Two Chef!

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Stephanie watched the live broadcast of the Cooks Network High on Sugar in her office at her Upper East Side condo. The condo had been a present from her father years before and had a commanding view out over the Central Park Reservoir and the north end of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She donated to the Met regularly enough to guarantee her invites to even the most select of their soirees.

Her office was part corporate magnate—she’d purchased a whole set of rosewood furniture that matched Teddy Roosevelt’s personal furniture; it was rich and commanded respect. It made an exceptional backdrop when she was telecommuting into board meetings at the major New York newspaper that Daddy had been smart enough to leave to her. Mom had extended clutching fingers—miraculously unwrapped from a martini glass for a moment—after Daddy had that heart attack with his mistress in the Caymans. But Stephanie had crushed her feeble efforts easily.

The other part of her office was a fitness center—the very best equipment and a floor-to-ceiling mirror; she used it diligently. Rich oriental carpets on the oak parquet tied the two halves of the room and her life together into a powerful whole. The few who entered here could never doubt the power of the woman who sat at the center of it and spun her plans.

The Cooks broadcast of High on Sugar had condensed the first two hours and forty minutes of the three-hour competition into the opening forty minutes, and then run the last twenty minutes live. A very tough editing challenge, doing a collapsing timeline like that and yet keeping it suspenseful. She’d have to make sure to keep Kate Stark’s floor manager and control-room director after she’d grabbed possession of the network; they made a very clean and very exciting product.

Perhaps more exciting this time than they’d anticipated. Though their cutaway was fast—done before the death became too graphic—it wasn’t fast enough to disguise the “tragedy” and that initial splash of blood.

Pity that they weren’t a touch slower to react. She’d have enjoyed seeing the aftermath on the live television broadcast.

But it didn’t ultimately matter. That’s why she’d paid the kid—to make sure she had the whole show even after the cameras were switched off. Her computer screen had been playing the kid’s hidden camera feed for three hours now.

Stephanie had missed the first hour of the hidden camera feed while waking George in a proper fashion. She loved how men so easily believed that they were a woman’s best time ever. All it took was a few well-timed moans, a shudder, a toss of long red hair, and dragging him against her bountiful breasts—she was still years from needing another round of work there—at just the right moment.

Poor George wasn’t even into her top third as a lover.

Her golf pro was ten times the man. Even when handicapped by the thicket off the tenth green, he’d found amazing things to do with gloved hands, a five iron, and her short golf skirt while they were looking for her ball in the rough. Very rough. She drove hard for that small clump of trees every Thursday morning after that. He’d taught her well; she rarely missed.

Her personal trainer did more than keep her body perfectly toned when he visited three times a week. He liked taking her from behind, sometimes all the way behind, which was fine, his face wasn’t the prettiest, but gods he was hung like a horse.

George wasn’t even top two-thirds now that she considered it. Frankly, her naive housemaid at the house out in Greenwich with her dildo-for-two—shimmying away and fantasizing of her someday-green card—was a more skilled lover than George.

But he had one thing going for him.

He was exactly the man she needed to make this all work.

George Madsen was the Majority Whip—making him the number two man in the US Senate. He was the “everyone’s friend” US Senator from New York with good relations on both sides of the aisle. And, most importantly, he was also Vice President Morgan’s closest friend.

Exactly the man…if only he was more of a man. Well, nothing was perfect.

Now he was gone, filling his day with what he surely thought were constructive things. That left her a chance to tip back in her office chair, sip her wheat grass-banana-soy smoothie, and watch the disaster unroll at Cooks Network.

The end result had been even better than she’d hoped.

The kid had chased some pretty blond—f**k buddy of the dying man by the way she acted—and gone right up to stare down at the corpse. The audio was crystal clear, he’d captured all the initial screams as the studio emptied as well as the quiet weepy bits muffled against his shoulder.

The kid had watched it all, every last pumping spurt of red. Stayed totally focused on it—must be the way he got off. Serial killer in the making.

He’d been smart, ending the call on the phone before exiting the building. No way to tell from the video which way he turned from the exit, though Stephanie knew exactly where to find him if she needed him again; not that he’d ever know who she was. She’d go slumming on occasion, but there were some depths she certainly wasn’t going to stoop to.

And she had what she needed.

Stephanie opened a new file and started the video clip at the drama moment of Klugman cracking the crystalline floor of his sculpture and the crowd going wild. Let it run through the explosion set up by the ex-con she’d hired down in Chinatown. She ended it the moment before the kid turned away from filming the close-up of all the blood, backgrounded by the sound of wracking sobs and the kid’s whispered, “Holy shit.”

It was so perfect.

She hit send on the video clip. Her tamed hacker would make sure it went out and went viral with no trace back to her.

She wished her personal trainer would hurry up and get here. Today she would tie him to the workout bench and f**k the s**t out of him. If he recovered fast enough, she’d leave him tied there while she did her workout, then do it again. If she had her maid’s double-ender here in the city, she’d take him right up the backside. That would truly be an education for him.

After months of preparation, things were going to start happening fast now. Step One of her plan, the murder of Maxwell Klugman in Kate Stark’s Cooks Network television studio was complete.