Chapter 55 Let’s Play Spy
LET’S PLAY SPY
AURORA
Itry the power button on my laptop for the fourth time since this morning, but it doesn't even have enough juice to flicker.
Santiago went to town to get me a new adaptor because apparently they didn't have any around the house.
But I've had it plugged in for over an hour, and if the fucking thing was going to charge, it would've by now.
"Ugh," I groan, slamming it shut.
They've offered to buy me a new laptop, one that works with this country's weird-ass power outlets, so it's not even all that reasonable for me to keep asking for new adaptors to try.
And as if dealing with Ambrose's increasingly pushy attempts to get me to agree to completely abandon my life in Boone wasn't bad enough, I haven't even gotten close to getting into his office.
Not because it's locked or under any sort of surveillance—it doesn't seem to be—but because his staff won't fucking leave me alone. In the three days since I arrived here, I haven't been able to leave my room for more than fifteen minutes before running into Santiago or one of the cleaning ladies.
Honestly? It’s starting to feel intentional.
The staff is lovely and the estate is gorgeous and Ambrose is charming, generous, and everything a doting father should be, but a pretty cage is still a cage. Even if the bars are invisible—made up of smiles and gifts and carefully worded requests—they still exist.
I feel them close in a little more each time I reach for a door and find someone already opening it for me. Or when I mention leaving to explore the scenery or shop in a nearby town and feel the room temp drop by ten degrees in ten seconds.
It wouldn’t be as frustrating if the staff’s cleaning schedule didn’t seem to correspond perfectly with Ambrose's early afternoon meetings. It makes sense they'd want to clean that space when he isn't home, but it makes it a lot fucking harder for me to do what I need to do.
I tuck the USB stick in my back pocket and consider the pedestal sink in my en suite bathroom, latent energy making my fingers tingle.
I need to make some sort of distraction.
Something that would require Ambrose's head of staff and all of his cleaning ladies to be busy for at least twenty minutes, longer if I can swing it.
If he has any sort of physical filing system, Atticus said I should try to look there for anything he might keep off digital record.
Bending to my knees on the tile, I look for the pipes or whatever, trying to see if there's something I can detach or break to make a flood in my bathroom look accidental. There's nothing here, though. All the plumbing seems to be in the wall.
I lean on the top of the sink bowl, pushing down with all my weight to see if it will tear from the wall, but it's solid as hell and doesn't budge.
"Fuck."
Toilet then.
It's nothing more than a bowl attached to the wall with the flush buttons embedded in the tile. So no toilet guts I can fuck with, which leaves…clogging?
It'll have to do.
I look around for something to use, but it needs to look accidental. Rushing back to my room, I search through clothes Ambrose's staff neatly folded and hung for me from the case Linette packed and find the toiletry bag.
I've brought what I needed into the bathroom already, but I know I saw—
There they are.
I grab a handful of the tampons from the box, and within five minutes, I have them all unwrapped and rapidly absorbing water in the toilet bowl. I add a healthy amount of toilet paper for good measure and one of those thicker paper cloths by the sink that I've been using to dry my face.
Holding my breath, I hit the flush button, and wait as the drain tries to pull the mess down.
It gurgles and then stops, but doesn't overflow.
"Shit."
I do it again, but the water only trickles into the bowl.
"Come on."
When I press the button a third time, I hold it down until the water comes, filling the bowl and trying—but failing—to flush down the tampons and paper. I keep holding as the bowl fills and don't let go until the mess has been pulled into the pipe, and I'm absolutely sure it's clogged as fuck.
When I let go of the button, the toilet continues to fill, and I step out of the way as the water spills over the edge of the bowl and starts to spread out on the tile.
My blood sings with success and anticipation as I jump out of the path of the water and into the bedroom, racing to the phone.
I lift the receiver, but push the button to page Santiago. Not yet. Instead, I wait.
I wait until the water has come over the threshold of the bathroom, and then I wait even longer, until it starts to spread a wide circle over the bedroom floor. I don't call for help until it's soaked through the rug in the middle of the floor.
"Oh my god, hi," I blurt when Santiago answers. "Uh, the toilet in my en suite is flooding, and I don't know what to do. It won't stop. Should I—"
"I'll be right there, miss."
The line goes dead, and I grin, waiting in my mess until I hear the thunder of several people coming up the stairs. Only then do I go and meet them in the hall and make an absolute spectacle of being embarrassed. "I don't know what happened, it just started—"
"That's okay, miss," Santiago says, and then freezes when he gets to the doorway of my room and sees the puddle quickly turning to a lake on my bedroom floor. A lake with bits of paper and a floating tampon or two.
"Dios," he breathes, and ushers me away from the wet floor. "You leave this to us, miss. Why not go have an early lunch? The chef has some things set out in the kitchen."
The two other cleaning ladies enter my room, their black shoes squelching in the water as the make their way to the bathroom to stop the leak.
"We'll have this all fixed and cleaned up as soon as we can."
"I—I'm so sorry," I mutter.
"Not to worry. Not to worry. Go on. It's fine."
At his insistence and the slight push of his hands, I leave, only letting myself preen once I'm all the way down the stairs and through the arched opening to the library and the doors to Ambrose's office are in sight.
I hope I'll hear them if they come back down the stairs, but I'm ready with an excuse. Since my laptop isn't working, wouldn't it be reasonable for me to try checking my email from Ambrose's office? Innocent enough, no?
But I know they don't want me in here touching anything, or else Ambrose or his staff would've suggested it instead of offering to buy me a new laptop.
The USB stick is heavy in my pocket as I enter the office and slowly shut the doors behind me, covertly checking for cameras like Atticus taught me. But like the rest of the interior of the house, there aren't any. Not that I can tell.
And I think it must be by design. Surveillance cameras can be hacked. He wouldn't want any in his house, tracking his movements.
The first thing I notice is the art on the walls. I've learned enough from Eli and the others to know fine art when I see it now, and these are definitely that. It's the first real evidence I've seen in this house that he is the impostor White Rose the guys say he is.
The lily pads and art style one on the right give it away as a Monet, but the other…
It takes me a second to really understand what I'm looking at, but when I do, I gasp.
It's the pond. Their pond. And the painting of it is everything Julian said.
The still water looks like the shade of Seven's eyes in the dark of night.
The clay soil at its edge—just as soft and warm as Elijah's.
And there's Atticus in every spot of light and warmth.
The gold and copper tones of his hair. The honey of his eyes.
It's…incredible.
The second I think it, an ugly feeling twists in my stomach.
Because this artwork isn't Ambrose's to admire.
He fucking stole it from them.
From Julian.
My hands flex and twitch at my sides.
Fucking bastard.
Displaying this in his office is so twisted. I want to rip it off his wall and take it somewhere he can't even look at it. But I can't do that.
Not yet.
With a renewed sense of purpose, I turn to the desk, scanning for a computer tower, the USB stick out and ready.
But there's only a monitor. I search its edges, looking for a spot for the USB to plug in, but there doesn't seem to be one.
I follow the cords into a hold in the top of the desk and drop to the floor, searching the rest of the desk until I find a cupboard that's about the right size for a computer tower.
I tug the handle, but it doesn't budge.
Then I'm in the drawers, the fire in my chest pushing me to work faster. I will not let this fucker get away with this. I'm getting this fucking USB stick in his shit one way or another.
I've been complacent. Getting too comfortable in this place with this monster.
Something upstairs thuds, and I wait, holding my breath to listen in case someone's coming down the stairs, but I don't hear anything else.
I check the last drawer, careful not to move anything I touch as I search for the key. When I move the stapler, the bottom of the drawer shifts. A false bottom.
I commit the placement of the items to memory and then remove them, lifting the thin rectangle of wood to reveal the motherfucking keys.
Grinning, I'm quick to move back to the cupboard and get it open on the second key.
Inside, the computer tower's power light flashes. "Jackpot."
I stab the USB into the first port I see and sigh when the little red light at its tip begins to flash as it pillages data from Ambrose's system.
Then I'm up.
Files.
Where would he keep files?
My pulse thrums as I scan the shelves and cupboards, looking for anything that looks more like a filing cabinet.
"Bingo."