He lifted the weapon and fired into the ceiling, causing plaster to rain down.
I jumped and instantly tried to cover Nonna.
“Last chance,” he hissed.
“Fine.” I looked at Oliver.
“I will kill him, but I don’t need to,” Wayne said carelessly. “He didn’t see my face when I grabbed him outside your office, so he has no idea who I am, and I didn’t leave prints on his phone when I texted you. But move now, or I’ll shoot him in the head.”
I gulped.
Wayne forced us outside and into Nonna’s older Cadillac, getting in the back with a gun pointed at me in the driver’s seat. Nonna’s purse rested on her lap, with both her wooden spoon and a nine-millimeter in it. In a swift motion, he reached over the seat and grabbed her bag. She tried to fight for it, but he put the gun to her head.
“Stop,” I yelled, panicking.
She released the purse.
He tossed it out the window. “Now, start driving. I only need one of you to make sure I get out of town.”
Great. We were hostages he’d shoot the second he was safe. We’d both seen his face and could identify him to the authorities. Trying to stay focused, I put the car into drive and headed back down to the main road. “Where to?”
“Lilac Lake Road. Our cabin is around Turney’s Corner. Drive on the periphery of town. Don’t make me shoot you.”
My hands trembled, but I did as he ordered, trying to keep from sliding in the snowy conditions.
When we reached the end of the country road, the ambulance roared past us.
“Damn it. Hurry up,” he said.
I pressed the gas, careful in the snow, trying to think of a way out of this. Aiden knew we were in trouble, and he would be coming. Unfortunately, my phone and any GPS were back at the farmhouse. But I had sent him the picture. I didn’t know if he’d put it together, though, because he didn’t have Nonna’s information about the Wilson brothers.
I shook my head. “So, your brother pretended to be you when he gave his DNA?”
“Yep,” Wayne said. “You thought I was Spencer. You thought he was Wayne. When his DNA cleared, you figured we were both clear.”
“His DNA cleared because you’re not genetically related,” I said. How had we not known that? How had anybody not known that? They shared a last name, and they’d grown up in Silverville. “How old were you when Jack Wilson adopted you?”
“I was just a baby. Very few people would even remember that we weren’t brothers,” he said, bragging now that he’d been revealed.
“That was quite the camouflage you wore,” I said, remembering his slumped-over posture and thicker body.
He chuckled, sounding delighted with himself. “Yeah. No shit.”
Nonna gasped. He didn’t apologize for the crude language, but why would he, considering he had a gun pointed at us?
“It was pretty easy. When I worked on the cruise ship, I often helped with some of the shows and learned makeup and how to camouflage. But boy, wearing three sweaters at a time sure got hot in that interrogation room,” he chuckled.
“What about the height?” I said. “You’re under six feet tall.”
“It’s the boots,” he said. “You thought they were part of the outfit. They make me a hell of a lot taller.”
I shook my head. “Why did you go through with all this?”
“I needed those pictures,” he said. “If I had only robbed the antique store, everyone would look more closely at what was taken from there. Nobody thought twice about certain objects since I robbed so many places.”
I thought about the picture of him with Richard Basanelli, and it hit me. “It’s the knife, isn’t it? The knife was in your hand.”
“Yeah. That was Nick Basanelli’s knife. His dad used it often, and I had it in my hand when we caught those fish and were photographed. I had to get that picture.”
