Move to Strike by Sydney Bauer Read Free Book Online

Entertainment, Nancy Schaffer, and the network’s Vice President and General Counsel, a smarmy little weasel by the name of Walter Goth.
    She had had no time to prepare. She had smoked ten cigarettes in the past sixty minutes and still wasn’t sure how the hell she should handle this. She thought they would give her the morning at least, considering they were in LA and she was three hours ahead. But then again, she also knew that when Allen Greenburg requested a 5.30am conference call, his loyal staff jumped. And if she was to survive, if she were to have any hope of saving what she and Jeffrey had built from scratch, she would have to jump with the best of them – higher, faster and without the slightest hint of hesitation.
    The timing could not have been worse. First of all, they were in the middle of the all-important May sweeps. November, February and May were the three months when the networks pulled out their big guns – when they and their affiliates ran seasonal campaigns aimed at huge ratings in order to maximise advertising revenue. The May sweeps represented their last chance in the viewing calendar to impress existing and potential advertisers so that they might set ridiculous fifteen- and thirty-second spot rates and those all-important program sponsorships for the following season, before the industry lumbered into the long, slow summer where re-runs were ripe and audiences were at their lowest.
    Secondly, Katherine and Doctor Jeff were just about to sign a new three-year contract with CBC – a deal which would see
The Doctor Jeff Show
through to its seventeenth season and earn Jeffrey, and herself, somewhere in the ball park of $25 million per year.
    The deal included tie-ins for specials and other promotionalopportunities used to showcase the Doctor’s website, books and DVDs, and coincided with another major agreement with Imperial Productions for the syndication of three earlier series of the show – assuring affiliate and cable stations across the country would be running and re-running episodes of the high-rating show at one time or another twenty-four hours a day.
    These agreements alone, topped with international distribution deals with over thirty-five countries worldwide, would earn Katherine and her famous psychologist partner thousands of dollars every time the muted tones of their familiar opening credits rolled up on the screen. They would be making money while they slept, and lining their bank accounts in twenty different currencies as Jeff consolidated his role as international counsellor extraordinaire, and their program became the most watched relationship talk show on the whole Goddamned planet.
    And so what to do?
    She had to decide.
    She was not stupid. She knew exactly what had gone down in that painstakingly neat mansion in Beacon Hill less than twenty-four hours ago. She saw J.T. before the crime people took his clothes into evidence and there was no doubt in her mind – nor, she garnered, anyone else’s at the scene – exactly who had murdered Stephanie Tyler, accident or not.
    Now running out of time, she tried to think logically. She decided there were three major points to consider in her now urgent deliberations.
    First up, as much as she hated to admit it, the survival of the show – and their careers, their future – was her number one priority. She felt for the boy and knew that he needed help, but that might have to wait until she and Jeffrey could set things straight. Once his father was freed, they could deal with J.T.’s ‘issues’ and hopefully help the boy sort out whatever was going on in that psychotic little mind of his.
    Secondly, she needed Jeffrey out of prison ASAP. She was no lawyer but she was sure that if he somehow managed to pull off his ‘it was a tragic accident’ theory in order to protect his son, he was most likely looking at a charge of involuntary manslaughter which more often than not