Page 10 of Heartbreak Hero

“If the event is that important, I’m sure she’ll make time for it,” Levi replied.

“Mr. Hux—”

Levi ended the call and pulled up the Venmo app. He shot back the thirty grand Jack Jones Sr. had given him to find his wayward adopted daughter—along with a note.I found her, she’s fine. No payment necessary.

The rest of the day was uneventful and Levi did the norm, which was to assign guys to jobs that came in. It was a slow period for them, but it should pick up the closer they got to summer.

“See? It’s dead with only the four jobs.”

“We’ll make enough to pay the bills,” Max said.

Which was kind of crazy when you thought about it. Max was dating and living with an heiress. Not to mention, Levi himself had a buttload of money. But Levi knew Max would never ask Lily or anyone for funds. Levi was the same damned way. No way in hell would he ask the woman he loved for a dime, not that he would ever need to.

Maybe that made them old school? He snorted under his breath.

So what?

Closing time came and Levi shrugged into his suit jacket.

“You coming over to William’s for dinner tonight?” Max asked as they headed out the door together.

“I don’t know…” he hesitated.

The girls were too fucking chatty with their endless questions. He was worried that he’d let something slip.

“Come on, Lily has been asking you to stop by and I told her you would.” Max hit the fob on his keys, and the man’s jeep chirped.

“I’ll follow you, but I can’t stay long.”

The dinner was just as he expected it to be.

Lily kept giving him sad-eyed looks and Michelle kept clicking her tongue.

“You didn’t even get a phone number,” Lily complained over a plate of lasagna.

The guilt weighed heavily on Levi. He had only taken the job of finding Sara for Lily and Sara’s family because he had caved beneath Lily’s sadness.

“I didn’t havetimeto get her number. Our meeting was…brief,” he lied around the bite of garlic bread and kept his eyes on his plate. The bread threatened to choke him.

“Did she say where she lived? Or worked? Because when I talk to her over the phone, she won’t say anything other than she’s fine.” Lily sounded on the verge of tears.

Max curled an arm around her shoulders and gave Levi a death glare.

“No, she didn’t.” Levi gave Max a—you gotta be kidding me—glare right back.

“It was so noisy on the recording,” Michelle chimed in.

“What recording?” Levi frowned, and Lily handed him her phone. He thumbed through the list and found Sara’s message from a few weeks ago. Hitting the play button, he listened to the background along with her words.

“Doing my bi-weekly check-in. Love ya,” Sara had recorded and hung up.

It wasn’t much, but in the background was some type of bar. He’d bet money she was calling from a bar. And there were thousands of bars in San Francisco.

But how many had employees named Sara Jones?

Saturday morning.

“Thanks for this,” Sara told Mandy and rolled her suitcase into the woman’s two-story brownstone that sat at the end of a cul-de-sac in a quiet Oakland neighborhood.

---