Saving Us (Mitchell Family #6)(20)
Author: Jennifer Foor

Ty and Miranda headed over to his parents for dinner, while Conner and I climbed into his bed and enjoyed the quiet. Living with three kids wasn’t easy. I already felt like I was imposing, so I tried to help out or stay out of the way.

The following morning I drove myself to work. Jax was running a fever and Miranda stayed home to take care of him. Conner had already left to work somewhere on the farm and I really didn’t see it as being a big deal. There was nothing wrong with my car and I had a new phone in case something did happen. While driving, I found myself constantly checking the rear view mirror.

“Come on Amy, get it together. There is nobody following you,” I said to myself.

As I pulled up at the shop, I noticed that the parking lot was pretty empty. I grabbed my keys out of the ignition and reached over for my purse, but didn’t stick the keys inside. Miranda had given me a bottle of pepper spray to have for safety. I knew I was being a worry wart, but I held the keys up as I walked, like I was prepared to spray someone in the face.

I inserted my keys into the door and felt something touching my shoulder. As I turned around, I tried to grab my keys out of the door, but they had to be turned to come free. Instead, I took my elbow and threw it back to push myself away from whoever was behind me. My arm made contact directly with the person’s face. They hunched over holding their face and the first thing I noticed was that it was a female. She had brown hair and it was pulled into a ball cap, plus she had on sunglasses, even though it wasn’t very sunny out. “Oh my God! I am so sorry. I didn’t know someone was behind me.”

Thinking that it was a customer, I opened the door and pulled her into the salon while she held onto her bleeding nose. “I am so sorry, sit down here and I will get some rags.” I ran into the back room and grabbed a few rags and wet them.

When I got back out to where the woman was sitting, I noticed she still had her head down. She wasn’t saying much as I approached her. “Just lean your head back and put one of these up to your nose.” I went to grab the glasses off of her face to help, but she grabbed my hand.

“Wait!”

That voice…I had heard it before, but couldn’t place it.

“Amy, I’m in trouble. Please don’t freak out.” She removed her glasses and it took me a second to realize who it was.

“Heather?”

She stood up but kept the rag over her nose. I watched her finger come up. “Please just hear me out. I didn’t know where to go. I’m afraid he’s going to kill me.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Who is? What does this have to do with me? Why would you even think I would be a good person to help you? Do you have any idea how much I hate you?”

“Please, Amy, you have to listen to me. I’m in real trouble here.”

I looked at Heather for the first real time since I’d realized it was her. She’d dyed her hair a dark brown and was wearing jeans and a hoodie. Anyone that knew the girl, knew she didn’t even own the kind of clothes she had on.

I put my hands on my hips and sighed. The girl seemed petrified of something. I started to pull my cell phone out of my pocket. “I need to call Conner, before you say anything to me.”

“No! You can’t tell anyone. Please just listen to me. I overheard something that I shouldn’t have. Amy, Rick isn’t who we think he is. He has some kind of secret and I’m afraid I got too close to it.”

I sat down on the chair beside her. Obviously she had gotten my attention enough for me to listen. “What are you talking about?”

She started crying right away. I refused to give her sympathy. She deserved to cry for all that she’d done. Maybe that made me an equally horrible person, but she’d caused the people that I loved too many problems for me to be cordial.

“You know that I was seeing Rick, right?”

I rolled my eyes. “You can have him.”

She shook her head. “No! I don’t want anything to do with him or his lies. That’s why I’m here. I think we both are in serious danger.”

I stood up and looked right at her. “Heather, come out with it. I have people coming here soon. I know Rick is an ass**le, that is why I left him. You know this already, so I want to know what exactly it is that you are here to tell me.”

She put her hands up to her face. “Just give me a second. I slept in that abandoned car in the parking lot.”

Wow. Was she really that scared that she couldn’t go home to her own house?

“Why did you do that?”

“He told me that if he found me, he would kill me. I threw my phone away and have been hiding ever since.”

I tightened my face up and shook my head. “Heather, Rick may be a wife beater, but he is hardly a murderer.”

“I guess you don’t know about his first wife?”

“I know she left him with a kid.”

She shook her head and sighed. “No, that was his second wife and she didn’t leave, she went insane.”

“What are you saying? He was only married twice.”

“Amy, he has been married three times. I swear that I am telling you the truth.” She looked right at me. “His first wife died under suspicious circumstances. Look it up on your phone.”

I pulled up the internet on my phone and searched for my husband’s name with death of wife next to it. When nothing came up, I looked over at Heather. “There’s nothing here. Heather you need to leave. I am going to have enough problems filing for divorce. I don’t need this nonsense.” I started to turn around, but she had stood up and grabbed ahold of my arm.

“Search Richard Martin loses wife.” The look on her face was that of a very scared and very determined person.

“Who the hell is Richard Martin?”

She tapped on my phone. “Just look it up, Amy. If you want me to leave once you see it for yourself, I will.”

I was disgusted being in the same room as this woman. It made me especially sick knowing that she’d slept with not only my soon to be ex-husband, but also Conner. I hated her so much. To prove her wrong and get her out of my salon, I typed it into the search engine and hit enter. “When this turns out to be nothing, I want you to lea…Holy shit!” His picture popped right up on the screen. “Is this…Is it really him?”

“I wouldn’t have believed it myself had I not found a little address book in his truck and searched it myself.”

I’d seen pictures of Rick from twenty years ago and this was definitely him. I stood there just staring at my phone for a second before I could even read the article.