit goods out of the house. She didn't think that was likely, but she was taking the shortcut anyway. When she found an unexpected dead end, with the floor lowered below the typical level of the house.