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Silvia couldn't move, too terrified to speak or to go. But as she saw his face, distorted with pain, some of her old self returned as she hurried to Andy's side.
"Andy, Andy, how are you? What's wrong with you?"
He didn't answer. He was already dead.
"Lindsay," Peter's voice seemed to come from far away. She was again lost in her thoughts. "You don't seem to hear me."
"Hmm?" that was all she managed, feeling a bit guilty.
"I've been telling you that there's a very interesting case in Maryland but we don't have enough evidence to investigate it."
"You mean, the men are noncommittal?"
"No, it's not like this. You see, it all involves the Indians living there and since there have always been problems between whites and Indians, the officials just left the case without due attention. And so I thought since you're on a holiday now…" his voice trailed away.
"I would hardly call it a holiday," Lindsay smiled, looking down at her protruding belly, "but I have to admit I already miss OSIR."
"You've been away less than a fortnight!" Peter exclaimed. "It's unfair, why don't guys get a maternity leave?"
She laughed: "I think if you knew how hard it is to have a child, you'd preferred to stay a man."
Pete wasn't convinced: "I don't really know…"
"Well, I could talk to Anton. As soon as the kid is born, you'll look after her and I'll go back to work. Changing diapers, cooking baby food, feeding her in the middle of the night…"
"Enough, I give up!" he cried. "I admit I was mistaken! But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't have liked you to go to Maryland. Just sniffle around a bit." He also threw a look at her figure and added hastily: "I mean, if it's not too much to ask."
"I'll be perfectly all right," Lindsay reassured with a smile, "I'm already looking forward for a nice winter. This one here looks more like late autumn."
"You don't mind it, do you?" he asked one more.
"Now don't you behave like a mother hen," she laughed, "I'll be all right. You know that perfectly well, don't you?"
"I do," he said guiltily.
"I know you're worried about me," she added softening, "but you have to understand that I'm grown - up and that my whole life I spent running away from persons who tried to smother me. Please, don't become one of them, Anton's quite enough and I enjoy having you as a friend. Not as a Daddy."
"I won't," he promised, "if you promise to watch out."
"I will," Lindsay stood up. "I'll take the night machine, what're the directions?"
The full force of the icy wind met Lindsay as she got out of the plane and headed for her rented car. Unlike in all the other cases, there was no one to meet her and no one to be asked the details. She was all alone in this city and she'd be alone in the village covered with snow, facing something that can be more than a coax.
Well, she agreed to go and it would be a fun. That was what Lindsay promised herself and the baby as she got into the car.
"You must be Lindsay Donner," the elderly woman at the reception, who looked rather forbidding because Lindsay interrupted her reading, looked up at her through the thick glasses.
"I am," replied Lindsay and smiled one of her charming smiles.
The woman didn't change her expression but looked a bit nicer: "All right, here you've got your keys. We have no meals served for you're for now the only guest staying here, you can get to the Tony's, there's always something served."
"Thank you very much," Lindsay said politely, trying not to smile. She has seen a lot of small villages and in each the people were the same. It didn't matter if they lived in US, England, France, Germany or elsewhere, their attitude towards strangers was the same. They didn't mean it possibly and Lindsay learnt not to be put out by their rejection, she was only amused by the likeness.
Therefore she went upstairs to the small room, casting a quick glance at the receptionist. The woman shook her head, obviously thinking that to come along in such a state was a shame for a woman. But she didn't allow herself to giggle so that the woman could get more possibilities to dislike her.
The room was rather pleasant, the windows facing the forest across the road. The road, covered with snow, was deserted. There were few people living in this place and even fewer outside on such weather.
Lindsay crossed the room to the old fashioned radio standing on equally old fashioned dressing table. But no matter how she tried, the thing just didn't seem to work. Finally she gave up and looking at the watch decided it was the time to eat something. So she locked the room, went downstairs and crossed the hall under curious glances of Mrs. Potter (that was at least written on the card on her table). The wind outside was a shock but she bravely faced it, hurrying down the street to the Tony's and trying not to fall on the slippery pavement.
I bet the guys here don't know what it means, to clean streets from ice and snow, Lindsay complained to the baby as she almost fell down.
Still she managed to get to Tony's and just as she struggled to open the door, she felt how it was easily opened and turning around looked into a smiling face of a bearded man.
"A lady in your condition shouldn't walk around in such a weather," he said.
Lindsay just wanted to say it was none of his business but changed her mind: "I have to eat something. You know, the two of us."
He grinned: "Yeah, I bet you're over at old dragon's, aren't you?"
"You mean Mrs. Potter?" Lindsay giggled.
He nodded and stretched out his hand: "Harry Lewis."
She took off her gloves: "Lindsay Donner."
Together they went through the hall and Harry showed her the table at the window, "the best here" as he said.
"So what are you doing here on such a winter, hon?"
Lindsay didn't quite like when she was called "hon" but it was the usual word for this man, not meant as an insult.
"My maternity leave," she shrugged, "I love real winter."
Harry's face lit up: "That's what really nice people say, I don't think that this kind of foggy, rainy weather like in London can be called "winter"."
Lindsay smiled back: "I also think it's far fetched. But what people are used to. In Australia there's no winter at all. Why Australia? Even in Florida!"
He nodded and waved for a waiter. "It's a nice place to stay, hon, believe it or not. Except for the troubles we had in the last six months."
"What kind of troubles?" Lindsay asked nonchalantly while her heart started beating a bit faster like always when she was excited about new information.
"You know, there's a kind of reservation not far from here, where the Indians live. Normally we don't have troubles with them; they're quite nice really. But from time to time there's something strange happening over there. Not that I have seen something during my life until now, I've been told by my grandfather as I was a little boy. But I don't think that the kind of troubles we have now is the same as then, no it's different.
Everything started when Steven Hopkins was found dead. Somehow he must have been connected with the Indians, perhaps dating one of their girls. Anyway, he was found dead. And four months later Andy Walts, Tony's son by the way, was dead as well. His girlfriend, Silvia Sullivan, mumbled something about an old man, probably Indian, she has talked to before Andy died, as found out, of a heart attack but no one really believed her. You know girls, they get hysterical about everything and Andy died directly before Silvia's eyes so it's not surprising that she can fantasize."
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