He had destroyed everything.

He had burned the office to ash.

He had disposed of the clothes.

He had thought of every loose end and cut it, methodically, five years ago, and he had spent five years since living inside the safety of that thoroughness.

And then, standing in his living room with the rain coming down and the ticker crawling across the screen, he remembered the one thing he had not accounted for.

The small heavy silver box he had taken from Vance’s desk that night, the box he had hidden so cleverly inside a hollowed-out old teddy bear and tucked away in his attic and forgotten, until three weeks ago, when he had cleared out a carton of old toys to make the child feel at home in his cabin, and had handed that very bear, without a second thought, to Chloe.