The deed of record for the Ménerbes property, parcel 2047-B, listed two co-owners: CALLAHAN, Wren Elisabeth and MORGAN, Calliope Jane, each holding an undivided one-half interest.

The transfer document filed two months ago bore only one signature: Morgan, Calliope J.

Just one.

She called her brother.

"Arch."

"Hey," Archer said. He was in Chicago, she could tell from the background noise - a coffee shop, probably, his usual Tuesday-afternoon office away from the office. "You're alive. What time is it there?"

"Four-thirty. Listen. Callie sold the cottage without my signature. Just her half, on a deed that required both our signatures. Is that a valid transfer?"

A pause. "Where are you?"

"Standing in the rubble of my house."

Longer pause. "Tell me you're joking."

"I'm standing in the rubble of my house, Archer. Just talk me through the French property law."

He talked her through it. The short version was: no, a single co-owner could not unilaterally convey the entire property. The buyer had purchased, at best, Callie's undivided one-half interest, and even that transfer was arguably defective without Wren's written consent if the deed's governing language required joint action. The demolition of the structure was almost certainly a tortious act. The development of the land would require either Wren's consent or a formal partition proceeding through the French courts.

"So you still own half," Archer said.

"I still own half."

"What does the buyer plan to do with it?"

She looked up the hill. Through the cypress trees, barely visible above the ridge line, she could see the towers of the old Fontaine estate. Château des Lavandes. She knew it, vaguely - everyone in the valley knew it, or knew of it. A two-hundred-year-old Provençal manor that the Fontaine family had owned for generations, recently acquired by some American whose name she couldn't remember. There were rumors of a boutique hotel development, which had made various people in the village unhappy.

"Avery Hospitality," she said. "Boutique hotel development."

"Okay." She could hear Archer typing. "I can get you in touch with a French property attorney I know in Lyon. But Wren - you have standing. That's real. If this guy is serious about developing, he needs your interest extinguished properly. You have leverage."

She folded the letter again. Put it in her pocket.

"Madame Dubois," she said, "which road goes to the château?"

The cypress drive was as long as a small runway. She walked it in the full afternoon sun, backpack on, violin case in hand, sweat at her temples and dust on her boots, and she did not once look uncertain about where she was going. This was a technique she had developed across thirteen months and approximately forty countries: if you look like you know where you are going, most people will assume you belong there.