He had grown up detached to things but respectful of their value and could count on one hand the items he’d owned that hadn’t lived a second life with someone who needed them more. That was the one thing Clare had taught him that had been worth keeping, perhaps the only thing he’d deliberately adopted for himself.

A few-minute walk took him to the Westgate Transit Center, and a bus took him toward his destination. At the halfway point, he stepped off in a detour for a nearby homeless shelter, and he walked the streets, searching for signs of those who preferred to live rough, handing off the grocery bags to those he met, shedding, adapting along the way, swapping the clothes and shoes he wore for what he’d purchased, and swapping again, all the while putting anything of value into the hands of those who could use it most.

He was cautious of cameras and social interactions, passing in one door and out another, cutting through backyards and down side streets, as he made his way to Edgewater Park, and by the time he arrived, he had nothing but cash and the few purchased items he still needed.

The park itself was 150 acres of fishing pier and public beach, picnic areas and walking trails, stretched out along the shores of Lake Erie. Not a big early-winter destination, but home to one of Clare’s drops, and that was why he’d chosen Toledo as an entry point, and why he’d made the run to Cleveland itself.

He’d prefer to avoid raiding her cupboards.

Anything that came from her was another string he’d have to cut, but he needed a clean identity, didn’t have time to build one of his own, and no matter how many of his own deliberate decisions had brought him here, this mess was still on her. If ever there was a scenario for which a drop was buried, he was in it.

And that was the thing about this one, it was literally buried.

To find it, he’d have to dig.

A lot of work for a small box.

But of all the resources she’d hidden in the United States, this was the closest he could get on the axis of least likely to have been raided by Jill and near a municipal airport he could afford to burn.

He strode along the bike path in its direction, hands stuffed in pockets, chin tucked into a scarf to ward against the biting wind blowing in off the lake, searching for the statue that would guide his way.

Clare had a thing for statues.

“They’re usually cared for,” she’d said.

Trees died. Creeks rose. Buildings got renovated. Businesses closed.

But statues were meant to last generations, and even in cases of war or uprising or shifting politics, where the statue itself might be removed, the pedestal or evidence of its existence still remained.