Excerpt from "Patent to Kill"

Chapter One

DAY FOUR.

As the Mexican sunlight inched its way across the floor's red tiles, Jake Skully reached for his wife, Ana. Even half-asleep, the thought of making love to Ana before they got up for work had him fully aroused.

They would have to be quiet, and quick. The boys had begun waking before the alarm.

But the cool, unruffled sheet that greeted Jake's groping hand cruelly shattered his sleep-induced amnesia.

Jake bolted upright and swung his legs over the side of the bed, sweat beading on his face. As the now familiar black dread once again encompassed him, he dropped his head into his hands and moaned like a wounded animal.

Ana was gone.

Reaching for the clock that sat on the bedside table, Jake turned the alarm off and threw back the single cotton sheet covering him. He went to the bedroom door and peered across the still darkened hallway into the room in which his two sons slept. The older of the two, Michael, lay facing Jake, his back pressed to the wall to accommodate his little brother, Antony, who had crawled in bed with him sometime after Jake tucUntitled.ems ked them both in the night before.

Reassured by the sight of his boys, Jake pushed the door shut silently, grabbed the terry cloth robe hanging on the back of it and headed for the cordless telephone on the bedside table. Slipping into the robe and knotting it loosely around his trim waist, he picked up the phone and punched in the number he'd memorized.

"Policia," a female voice answered.

"Sergeant de Santos," Jake said impatiently.

Jake paced frantically while he waited. It took almost ten minutes for a familiar voice to come on the line.

"Sargento de Santos."

"It's about time," Jake said impatiently. "This is Jake Skully. What news do you have?"

The pause was short but noticeable.

"Buenos dias, Dr. Skully. No, we have no news on your wife. At least, nothing that would be news to you."

Jake stopped in his tracks.

"What do you mean?"

De Santos ignored the question.

"As I've told you many times, you will be notified the moment my investigators turn up something."

"What are your investigators doing?" Jake's grip on the phone tightened. "How can a well-known physician just disappear? Someone had to have seen something. It was the middle of the day when she left to meet her friends. Your men are bungling this. How many of them do you have on my wife's case?"

De Santos cleared his throat.

"More than I should. Your wife is not the only missing person in the city of Nogales, Doctor."

"What about those names I gave you? The list of her patients? Have you checked them out? My wife had just treated someone from the Guerrero drug cartel. He'd come in with a gunshot wound and told her not to report it."

"And did she?" de Santos asked. "Did she report it to the authorities?"

"Of course not. Ana knew better than to cross the cartel. She's treated them before. But maybe this time they decided not to take any chances." He ran his free hand through his disheveled hair as his pacing quickenedUntitled.ems . "They had something to do with her disappearance. I'm certain of it."

"Perhaps you should look a little closer to home."

Jake stopped dead in his tracks.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Maybe your wife chose to disappear."

"Are you out of your mind?" Jake's raised voice carried across the hall, to the room in which his sons slept. "Ana would never just leave, vanish without a word. She would never deliberately put me through this. You're just making excuses for your own incompetence. I tell you, de Santos, something happened to my wife. And I'll hold you responsible if the bastards who took Ana aren't found and brought to justice."

"Dr. Skully, contrary to what you would like to think, my people have indeed been investigating your wife's disappearance." The sergeant's voice held a note of amusement.

"And what have they found?"

"You told me, Dr. Skully, that all was well between you and your wife."

"It was," Jake answered quickly.

"This is not what I hear." A new sense of dread rose in Jake, knotting his stomach into a giant fist. "My investigators tell me that you were having an affair."

Ambushed, Jake fell silent for several seconds.

"Who gave you permission to snoop into my private life?"

"Did your wife know about your lover?"

Jake did not respond.

What de Santos was implying could not be. They'd worked it out. He'd promised Ana he would end it. De Santos was just desperate to deflect the heat off his own investigators for their failure to find the culprits who'd taken Ana. Ana had not left him over the affair. He was certain of it.

"Dr. Skully, I repeat. Did your wife know about your affair?"

"Yes," Jake said hesitantly. "She did. But my affair had nothing to do with Ana's disappearance."

Memories of the days before her disappearance -- the days after Ana discovered that Jake had become involved with one of the hospital nurses -- slipped, uninvited, into Jake's mind. Memories Untitled.ems of Ana, stone-faced, welcoming patients into her office. Or reading to the boys before bed, her voice void of its usual theatrics.

Of Ana turning away when Jake reached for her during the night. Even after he'd told Francesca it was over.

"You still have not explained the envelope found in the wastebasket in your bathroom."

Jake's jaw tightened.

"I told you, I know nothing about that envelope."

"But it was addressed to you. And you yourself identified the handwriting as belonging to your wife. What did you do with the letter, Doctor?"

"Stop it, will you? How many times have I told you? Ana was leaving with friends for the weekend. Maybe she started a note to me, to say good-bye."

"Then where is the note?"

"I don't know. Don't you think I'd give my right arm to have it now? To read what it said? But maybe she never even wrote it. Maybe she ran out of time."

"Yes, ran out of time..." de Santos mimicked cruelly.

"Dammit, de Santos, you've got to stop focusing on me and that note. You're wasting precious time."

"Perhaps your wife will return to you," de Santos said lightly. "Sometimes they come back. Good-bye, Dr. Skully."

A creak from behind him suddenly caused Jake to turn. Antony stood in the half-opened door. Still, Jake did not loosen his grip on the phone.

"Don't hang up, you bastard. You can't stop looking, do you hear?"

Antony's huge dark eyes widened in horror at the sight of his father, usually the definition of cool control, screaming into the telephone.

"Papa?"

Jake placed a palm over the phone's receiver.

"Just a minute, Tonio," he said impatiently.

He lifted the phone to his ear again.

"De Santos? Are you there?"

A dial tone.

Sergeant de Santos had hung up on him.

"Papa?"

Jake placed the phone back on the table and crossed the floor to where Antonio stood. He wanted to hold him, to comfort him, but his shame was so great, his guilt so visibly paUntitled.ems inted across his face, that he could not bear to meet Antony's eyes.

Instead, he simply said, "Go back to bed, Antonio. Everything's fine."

"Will he find Mama?"

Slowly, Jake raised his eyes to Antony's. What he saw in them -- the fear and uncertainty -- stabbed at Jake's heart.

He dropped to his knees and placed his hands on Antony's narrow shoulders. Antony had always been on the chubby side, but just four days without an appetite had already taken their toll. His huge brown eyes searched Jake's for comfort.

Jake could not refuse.

"If he doesn't find her," Jake promised his son, "then I will. One way or another, we will find your mother."