A Beauty Uncovered (Secrets of Eden 2)

Damn it.

Just like the one that searched for Brody Butler, there was another crawler that sought out any interest in Tom, Thomas or Tommy Wilder. If someone, somewhere, was looking for him, Brody wanted to be the first to know. Once he assessed the risk, he and his brothers could determine what action needed to be taken. It was imperative that Tommy not be found and that questions not be asked about his current whereabouts.

That’s because his location for the past sixteen years was a makeshift grave on the property where they grew up.

The Eden kids never talked about that day. It was as though they decided as a group that they could pretend it never happened if no one mentioned it ever again. They all went on with their lives, became successful and wealthy. But nothing they did or achieved could erase those memories. You can’t forget the sight of that much blood. You just have to focus on other things.

That had worked for a long time. Then about a year ago, everything changed. Julianne had called in a panic last Thanksgiving when she discovered their parents had sold off a large portion of the family property. The part where Tommy was buried. All three plots were being developed and ran the risk of uncovering his remains.

The question was, which plot? Only his older brother Wade knew where Tommy’s body was located and even then, after all this time, it was a good guess. They sprang into action and Wade returned to Cornwall to buy back the property. He’d been unsuccessful in his initial attempt, but given he was currently engaged to the woman that owned the land, the Eden children felt fairly secure that they’d retained control of the right plot and Tommy’s body wouldn’t be found.

All but Brody. And he hated to be proven right about these kinds of things.

Now that Sam had gone home for the day and he had finally quelled the distracting desire she stirred in him, he returned to the report on his machine. According to his records, someone had entered the search query Tommy Wilder Cornwall Connecticut with a variety of other keyword combinations including jail, dead, and arrested. Whoever was looking for Tommy didn’t have a lot of faith in what he’d been doing the past sixteen years.

Fortunately, the person running the Google query was logged in under their Gmail account. In addition to the query details and results, it provided the IP address, internet provider, location and email address of the person running the search.

dwilder27. A Hartford, Connecticut, connection.

It would take a little legwork to figure out who this dwilder27 was and what he was after, but it was obvious he was a relative. Tommy had never been very forthcoming about his background. If he had family that might look for him, he kept that to himself. Brody wished he’d kept his hands to himself, too.

Fortunately, dwilder27’s query hadn’t pulled up any useful results. Mainly because Tommy couldn’t get arrested in his current condition and no one knew he was dead. There was only an old, archived Cornwall news article about Tommy when he ran away from his foster home at the Garden of Eden Christmas Tree Farm. Molly and Ken had reported their oldest foster child as missing, but since his eighteenth birthday was the following week, not much effort went into the search. He was an adult and out of the system regardless of his location. End of story. For now.

Brody had queried Tommy periodically to make sure nothing else came up. As far as the internet was concerned, Tommy Wilder had vanished from the face of the earth. He hit the button to send the report to his home network and shut down his machines. He grabbed his coat, scooped up his laptop bag and headed for the elevator.

Passing through the multiple security measures he put in place was like a soothing ritual to him now, the barriers carefully crafted layers of protection. He was happy to be a ghost, an enigma. That was better than the reality.

A swipe of his badge and a scan of his thumbprint opened up the private elevator doors. On the ground floor, he turned away from the exit Sam and Agnes used to a narrow corridor. At the end was another door. A second badge swipe and rotating key code opened up his private entrance and exit to the building. Waiting for him was his car—a black Mercedes sedan with a tint job on the windows that was illegal in some states. He supposed he could’ve selected something flashier, but he didn’t want to draw attention, just to block it out with the darkened glass.

As it was, he got a few looks from people who thought he might be somebody. They were wrong. He was nobody.

It was late to be heading home and traffic was easily navigated out of downtown Boston. Most people probably assumed that as an eccentric multimillionaire, he had some big loft apartment in the city, but nothing could be further from the truth. He’d opted for the exclusive and sprawling suburb of Belmont Hill. The lots were large and wooded, backing up to a bird sanctuary. Chris loved running around the backyard barking at the various birds that dared to light on the fence. Aside from that, it was a very quiet, secluded location. It made his home feel like a private retreat. It also helped that the neighbors kept to themselves.