Electing To Murder Read Free Page A

towards the road.
    It took her ten minutes to pick her way over to the property north of Hitch’s cabin. She was now peaking around the corner of the three-car detached garage sitting twenty or so feet lower than Hitch’s place. The backyard of the cabin was open and cleared like a yard you would find in the city, with just a few trees interspersed through what would be a finely manicured yard in the summer. Fortunately, the cabin appeared to be buttoned up for the year and the floodlights on the garage were dark. Nevertheless, she stuck close to the northern edge of the property and the tree line and scooted to the cabin.
    There was an old metal television antennae tower that hugged the north side of the cabin. Wire suspected this was left over from a bygone era before cable or satellite dishes became prevalent. She looked at the base, which had cement footings. The tower itself was secured to the house in two places by metal brackets. Best of all, it had foot rungs. It was sturdy and would easily hold her one hundred twenty-five pounds. She put her left foot into the first rung, when to her right she noticed another set of headlights approaching.
    Wire stepped back down off the antennae and slithered back to the rear corner of the cabin and peered towards the driveway behind Hitch’s place. Another limousine had arrived. She slipped off her backpack and kneeled down and took out her camera. She snapped a photo of the license plate. A man providing security opened the rear passenger door.
    * * *
    “Someone else has arrived,” Stroudt stated, seeing the headlights appear. “Who do we have now?”
    “I can’t tell,” Montgomery answered, starting to stand up. “Let me see if I can get in position to take a picture.”
    “Can you get one?”
    “I need a little better angle,” Montgomery answered as he stood up. He moved to his left five feet, not looking down, and stepped awkwardly onto a branch.
    The crack was loud—too loud.
    * * *
    Wire had her camera trained on the newly arrived limousine. A foot appeared from the rear passenger door, a man ready to step out.
    “There’s somebody up there!” she heard a security guard scream as she slipped safely back behind the cabin. “Up in the woods. Up there! Up there! On the south side! On the south side! Up there!”
    The two men had been discovered. She was instantly relieved she’d had to change positions. The security man holding open the limousine door was animatedly talking to the man inside the limousine. Then the security man took two steps away from the limousine, quickly pivoted to the south and ordered: “Don’t let them get away.”
    “There they are! There they are!” one of the guards yelled.
    Then she heard it, an unmistakable sound.
    Pop. Pop. Pop.
    Three shots fired.
    “What in the hell?” she muttered to herself.
    Then she heard another series of gunshots.
    The limousine that had just arrived peeled out of the driveway.
    The meeting was over.
    She sprinted back to the detached garage and took stock. With security focused on the south side of the Hitch cottage and away from her location to the north, Wire took a chance.
    She jumped from behind the detached garage and bounded up the hill to the back of Hitch’s and knelt down in a small cluster of trees. She snapped photos of Connolly and others running out of the cabin, and into the waiting limousines and SUVs.
    The motorcade quickly sped away.
    Wire held her position for a few minutes in case she missed any straggling personnel hanging around. The cabin had gone quiet; most of the lights now out. Sure that it was now safe to move, she carefully moved back away from the cabin and up towards the road and picked her way back to the Acadia all the while wondering “What did those two see, anyway?”

CHAPTER TWO
“What would be the fun in that?”
Thursday, October 31st
    T he Snelling Motor Lodge was a two-story L-shaped motel from a bygone era, both in its shape and function. It was