Maybe she was right. By this time next week he could be back in his old life, working in whatever job he usually held, interacting with people who were only fuzzy images to him now, answering to a different name. Maybe he had loved that life. Maybe he would again. But he suspected he would always miss this place.
“Are you doing okay, Sam?” Marjorie asked at one point during the lunch rush.
“I’m fine,” he assured her, wryly amused by her dramatic stage whisper. They had agreed not to tell anyone else about his amnesia—at least, not yet.
“You let me know if you need anything,” she said, patting his arm on her way to her post at the cash register. Both the gesture and her tone were quite maternal.
Thinking of his suspicions that he’d had a less than ideal childhood, he wondered what his own mother had been like. Marjorie Schaffer was exactly what he would have wanted in a mother, had he been given a choice.
As the time drew nearer to closing, Sam glanced at the glass front of the diner to see if any stragglers were on their way in. He froze for a moment when he spotted a man standing on the sidewalk outside. Tall, straight, rather stiff—buttoned down, he thought. What were the odds that Sam had seen him before, at the Independence Day celebration?
On an impulse, he started to move toward the door. Maybe this guy could answer a few questions…
“Hey, Sam. Can I get some coffee here?” someone called.
Hesitating for only a moment, Sam turned toward the kitchen. He was still on duty—and he didn’t know what he’d have said to the guy, anyway.
By the time the front door was locked and the Open sign flipped around to the Closed side, whoever Sam had spotted outside appeared to be long gone. He hadn’t come inside; he seemed to have been looking the place over.
Watching him? Sam couldn’t help wondering.
It was his turn to haul the garbage bags out to the Dumpster in the alley behind the diner. Swapping jokes with his co-workers, he gathered the bags in both arms and stepped out the back door. The door closed behind him.
It must have been instinct that made the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stand on end. There hadn’t been a sound. His reflexive flinch made the blow that was intended for his head fall across his shoulders, instead.
He hit the ground, then rolled, ignoring the pain, gathering his strength. He wasn’t sure whether he’d had a chance to fight back last time he was attacked, but he wouldn’t go down easily this time.
The man he’d spotted on the Fourth of July stood over him, holding a steel bar. He swung it again at almost the same moment Sam recognized him, the vicious blow aimed for Sam’s face.
Sam rolled again, feeling the whoosh of air as the bar missed him by less than an inch. He bumped into one of the plastic garbage bags he’d dropped, halting his momentum, trapping him while his attacker lifted the bar again.
With a grunt of effort, Sam kicked out, his foot landing solidly on the guy’s knee. Though his sneaker wasn’t as effective as a heavy boot would have been, the kick was effective, making the other guy stumble backward long enough to give Sam a chance to shove himself to his feet.
He remembered how to fight, he discovered in the next few tense moments, but fists were little defense against a thick steel bar wielded by someone who obviously knew what to do with it. The bar landed solidly against his upper left arm, making him numb to his fingertips, and then across his ribs, which hadn’t fully healed from the last beating. The pain took his breath away. It was mostly desperation and blind luck that allowed him to get in a teeth-rattling blow of his own, right against the other guy’s jaw.
Snarling in rage, the guy lifted the bar again, muscles bulging in his arms with the force of his movement. Sam braced himself.
A furious, almost animalistic growl signaled the arrival of help. In a blur of movement, a man plowed into Sam’s attacker, knocking the guy flat on his face on the pavement. The bar clattered as it fell from his hand. Sam kicked it out of the way, then dove into the struggle to subdue the guy, who was fighting wildly to escape the new arrival.
The back door opened. “Sam?” It was Marjorie’s voice. “Are you ready to—”
“Call the police!” Sam shouted, wanting her inside and out of any possibility of danger.
A moment later, he was sitting on the attacker’s legs while his rescuer restrained the guy’s arms. Sam looked at the new arrival and recognized the face as one out of his dreams. “Shane?” he asked tentatively.
“No, it’s Santa Claus,” Shane drawled sarcastically. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into this time, Cam?”
Cam. The name sounded familiar, though i
t didn’t bring a blinding flash of revelation with it.
Dan arrived very quickly, accompanied by the two uniformed officers Sam had met before. After a few minutes of pandemonium, during which the attacker refused to utter a word, the cops left with their prisoner, and the diner employees rather reluctantly cleared out, leaving Marjorie, Sam and Shane in the place. Until that point, adrenaline had kept Sam on his feet, hardly aware of the pain of his latest injuries. Now he felt every one, particularly in his ribs and across his back where the first strike had landed, the one intended to knock him unconscious and render him helpless to follow-up blows.
He felt himself swaying on his feet and reached out to grab the back of a chair to steady himself.
“You okay, buddy?” Looking every inch the lanky cowboy, Shane placed his hands on his lean, denim-covered hips and studied him closely.
Sam drew a deep breath. “I, uh, I’m afraid I don’t remember you, exactly,” he admitted. “But thanks for the help out there.”