Shadow Keeper (Shadow Riders 3)

"So, our suspects all have alibis. That leaves us with Aaron," Giovanni said. "I still don't buy it, but I'm beginning to think I could be wrong."

"All of us have alibis when you're guilty as hell," Emmanuelle pointed out. "They aren't riders, so none of them move through shadows, but maybe they have another way and we're just not figuring it out yet."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The weekend was crazy. More people were jammed into the club than ever before, pushing the number to full capacity with people standing in a very long line outside, hoping for a chance to come in. The extremely famous DJ inside, working her magic with the music, kept the dance party going hour after hour. Sasha worked the upper tier, not once looking at Giovanni. The tabloids were full of their broken engagement, all due to Giovanni's roving eye and his tryst with Meredith Benson.

Meredith was there, the paparazzi shooting her photograph over and over. Word was, she was a pariah in Hollywood and the one project she'd been about to work on had been yanked out from under her, due, the papers said, to the fact that she refused to come to work two mornings in a row. That was standard Meredith diva behavior, but her numerous absences, causing delays to the film, cost her dearly.

There was no way for her to fight the decision since they had plenty of evidence. Usually, it was too costly to bring in another actress when the film was a quarter of the way done, but in this case, another producer had funded the project. There was wild speculation who the producer was, but so far, the identity hadn't been uncovered.

She sent notes to the Ferraro table, but Giovanni didn't so much as turn around or deign to look her way. His brothers, as they came down the stairs to dance, didn't look at or acknowledge her, either. She was the center of attention with the flashing lights on her, but for the first time, she didn't seem to want the attention.

The MMA fighters arrived just after one, very pumped up after their bouts. James Corlege and Tom Mariland were the two big winners, and women flocked around them. The other fighters laughed and joked with them, cheering for them and buying them drinks. Sasha took the tray of drinks to their table and set them in front of the various fighters and their women. As she turned to go, Corlege caught her arm.

"I wanted to apologize for the way I acted the last time I saw you. I was upset over your engagement to Ferraro and I took it out on you in a very ugly way."

She gave him a small smile. "Thanks, I appreciate the apology. No worries." She turned away from him again.

Tom Mariland stepped in front of her, blocking her way. "I owe you an apology as well. Aaron was really upset about losing you to Ferraro, and he's a good friend of mine. James and I stayed up with him all night after the news of your engagement broke."

James nodded. "I thought we might have to take him to the hospital for alcohol poisoning."

Tom sighed. "He was so upset that we both thought you'd been in a relationship with him and had dumped him for Ferraro. It was only a couple of nights ago that he admitted he'd never been with you and, in fact, barely knew you. I felt like an idiot."

"It's okay, really."

"No, it's not. There was no excuse to talk to you that way," Corlege insisted.

"That picture he took of me, the one that ended up in the tabloids, did you know he had it?" She bit her lip and lowered her eyes. "Before it ended up all over the magazines?"

The men looked at each other.

She sighed. "I can see from your faces that Aaron shared it with you."

Tom nodded. "I'm sorry. It seems I'm always owing you an apology." He sighed. "Aaron thought you were beautiful. He had dozens of pictures of you on his phone. He showed them to us. That's why I thought you two were a thing and you had cheated on him with Ferraro. But ..." He hesitated. "He also liked to share his women. It was a thing. I think he's a bit of an exhibitionist."

Sasha had to turn her head away. Tom and James were painting Aaron with an entirely different brush than Giovanni had. Who was right? If it had been just Tom or just James, she would have thought one was lying, but both of them? As a rule she could hear lies, and she was hearing a mixture of truth and lies, but what was true and what was the lie? Did they have it wrong? Had Aaron been the one trying to kill her? If so, what could possibly be his reason?

"Sasha, if there's anything I can do for you, just let me know," Corlege persisted.

Another woman caught his arm and pulled on it in an effort to remove his hand from Sasha. She glared at Sasha. "Run along, honey. You're supposed to be serving drinks."

"Candy, don't talk to her like that," Corlege reprimanded, his voice harsh. He bunched his fist in the woman's hair.

Candy winced, turned red and, when Corlege returned to his seat, pulling her with him by her hair, she curled up at his feet. He held a glass of vodka and grapefruit to her mouth and she gulped it down, some spilling down the front of her. Several of the men laughed and turned to kiss the women sitting on their laps.

Disgusted, Sasha turned away. She made her way down to the bar where Alan looked her over. "You look tired, honey."

She glanced up the stairs to see Tom and James both watching her. Immediately she looked away, not wanting to see them anymore. "I'm all right, just need a little break. I've been at this for hours. How did Nancy ever work both tiers? It seems just when I serve a round of drinks to a table, they're already asking for more. One tier is all I can handle. Thank God, I don't have to work both."

"She didn't work both tiers unless her partner was ill," Alan corrected. He glanced at his watch. "Take your break. It's only a couple of minutes early. If you're back a couple of minutes early, it will even out."

"Thanks, I think I will." Being too close to Corlege and watching the way he treated the woman he'd brought with him turned her stomach. She was tired of seeing so many women debase themselves in order to try to marry money.

She went down the stairs and headed straight for the employee lounge. She'd just gotten her heels off and was sitting back, her head against the very comfortable back of the chair, when the click of heels told her she wasn't alone. Cautiously, she opened one eye. Meredith Benson stood over her, hands on her hips.

"Go away," Sasha said. "I mean it. Go away, or I'll call security and have your ass hauled out of here."

Meredith's breath hissed out of her like an angry cat's. "How dare you talk to me that way! Do you have any idea who I am?"

"You're the skank who had her tongue down Giovanni's throat for show."

"I came in here to tell you that he had nothing to do with it."

"I know that. You made a scene, kissing my man, making him look bad just because you're so vain you wanted to be the one to dump him. One doesn't get dumped if it's a one-night stand. Go away."

Meredith ground her teeth. "I'm trying to be nice and repair the damage I did."

"You're trying to get Giovanni to let you have your career back. That's the only reason you would follow me in here and tell the truth. Have you forgotten? Or don't you read the crap you contribute to? Giovanni and I are a thing of the past. I have absolutely no influence on him at all."She shooed Meredith away. "Go. Maybe one of your many lovers will take you back after you dumped them for the publicity."

Meredith pulled her arm back to hurl the heavy glass she held in her hand at Sasha. A hand caught her wrist and yanked her backward. James Corlege took the glass from her hand as Sasha slowly sat up.

"Get out of here," Corlege advised.

Meredith backed out of the room, her face twisted with malice.

Sasha sighed. "Thanks. She doesn't like me. I'm not certain why, not when she's the one trying to screw things up between my supposed fiance and me."

His eyebrow shot up. "Supposed fiance? I saw the ring on your finger. Tabloids lie all the time, but that ring was real."

She shrugged. "My boss did me a favor. My brother was in a car accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury. I don't have a lot of money or clout. The Ferraros do. Giovanni was nice enough to offer to help. Being enga

ged made it easier to breach patient confidentiality. Being a Ferraro made it so much easier to get to the administrator's ear. Meredith actually did us a favor because we would have had to find a different way to break up."

He was silent a moment. "None of it was real? Not all those hot looks?"

She laughed. "I should have been an actress, right? No, none of it was real. The Ferraros are very loyal to anyone who works for them. They've been extraordinary with me. I was so worried about Sandlin, that's my brother, and they straightened things out. I can pay for the facility, but I couldn't get to the doctor and I needed to do that in order to understand why they hadn't scheduled another operation."

"You work too hard." He pulled her foot between his hands and began a foot massage.

It was intimate. Too intimate. It also felt good when her feet were screaming at her. She knew she should stop him. Giovanni was going to have a fit, and James made her want to curl up and hide, but her feet hurt so bad, she didn't care.

"Isn't your girl going to get upset with you, James?" Deliberately she used his first name.

"She isn't my girl. She's a groupie. Women like fighters. She'll do me and then the same night crawl into someone else's bed."

Her stomach lurched. Wyoming wasn't that far away. Cattle ranches weren't the end of the world. She'd never considered herself sheltered. She always believed men were the ones doing very bad behavior and playing ugly games, but she was getting her eyes opened about the women who pursued fighters, the wealthy, athletes and diplomats. It was no wonder these men didn't have much respect for women. They had become conditioned to get anything they wanted. She let her breath out slowly, once again feeling that maybe she didn't belong there.

Still, she had a job to do. "I was so shocked to see on the news that Aaron had been arrested for starting the fire and stalking me. Have you been to see him?"

James frowned and shook his head. "It doesn't surprise me. The cops were by to interview all the fighters. Tom is his closest friend. He wasn't surprised, either. We knew he'd fixated on you after he got so drunk when he found out about the engagement."

His fingers moved over her bare feet until she wanted to groan in appreciation. The door opened and slammed closed behind Tom Mariland. He glared at James, his hands on his hips.

"What's going on in here?" he demanded, his gaze dropping to James's fingers stroking along her heels.

"Just giving the lady a foot massage, Tom. She's been working all evening in those high heels. We were talking about Aaron."

At once Tom crossed the room to sit down on the edge of the lounge Sasha was sitting in, forcing her to scoot over. "That's such a tragedy, Aaron going off the deep end like that," Tom agreed. "He was drinking too much, and I think it just got to him. I'd tell you he was a good guy, but I'm pretty certain I'm not going to convince you of that."

"You know, neither of you is supposed to be back here," Sasha said, uneasiness creeping into her voice, as if she didn't want to get into trouble. "How did you get back here? Security is everywhere tonight."

"They've got their hands full with drunks," James said. "I slipped a couple of guys some money to start an altercation. Just pushing and shoving a bit on the floor."

Tom nodded. "It isn't that difficult."

Sasha was very uncomfortable being so close to Tom, especially with her feet in James's hands. "Aaron burned down my apartment with everything in it"--she continued their earlier conversation--"so, no, I don't think you're going to convince me Aaron's a good guy. Worse, he could have really hurt my brother by setting off charges in the ceiling of the place where he's getting care."

The door swung open again, this time slamming shut so hard the crash was louder than the music. Tom jumped to his feet. James swung around to face the threat, and Sasha jerked her feet out of his hands as Giovanni stalked in. Anger darkened her fiance's face. He wasn't acting. Yeah, the foot massage, as good as it felt, probably wasn't the best idea.

"What the fuck, Corlege? Keep your fuckin' hands to yourself."

Corlege stood up slowly, straightening to his full height. Sasha could see the muscles rippling in his body. He looked coolly confident. If he knew that Aaron trained with Giovanni, he clearly hadn't bothered to assess his fighting skills.

"She doesn't belong to you."

"The hell she doesn't."

"Giovanni." Someone had to be the voice of reason. "He knows you were just being sweet to me for my brother's sake."

Giovanni's dark eyes swept over her, and she pressed her lips together very tightly. He wasn't going to hear the voice of reason. He was angry. More than angry. Giovanni in this mood was actually a little terrifying. She had never seen this side of him.

Tom moved, trying to circle around to the side of Giovanni, and her heart plunged. He would weigh in on Corlege's side. Both men were MMA champions. She knew Giovanni could take one of them, but both coming at him at the same time?

"You have no right to be in here. It's an employee lounge and it says so right on the door. Get the fuck out." Giovanni's glide to the side of the room with the least furniture was almost imperceptible. It took him closer to James but put distance between Tom and him. At least she didn't have to worry that he wasn't aware of Tom as an added threat.

"What do you plan to do? Call security so you can hide behind them the way you always do? I suppose that makes you feel like a big man, to call your security force to deal with real men who fight their own fights."

"James," Sasha cautioned, hoping that concentrating on the enemy might get better results. "You don't want to get banned from the club." It was totally the wrong thing to say, and as soon as the words left her mouth, she knew she had just amped up the trash-talking. Taking a breath, she moved her feet to the floor. If Giovanni was going to have to fight James, he wasn't going to be fighting Tom at the same time.

"Right, because that would be the chickenshit thing he would do," James taunted.

"Do you think I need security guards to wipe up the floor with your ass?"

Sasha looked up at the camera, silently begging one of his brothers to come help. She knew they had to be watching. She wanted to scream at them to get in there. For all they knew, one of the two men had a gun with him. She didn't know which of the two was guilty of framing Aaron, but she was sure one of them had. Whichever it was, he was bound to be willing to kill Giovanni.

James rolled his shoulders. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tom echo his movements. Giovanni was perfectly still, but he looked casual, like a lazy tiger regarding two cubs challenging him for territory--or a woman.

"This is silly. James, Tom, you have to go back upstairs before everyone does something they can't take back." She tried again.

"Baby, you go on upstairs," Giovanni prodded. "Get back to work."

That wasn't happening. She wasn't leaving him alone with a possible madman--one already proven willing to use bombs, fire and bullets to get his way. Giovanni was ruining their entire plan--or he had another one she just didn't know about.

James launched himself at Giovanni with a series of kicks. Giovanni blocked every one of them, his fist slamming down again and again on James's legs as the MMA fighter tried using his famous forward snap kick and equally lethal roundhouse kick to drive his opponent toward Tom. Giovanni didn't give ground at all. He stood, loose-limbed, his feet under his shoulders, elbows tucked in until he lashed out with a block. He was strong, and when he hit, it was as if he was dropping a hammer down. James was limping a little as he backed off.

"Holy shit, you really do hit that hard. I thought the first time you clocked me it was me being drunk thinking you hit like that."

It was obvious to Sasha that James was trying to keep Giovanni's attention centered on him so Tom could move in. Tom hurled himself into the air, both feet driving at Giovanni from the side. Simultaneously, James did the same. Giovanni didn't move. Sasha did. She threw her high heel right at Tom's face. She'd spent her entire life on a ranch, and when she needed t

o hit something, she did it. The high heel slammed into his face hard, throwing him off-balance because he saw the missile coming at him at the last minute and tried to deflect it.

She shouldn't have worried. Giovanni blocked both men's attacks, again striking hard with a closed fist, slamming it on exposed thighs to give them a dead leg. Tom dropped out of the air to hit the ground on his butt. James staggered back. Tom kept moving, this time going for Sasha, sweeping her legs out from under her. She hit the floor hard. Tom was on her in a second, punching toward her face.

The first blow hit the floor as she rolled. The second hit the back of her shoulder. He never got a third shot in. Giovanni stomped him hard, kicked him in the ribs and flipped him over with a third and fourth kick before James could get near him.

James got in one shot as Giovanni was turning toward him, but then it was over, Giovanni moving with blurring speed, hands and feet pounding until both men lay on the floor bleeding. Sasha dragged herself back to the chair and threw herself into it.

"What is wrong with you, woman?" Giovanni demanded.

"I was helping. They weren't fighting fair."

"Neither were you," Tom groused. "What the fuck did you hit me with? A tank?" He spat blood.

"It was a shoe, you moron," Sasha said. "I think you broke my shoulder."

Giovanni's hands were there, gently moving over her, checking for damage. "What the hell was this about, James? You knew Aaron trained with me. You can't take him. If I can beat the shit out of him, it would stand to reason that you can't take me." He indicated Tom with his chin. "Did you tell Tom about Aaron sparring with me?"

"Aaron couldn't quit bragging about it," Tom said, spitting more blood. He pressed his hand to his mouth and glared at Sasha. "That was always his trouble. He talked so much trash, he didn't know when to quit."

"Big fuckin' deal, sparring with a Ferraro," James added. "Never did a day's work in your life. Walk around all badass carrying a gun and looking dangerous? You think that's going to impress us? Not likely. Aaron was an idiot."

"He got all the women," Sasha said. "I thought he was so hot when he was in that ring."

Giovanni glared at her. She fluttered her lashes at him.