“The two of you girls?” He sounded unimpressed.

“Hey, girl power. Don’t knock it.”

“Don’t forget your friend disappeared while working there. There’s no reason for you to go at all,” he said. “I could just send Jed and Merv to check it out.”

“What if someone recognizes them? Then we might not get anything at all. Besides, I can force a vision if I need to get more information.”

“But what if someone recognizes you? I’d rather Jed get nabbed than you.”

“No,” I said, glancing at the building, thankful Neely Kate was still inside. The less anyone knew about Mason’s possible involvement, the better. “I’m doing this.”

He was silent for several seconds. “You’ve proven yourself resourceful on several occasions,” he said, not necessarily sounding happy about it. “You’re determined to do this, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“When are you supposed to show up?”

“At seven. In fifteen minutes.”

“Check in with me by ten. If I haven’t heard from you, I’m sending Jed to check on you.”

Oddly enough, I found that reassuring.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I had no idea that so many men in Fenton County were obsessed with breasts. But then again, Joe had told me that there were twenty-five thousand residents in the county—if half were male, I supposed thirty men was still a low percentage.

I’d been behind the bar for nearly two hours, and while I wasn’t topless, I still got plenty of men checking out my chest. It was a good thing I wore Neely Kate’s pushup bra to give them something to look at.

For the most part, the men sat at tables, staring at the stage. The girls took turns dancing on the pole, stripping off their multiple layers of underwear until all that was left was a tiny G-string.

Some of the men noticed me behind the bar and came to the counter to get drinks instead of letting the girls who were walking around get them. Most of them ordered beer, but some of them ordered drinks I’d never heard of, let alone knew how to make. My plan to use an app on my phone didn’t pan out. The first time I pulled it out, I was told phones weren’t allowed. When I asked the guy I was working with how to make a bourbon neat, he shot me an irritated scowl. “Figure it out yourself.”

The bourbon was easy enough, but some of the other drinks were tougher. When I figured out that the men didn’t care, I started creating my own concoctions.

A bearded man who looked to be in his forties sidled up to the bar. “Hey, sugar. Can you get me a drink, then come sit on my lap?”

I shot him a scowl. “I’ll get you the drink. Someone else can sit on your lap.” I got him his beer and watched him shuffle back to his table.

“You’ll never make any money that way,” Kip, the bartender who was working with me, said.

I tried not to look surprised. In addition to my drink recipe inquiries, I’d been asking leading questions during some of our lulls, and he’d been annoyingly tight-lipped.

“Some men might get off on you being cold, but most of them are here because they’re lonely.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Some guys will pay girls just to sit and talk to ’em. But the guys who go off to the little rooms are lookin’ for more than that.”

“What little rooms?”

He laughed. “You really don’t know anything about this place, do you?”

“That’s why I’m back here. I’m trying to learn.”

He gave me a condescending grin. “Is that why you think you’re back here?”

What did that mean?

He shook his head with a smirk, then leaned his mouth close to my ear. “You see how some of the girls are dancing on guys’ laps?”

I’d spent most of my night trying not to notice. “Yeah.”

“If a guy pays more, she’ll take him to a VIP room.”

“And what happens in those?”

“It depends on who’s dancing and who’s asking.” He winked. “On Friday nights, from eleven until two a.m. or so, we see more action in those rooms than on any other night.”

“Why?”

He leaned into my side and reached behind me to cup my butt cheek. “Smart girls don’t ask questions here.”

I elbowed him as hard as I could. He grabbed his side, doubling over. “I think smart girls do ask questions,” I said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have known you should have paid me twenty dollars to do that.”

He laughed. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet. But for the record—” his eyebrows rose playfully, “I would have needed a whole lot more than that for twenty dollars.”

I was never gonna let any man here get close enough for me to have to remember that piece of advice.

The crowd got bigger over the next hour, and I kept busy getting beers and making my bad mixed drinks. Amazingly enough, I’d started to get the hang of working behind the bar, even if my drinks seemed be getting worse as the night wore on.

The music changed, and a new dancer emerged on the stage. She wore a sequined, bedazzled red bra and a black wrap-around skirt. When she started her routine, it was apparent she was a real dancer. Her moves were fluid and graceful, yet inherently seductive. Every man in the room watched as she put her back to the pole, grabbed it overhead, and arched her pelvis out. I’d seen the other three girls working the place do it all night long. With them, it had looked gross and tasteless, but this dancer was classy—which seemed like an oxymoron in this place—and she was successfully seducing the room.