D-Notice by Bill Walker (books to read for self improvement txt) 📕

He shifted gears then looked over at Erika. He could feel her anger coming at him in waves. Obviously, he was a total fuck-up when it came to women, including his own mother. The mere thought of Lillian and his anger renewed itself. Could she really have not known of the letter’s existence all these years? And if she had, then why hadn’t she’d told him about it sooner? It didn’t make any sense. After all, hadn’t she always said she loved him, said it that very night?

Michael stole another glance at Erika. She sat stiffly in the soft leather bucket seat, her luminous face staring out through the windscreen, a tiny frown furrowing the skin just above the bridge of her nose. Even with as dour an expression as this, she was breathtaking.

He turned his attention back to the road and noted a pair of headlights in the rearview mirror. The car joined them not long after they’d left the cottage and had stayed about a quarter mile behind them the whole way. The lights were low to the ground, suggesting some kind of sporty model.

“That was a shitty thing you did,” Erika said, breaking into his thoughts.

He turned, fixing her with a puzzled frown. “Was it?”

“Yes, it was. She’s your mother, not your enemy.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” he said, downshifting as they rounded a curve. “She made Dad into some kind of hero all those years. He was like a god to me...perfect. And now this.”

“You can’t blame her for not wanting to deepen her wounds, Michael. My God, she’d just lost a husband, and was pregnant. She needed to survive.”

Erika was right.

And knowing it only made Michael feel worse. Even in his righteous rage, he’d known he’d treated his mother unfairly, lashed out at her with forty years of a young boy’s anger at losing his father—blamed her for it, in fact.

Leaning back in the seat, he exhaled a long breath, as if expelling four decades of accumulated poisons from his body. He shook his head.

“You’re right. I’ve been a right bastard. She’s done her best, Lord knows. There’s a pub a few miles up the road. We’ll call her from there.”

Erika’s expression softened. “What about Cadwallader and Soames?”

“You’re as curious as I am, aren’t you?” he asked, a sly smile turning up the corners of his mouth.

She nodded, returning the smile.

“We’ll try them in the morning. Nothing we can do till then.”

A flicker in the rearview mirror made Michael glance up into it. He frowned. “What the bloody hell is this?”

As if on cue, the car behind them snapped on its main beam and roared forward, closing the quarter mile gap between the two cars in seconds. It pulled up to within a foot of the Mercedes’ bumper.

From what Michael could see, the car looked to be a late model Lotus Esprit, either black or midnight blue. And because of the glare on the Mercedes’ back window, it was impossible to tell who was driving. Erika turned in her seat and squinted into the glare.

“Maybe they want to pass,” she said, her voice sounding unconvinced.

Michael shot her a look. “If they’d wanted to do that they would have done so. The road’s deserted.”

The Lotus made its move. With a growl from its powerful 300 horsepower engine, the car nudged the Mercedes, forcing Michael to grip the wheel harder to remain in control. Erika screamed and Michael took this as his cue to step on the gas. The Mercedes leapt forward, its eight-cylinder engine winding out until he remembered to shift gears. Now in fourth, the 500 SL streaked forward into the night, the white line now taking on a greater significance. As long as he stayed with it, Michael knew he would be all right. The problem was, the Lotus looked as if it had every intention of running them off the road.

“Pull over, Michael!” Erika yelled.

The Lotus smashed into the back of the Mercedes, making Erika scream again.

Michael stomped on the accelerator, pushing it to the floor. The 500 SL responded like a bullet shot from a gun, the tires screeching as the car rounded a tight curve.

“Slow down, you’ll kill us!”

“And I suppose the men in the Lotus won’t?”

Her answer was her hand on his arm, her grip like a vise.

The two cars reached a straightaway and Michael caught sight of the Lotus in the driver’s side mirror as it swung out and shot forward, coming alongside the Mercedes. They rode side by side, each car jockeying for position. To the uninitiated, it would appear that the two cars were having a “drag race,” but Michael knew without having to be told that the stakes were a lot higher than macho bragging rights.

Keeping his eye on the road, he saw a bend about a mile ahead. He turned his head and tried to see into the Lotus’s windows. Unfortunately, they were tinted a smoky black, making an identification of the driver and any passengers impossible.

Returning his attention to the road, Michael tried pulling ahead. The Lotus stayed with him. He then tried to drop behind, hoping to give the exotic car some of its own medicine, but the Lotus merely matched his speed. The problem was the straightaway was rapidly diminishing, and any moment someone could come around the bend. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of Michael’s face, and his hands felt slippery on the wheel. He looked for a turn off, but there was nothing, just a narrow strip of road lined with stone walls.

“Michael!”

He looked into the distance and spotted a pair of headlights as it rounded the bend in the road