My idea for a story is this: FMC learns that her parents are killed in an accident. As the FMC starts to go through all of her parents stuff she discovers: 1. that they were spies 2. they were 'eliminated' - it was no accident. 3. the FMC's parents had an antique store in town, were reputable antique dealers. - this was their cover job. They had a secret passage in back that went underground and they hid info in plain sight in there antiques, etc. Their customers weren't really the public but other agents etc. (maybe) My question is if her parents were spies wouldn't the organization come in and take everything? Wouldn't they just take over the store and shut it down and come in their house and take everything as well? I think my story would shut down immediately because of this. The FMC wouldn't even have a change to go through any of her 'parents' 'stuff'. Any thoughts would be helpful.
I'm no expert, but my guess would be that if the parents were in possession of secret stuff that the spy agency considered classified, they would indeed go in and remove it. If the spy agency had them killed, they might have gone in before the deaths. Maybe you could have the MC discover the dead parents before the agency learned of their deaths, and get her look at their stuff that way.
I like that idea. Then maybe the conflict is the surviving daughter against the agency. Trying to figure out what is going on before the agency finds out, but it seems a bit over the top to me. I don't really seeing it happen. Maybe I need to change the character. I was thinking she is a single female in her 40's or 50's I'm thinking the end of the story is her discovering that her parents were spies.
For the agency to come in and completely clean out the home and business would, IMO, be unacceptably public and obvious. There's a daughter, but these total strangers showed up and cleaned everything out and the daughter doesn't know who they are? It seems to me that that would start a lot of talk that the agency presumably wouldn't want. I would instead imagine them quietly, under cover of darkness or the excuse of checking the gas meter, taking away what they know is meaningful. And maybe even spending a few night-time hours doing a thorough but tidy search. Anything stored in the secret passage probably would be removed, if the agency assumes that the daughter doesn't know it's there--and assuming that the agency does know it's there. But even then, it's not going to work for them to show up very publicly with a moving van.
ah.. OK. I didn't think about that. That actually makes sense. I was about to and still might go a different way all together. Maybe she discovers her parents are into extreme illegal activities, human trafficking, drugs, guns, etc. They were perceived as wonderful community members and donated a lot of money to local charities, etc. only for this to come out. The town folk revolt against the daughter , causing her to move away to another small town and to restart her life all over again. This might be the ending. I think I'm having a problem as I find spy stuff a little over my head. Illegal activities are, I think, a lot easier to research.
Since I've never been a spy or privy to any sort of classified material I am just guessing here, but I think if the agency knew they had certain materials the agency would want them back. If the agency assassinates the parents then it seems the assassins would remove the material either immediately before or after the murders. It seems probable the agency could have someone break into the shop and steal any information after the parents are killed. Or go over the top and burn the store down to ensure everything is destroyed. To give an idea how easy it is to commit arson in a small town, we had a local town cop (high school education, no college, minimum police training) who burned 3 or 4 abandoned homes to the ground. The only reason he was caught was he kept burning more down, kept being the 1st on scene after the call, and basically started bragging about doing it.
Especially people in their line of work. Is it essential for your story for the parents to hide the thingamajig in their shop? Maybe the daughter discovers a key left behind somewhere in a family keepsake or a number from a safety deposit box/bank vault, etc. instead.
I have a daughter in her 30s, I'm nearly 70, so her parents would be pushing 80...don't spies have pension plans?
Maybe the agency would only remove what they knew about ... Maybe the secret passage was the married couples doing, they were onto something terrible about the agency, the agency offed them but can't find the evidence that the couple had collected over the years. The daughter finds it, the agency finds out the daughter's found it and the story becomes a cat and mouse chase of the agency trying to off the daughter before she manages to find someone who will listen to her and do something to help her ...
I think that the people FMC's parents worked for would only take things relating to the job so I'd do how another person suggested is have the FMC go through her parents stuff before their boss gets ahold of it.
In the new Amazing Spider-man movie Peter Parker's dad hid some secret documents in his briefcase which was left with relatives. That could happen to the MC - her parents know that there's a threat on their life so they stash some documents in her favorite teddy bear before they get killed.
