“Come again?”

Astra pulls out her phone and calls up a picture Rick had sent her of Ashley at one of his parties. Bauer looks at the picture, squinting dramatically, then shakes his head.

“Nah. Don’t know her. That picture could have been taken anywhere, but it wasn’t here,” he says with a dismissive shrug.

I share a look of disbelief with Astra and can’t stop the laugh that bursts from my mouth. Turning to Bauer, I stare at him with wide eyes.

“Are you serious?” I ask.

“What?”

Taking the phone from Astra, I point to a couple of notable features in the photo, then gesture to an area across the lounge from us.

“This picture was taken right over there,” I say, my tone thick with incredulity.

Bauer makes a big show of looking at the photo again and turning to where I’m pointing. He turns back to us and pulls a face and shakes his head.

“Nah. I don’t know where that picture was taken, but it wasn’t in my lounge,” he says.

This guy doesn’t just dress like a mafia boss; he’s taking a page right out of their playbook. Deny, deny, deny. That he can sit there, with a straight face and total conviction, and tell me what I’m seeing isn’t what I’m seeing is so ridiculous, it’s actually pretty impressive. At the same time, though, it’s also annoying. We’ve got a missing girl to find, and this clown’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality is keeping us from doing that. It’s time to shake the truth out of him.

“Okay, if you’re going to continue playing this game, let me tell you what’s going to happen,” I begin. “The first thing I’m going to do is shut down your lounge—”

“You have no cause to shut me down,” he cuts me off, a hint of outrage in his voice.

“This picture and all the other ones just like it, depicting an underage girl in your club, is evidence of a crime in and of itself. This girl is sixteen years old, Mr. Bauer. So, yes, that gives us cause to shut you down,” I tell him.

“No way. Not possible,” he objects.

“Very possible,” I respond. “Actually, it’s a fact. She’s sixteen.”

“And after we shut down your lounge on that charge, we’re going to call our forensic accountants in, and they are going to pore through your books,” Astra joins in. “They are going to crawl so deep up your backside that if they find one decimal out of place in your books, you’re going to have some problems.”

“Not to mention the fact that we have evidence of you allowing underage girls into your lounge on multiple occasions for these sugar baby mixers. Any prosecutor worth their salt will be able to charge you with facilitating statutory rape,” I pile on. “If they’re able to convict you and—spoiler alert, with the evidence we have it’s all but a slam dunk—you may be looking at some pretty serious jail time. Is that how you want this all to go down?”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to cooperate with us and avoid that whole mess?” Astra asks.

The man looks at us sourly. “What do you want?”

I hold the phone up again. “This girl. You recognize her?”

“Why? What did she do?” he answers my question with a question. “Must be pretty serious to bring the feds running.”

“We’re doing some routine background checks, and it led us to your club. Specifically, it’s led us to look into these sugar baby mixers you host.”

The lie rolls smoothly off my tongue, making him shift on his feet. He’s uncomfortable and on edge, which is just where I want him.

“I have to wonder how many more underage girls we’re going to find frequenting these mixers you host once we really start digging,” Astra muses.

“Okay, look, I get it. You’ve got my stones in a vice,” he snaps, gesturing wildly. “You two mind telling me what you want?”

“The first thing we want is some honest answers,” I say and hold up the picture of Ashley again. “Let’s start with an easy one. Do you recognize this girl?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen her here a few times. But she had an ID. Had to have one to get in here. My guys check IDs on everybody who comes through that door,” he tells us.

“Obviously, you don’t check them that well,” Astra shoots back.

He clenches his jaw but doesn’t say anything. As bold and brash as Bauer is, he knows he can’t say anything to rebut the point. If a sixteen-year-old girl got through his security measures, his security measures obviously failed.

“Okay, good,” I say. “Now, who did this girl spend time with at these sugar baby events?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” Astra says. “You’re actually going with that?”

“It’s not like I sit with everybody at these things. I’m busy running my club. Once the doors open, I let them all do their thing,” he argues.

It’s a believable answer, so I let that go. “Okay, we need your records of the men who sign up for these events. I’m assuming you keep track of the participants?”

“I can’t do that,” he says. “My clients are private men—important men—and they value my discretion. I can’t just go blasting their names out there.”

“Mr. Bauer, we’re going to get the names one way or another. You can either help us out, or we can shut you down until we secure a court order for all the names, and after that, start publicly questioning all of them. How do you think they’re going to feel when that starts happening? Because I promise you that it will,” I state.

“You can’t do that,” he says.

“We can. And we will,” Astra says. “And we will make sure everybody knows exactly where we got the names from.”

“I didn’t give you anything.”

“Maybe not. But they might not know that,” I say.

“I have a feeling once they find out we got their names from you, business to your website and your club are going to decline dramatically,” Astra chimes in.

For the first time since we walked in, Bauer looks rattled. The prospect of having his reputation for discretion blown to pieces at the same time his website and club—both big money-making ventures I’m guessing—tank isn’t a very rosy outlook for him. He’d never be able to set up shop again after that. He’d never recover, and I can see in his face that he knows it.

“This isn’t right,” he grumbles, “strong-arming me like this is absolute bulls—”

“The flip side of that comment is that if you weren’t breaking the law, we wouldn’t have anything to strong-arm you with,” I counter.

“She makes a good point,” Astra says.

“You’re killing me here,” he says.

“Mr. Bauer, I promise you that we’re not out to get you. We just need to get a few answers, and instead of having to go broad with our line of questioning, we’re trying to take a more targeted approach,” I say. “And I give you my word that we will be discreet when we find the man or men we’re looking for and question them.”

“But we will go nuclear if you force our hand,” Astra says.

He sighs. “Fine. Follow me.”