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him.

Chapter Four
    Welcome to the Neighborhood
     
    Inside the gates, Rue Dianne looked like a street in any
other suburban neighborhood. The street was lined with midsized houses, all in
a color palette so similar you had to look closely to see the difference, with
two-car garages and a SUV in every other driveway. The scale was smaller than
it might have been in a similar neighborhood in the United States and
everything was made of stone in true French styling. If it wasn’t midmorning on
a weekday, any number of kids might be playing in the front yards or running
from house to house with their helicopter moms hovering nearby just like in the
United States. Rather than people walking down the street clutching Starbucks
cups, Desiree spied people riding by on their bikes or with a baguette tucked
securely under their arms. The street looked just as she would have pictured
it, almost straight from a movie set.
    Desiree stood outside the house she and Sam were moving
into, watching the fake movers carry their fake possessions inside, mostly
through the garage, while her fake husband was at his fake job. She shivered,
trying not to grimace as the furniture moved past her. It was the first time
she was seeing most, if not all, of it. The morning was crisp and her perfectly
matched sweats barely kept her warm. They weren’t her style really. If she’d
had her preference, her workout gear would have been understated and all black
instead of this color somewhere just shy of purple her boss insisted she wear.
Desiree was required to be fashionably suburban-esque for this job, down to her
underwear. It felt as if whomever had done the research had overdone things
just a bit. She pulled her baseball cap farther down on her head to help stave
off the small, slow-moving wind that felt like a thin needle being pushed
through her body.
    She stared down at the phone in her hand, rechecking it more
to look busy in an awkward situation than out of necessity. In between clicks,
she checked out the neighborhood, noting the slight differences between the
houses and the comings and goings of the people. When you looked hard, the
houses weren’t really as similar as they first appeared and the cars people
drove were different. A few hours ago, when she’d first arrived, everything
looked the same to her. That was certainly helpful. By the end of the week, she
would know who lived where, with whom and drove what. If they had a routine,
Desiree would know that too. Knowing was her job.
    The movers carried a large, hideous sofa in through the
front door. Desiree cringed. Reed had some sense of humor. He’d chosen the
house, the neighborhood and all the furnishings for the place. The ugly sofa
was probably his idea of a joke. It was studded brown leather and everything
Desiree and Sam were not. It looked more like it belonged in a Texas ranch
house than in a French home in the suburbs, midway between the city and the
countryside they’d come to love. Although Reed hadn’t wanted them to look into
this case, he’d finally relented, provided they’d do it his way. Apparently,
ugly furniture was part of the package.
    “There won’t be any going rogue on this one,” he’d said. “I’ll
let you take a closer look but you have to do it my way.” He’d made sure by
implanting locators into most of their clothes this time. Desiree had pouted,
but she’d eventually given in. The locators were overkill but Reed liked to
feel he was in control of things, even from countries away. Besides, the look
on the woman’s face in-between her sobs had been too much to ignore, even for
Sam. It was tragic she’d lost her brother the way she had, right before an
event that, in any other instance, would have been a beautiful thing. No sooner
than they had helped her get ensconced in a room at the inn than she had
disappeared too. No one had seen her again before they’d left the place. Top
that off with the unidentifiable bodies and the missing person