Hold on. I was being given the illusion of freedom, but in reality I was nothing more than his prisoner.
"That room next to your office. The steel door. What's in—?"
"That's the heart of Baalum." Pride in his voice. "The real reason I'm here."
"You mean drug research?"
He nodded. "Did you know the Central American rain forest easily contains a hundred thousand plant species? Over half of all pharmaceutical drugs are derived from plants, yet less than one percent of those here have been tested for pharmacological potential. Still, the old shamans and midwives all know of herbs they claim can cure everything from menstrual cramps to cancer." He smiled. "They also know which ones have powerful contraceptive properties, which is particularly helpful in my primary study, fertility and fetal viability. I take the specimens they bring and perform a rough screening in the lab to determine if they're actually pharmacologically active. If they do test positive, I then examine their effect on the blastocyst, the early form of embryonic cell formed just after fertilization, to see whether they affect cell division and viability and . . . the miscarriage rate here is very low, so some of these plants . . ." His voice trailed off as he pushed open the door of a suite at the end of the hall. It had a stone floor, a simple bed, and through the slatted windows the light of midday filtered through, along with the birdcalls of the rain forest. Any other time and place, I'd have felt like I was staying at a rustic nature retreat.
But this wasn't some other time and place. And what about Steve? Where was he? Maybe he was somewhere worse. Thinking about him, I was startled to hear myself say . . .
"Incidentally, I found out the man I've been trying to have a baby with didn't show up at his hotel in Belize last night. He was driving there from Guatemala City. I'm very worried. I keep hearing about how people get 'disappeared' in this country. He's—"
"Could his name be Steve Abrams?" Goddard turned back, still holding the tray.
It was a moment that stopped my heart. For a second I wasn't even able to speak.
"How . . . did you know?" I finally managed to say. "I never mentioned—"