Dying for Chocolate Read Online Free PDF

need: at the sight of the car, the animal scurried back to his lair. Even wildlife knew better than to be out in this mess.
    Once around the curve I caught sight of the BMW a quarter mile ahead. My right foot pushed the accelerator.
    We had been driving a few minutes when Philip abruptly careened to the right. His tires spewed a wave of mud from the shoulder. The paved part of the road was beginning to ice. I wondered if he had slid or had seen an animal, too.
    The snow fell steadily. I accelerated very gently. Philip slowed for a moment and then swerved over the center line to the left. Then he straightened out to straddle the dotted line.
    I honked. Was something wrong with his car? Was the snow bothering him? Maybe his windshield wipers weren’t working. I honked again, but there was no answer. Surely Philip knew the hazards of this drive. If he was having a steering problem, now was the time to pull over.
    Instead, he sped up. We passed a rock wall on the road’s left side, then a steep drop-off where a rollover had taken away most of the guardrail. Yellow police ribbons still marked the scene of a fatal accident. Again the BMW swerved to the left. A wave of fear left my hands damp. At the next curve I had to pay close attention. For a moment all that was visible in front of the car was air. My stomach dropped.
    After negotiating the turn, I sped up the boatlike Ford to get behind the BMW’s square taillights, which shone in the enveloping grayness. My hand groped for the headlights and I flashed them.
    No response.
    We headed east on the roller-coaster approach to Highway 24, the north-south biway that runs between Interstate 70 and Aspen Meadow. After we rounded another bend, my eyes picked out a trickle of cars heading north out of Aspen Meadow toward 1-70.
    Cottony clumps of snowflakes clung to the windshield. I strained my eyes and thought I could see Philip shaking his head. My heart beat in time with the windshield wipers. I pressed the accelerator and decided to overtake him. Force him to pull over. But when I pulled up on his left, he sped up. On the right a thin shoulder of ground and a barbed-wire fence were the only things between our lane and a forty-foot drop to whitened meadow. I pressed a button to bring my window down slightly. From Highway 24 the occasional honk and swish of hydroplaning tires punctuated the sifting sound of snow.
    Twenty minutes ago Philip had been fine. Now either he was having a heart attack or he was going to give me one.
    The last part of eastbound 203 went straight down. Philip again drove between the two lanes. Ahead I could see a tractor-trailer and a grocery-supply truck beginning to chug north on Highway 24, headed back to the interstate.
    Near the end of 203, Philip honked wildly. His brake lights flashed as the pale yellow car skidded right. I tried to gauge whether I could pass him again, but he was going too fast.
    Through the snowfall, a digital clock’s amber squares glowed twelve-oh-oh in the mist. We were only moments from Philip’s office, which was near the interstate. Soon this agony would be over. I flicked on the left turn signal as we approached the stop sign at the intersection of the two roads.
    “No!” I yelled as the BMW zoomed through the stop sign and screeched to turn right on 24 instead of left toward Philip’s office.
    I stopped, glanced left, floored the accelerator, and wrenched the steering wheel to the right. The snow was coming down like oatmeal. Philip barreled down the left lane straight into the path of the oncoming trucks. At the last moment he careened out of the lane when the tractor-trailer blasted him with his horn. The big trucks lumbered past. Philip put on his auxiliary lights and appeared to slow down.
    I gunned the T-bird forward and pulled up on the BMW’s right, on the dirt shoulder of Highway 24. I honked. Through his tinted window glass it was impossible to make out his face. He acted as if he neither saw nor heard me. Again