The Stranger in Room 205

“He’s claiming amnesia?” Dan’s lip curled in open disbelief.

“No.” Honestly, sometimes Dan took his official skepticism a bit too far. One would almost accuse him of being paranoid—if anyone had the nerve to do so to his face. “He’s simply disoriented, Dan. I would imagine that’s a fairly common reaction to a concussion.”

He nodded reluctantly. “I’ll try to talk to him when the doc’s through with him. If he can identify his attackers, we’ll have a better chance of finding them if we don’t wait too long.”

“He’s in a lot of pain.”

He gave her one of his rare smiles, though it didn’t quite reach his glittering dark eyes. “Don’t worry, Serena. I won’t browbeat your stray. Just want to ask him some questions.”

“So do I,” Lindsey agreed.

Serena gave her a look. “Go file the school bus story. Everyone in town’s going to want the details of that tomorrow.”

Lindsey’s expression implied that a mysterious wounded stranger was of as much interest to her as the mercifully minor school bus accident, but she had the discretion not to say so. She nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Serena. You, too, Chief. I’ll be wanting details of your investigation into this guy’s story, of course.”

Dan glared after Lindsey as she sauntered into an elevator. “Have I ever mentioned that I really don’t much like being questioned by your reporters all the time?”

“You’ve alluded to it a time or two,” Serena replied. She knew Dan didn’t mean anything personal against Lindsey, whom he’d known since she was a toddler. There were times she even suspected Dan was rather fond of Lindsey in his own gruff way—but he did not like reporters in general.

Dan had already turned his attention to the hospital room at the other end of the hall. “Okay, Sam Wallace,” he murmured as if to himself. “Time to find out just who you are—an innocent crime victim, or someone we don’t want in our town.”

Serena had been wondering that herself. For some reason, she was having trouble picturing Sam Wallace—wounded or otherwise—as an innocent victim.

Chapter Two

T wo hours later, Sam—the name he was still using for lack of a better one—was lying on his back in the hospital bed staring at the ten o’clock evening news on the TV mounted high on the wall across from his bed, hoping something would trigger the memories that had so far eluded him. He’d been straining to come up with even the foggiest detail, but the only result thus far was a pounding headache and a mounting frustration tinged with panic.

It was beginning to seem inevitable that he was going to have to admit the truth to someone—probably the cop who’d been in earlier, asking questions that Sam had deliberately answered as vaguely as possible. The chief had left with a promise that he would be back—or had it been a warning?

Sam wasn’t at all sure Meadows had bought his story that he’d been passing through this area in search of work and had been mugged by a couple of guys who’d given him a lift. Claiming pain, fatigue and confusion, he hadn’t given any details that would get anyone arrested, and Chief Meadows was not pleased with the sketchiness of the tale. Hell, for all Sam knew, it could be true. He just didn’t remember any of it.

He cringed at the thought of saying aloud that he had lost his memory, that his mind was a blank, that he was utterly at the mercy of the staff of this tiny, apparently rural hospital. So far the characters he had encountered—with the exception of the cop—had been friendly, cheerful, laid-back and unpretentious. He had obviously landed in Smallville, U.S.A.—but from where?

He knew somehow he wasn’t from around here; his speech patterns sounded different even to his own ears. Besides, he just didn’t feel…Arkansan. Whatever the hell that meant.

But why was he here? Why had no one come forward to identify him? To ask about him? Was he really so alone that no one knew where he was? Was he as nameless and mysterious to everyone else as he was to himself at the moment?

He didn’t like the idea that there was no one who cared whether he lived or died. Nor did he like lying in this bed wearing nothing but a backless hospital gown, a sheet so thin he could probably read a book through it, with a couple of bags of liquid dripping through a needle taped to his arm. Maybe if he could just see whatever he had been wearing when he’d been found, it would trigger his memory.

“What happened to my clothes?” he demanded of a thin, pale-skinned male who came in carrying a tray of vials and needles.

The man looked startled. He blinked almost lashless blue eyes. “Er, what clothes?”

“The ones I was wearing when I was brought in.”

“I don’t know, sir. I’ll ask someone as soon as I get a blood sample.”

“My blood’s all been sampled. There’s none left.”

The technician looked as though he didn’t know whether to smile. “Er…”

Sam sighed. “Hell. Just stick me and then find my clothes, will you?”

He was beginning to lose patience with all of this. The hospital, its staff—and his own stubbornly closed mind.

He was informed a short while later that he hadn’t been carrying a wallet, at least not that anyone from the hospital staff had found. There had been, he was assured, nothing in the pockets of his jeans or shirt. While his lack of personal items backed up his story of having been robbed, it gave him no clue as to his identity.

“Damn,” he growled as soon as he was alone again. Why couldn’t he remember? What was wrong with him?

Another nurse came in, this one tall and bony. “I’m Lydia, your nurse for this shift. How are you feeling?”

He eyed her warily. “That depends. What are you planning to poke into me?”

She smiled and held up a thermometer. “Only this. Pain free, I assure you.”

He reluctantly opened his mouth.

“Oh, and I have to ask you some questions,” she added, opening a clipboard and snapping a ballpoint. “LuWanda never finished filling out these papers and admissions is having a hissy fit.”

He nearly swallowed the thermometer. “Mmph.”

“Hold on a second.” She waited until the electronic thermometer beeped, then pulled it out and glanced at it. “Normal.”

He wouldn’t have advised her to bet money on that.

“Now, about this form. All we’ve got so far is your name, Sam Wallace, and the month and day of your birth. June twenty-second. Correct so far?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“What year were you born, Mr. Wallace?”

He managed a smile. “How old do I look?”

She rolled her eyes. “He wants to play games,” she murmured. “Okay, I’m supposed to humor the patient. You look…” She eyed him consideringly while he held his breath. “Thirty-three?”

“Thirty-one,” he corrected with an exaggerated grimace. It sounded like a nice age. Not too young, not too old.

“So you were born in nineteen…” Her voice trailed off as she scribbled numbers on her form.

“Address?”

“I’m, um, between addresses right now. Between jobs, too,” he added to answer her next question.

“Do you have insurance?”

Lady, I don’t even have a name. “No.”

“Next of kin?”