Page 44 of Colombian Chemistry

“Your boss will be pissed if you do.”

His lip curled. “El Jefe has something else to deal with, and then he’ll be in to talk to you. Your info had better be good, or I’m going to thoroughly enjoy taking you apart piece by piece.” He turned his attention to an older man strapped to a chair beside me whose head drooped in defeat, then leaned down into his face. “And just wait until we show you what we have for you. I think you’ll find yourself far more willing to work with us soon.”

The older man made no effort to fight back and just exhaled a long breath. “I won’t help you anymore. No matter what. You can just go ahead and kill me and get it over with.”

“Oh, you’ll help us all right. And soon you’ll see why.”

The cartel man left the room, and the mostly bald man at my side slowly lifted his head.

“Who are you?” I asked him, though the moment I saw his blue eyes, the ones that looked just like Irene’s, I knew the answer.

“It doesn’t matter,” he responded. “I’m as good as dead.”

“Are you Dr. Saltzman? Irene’s father?”

The moment I said her name, his eyes widened. “Who are you? How do you know Irene?”

“I’m Marcus, and I’m the guy who’s been trying to keep her alive. Are you the father she’s looking for?”

“Yes. I am. What do you mean trying to keep her alive? Is she okay? Is she hurt? Where is she?”

I blew out a breath. “She’s alive, but she’s here. The cartel has her.”

I quickly ran him through the events that brought us here and watched the tears drip from his eyes when I got to the part where they took her.

“So,” I finished. “I turned myself in to get taken here to save her.”

Tears filled his bright blue eyes. “No. Not my Irene. Please, you have to save her!”

“I’m going to, Dr. Saltzman. I won’t let them harm her.”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“What I don’t understand is why they want her so bad? And for that matter, why do they have you? We can’t make any sense of it.”

He shook his head and dropped his gaze to the ground. “It’s all just a big mess. A terrible, horrible mistake I made that I don’t think I can ever forgive myself for.”

“What happened?”

“I was struggling to get funding for my project that allowed us to create eco-friendly plastic from resources in the Amazon. I was out of options when an old work contact from my days in pharmaceuticals reached out to me. A company in Colombia was working on the formula for a new drug, and they’d contacted him to help with it. He was too busy with his own project, and he knew I had the experience to help them and needed money, so he recommended me. Even though it’s not what I do anymore, I agreed to meet with them. They offered to fund my entire project if I helped them fix the formula for a drug that was to be used to eliminate cancer patient’s pain. After losing my wife from cancer, I was so excited to help with their project. And after I was done, I would also get to finish my own fully-funded research. It was a win-win situation.”

“I see,” I said. “And I take it these Colombians were the cartel?”

He nodded. “I didn’t know that, though. The men I worked with were doctors, and they seemed legitimate. It was my own stupid fault for not looking into it more. So, so stupid.”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, they gave me a large sum of money to purchase a house and move down to Colombia to start the research. I spent several months working on their formula and fixing the flaws that had them stumped. When I was done, it was a revolutionary pain medication that worked almost instantly.”

“But that’s not how they used it, is it?”

He shook his head. “No. It turned out it wasn’t a cancer drug at all. They took my creation and sold it as a recreational drug. It took off, and it’s now the most popular drug in Colombia. And people are overdosing on it because they are taking it in far greater doses than was intended to get the high. And it’s all my fault. I just wanted to save people, and now they are dying because of me.”

I realized quickly the reason the Jungle Kings had risen to power so quickly was actually due to Dr. Saltzman’s revolutionary drug. “It’s not your fault. They tricked you.”

He looked up. “I should have known better. The night Irene arrived, I had a meeting with them that I’d thought was about my funding for my personal research now that I’d completed their drug. I was so excited to get my research money so Irene and I could start our work. But instead, they told me I had to keep making drugs for them. I was so confused, but finally, I put together what was going on. What I’d thought was a drug I’d created to help people was now being used in ways to harm people. I’d been duped. I was furious, and I refused to help them and told them I was going to the police. They didn’t like that.”

I scoffed. “I can’t imagine they did.”