Chapter 18

Josh stared at Dixon,stunned into silence.

This makes no sense.

Except when he thought about it? Yeah, it did. When Detective Marsh had tried to talk to Josh—before the feds had shown up—he'd asked the same question over and over.

And what did you find besides the body?

Like the body hadn't been enough?

At last Josh found his voice. "How did he die?" When Dixon didn't reply, Josh glared at him. "Tell me."

Dixon sighed. "They found him in a burned-out car, handcuffed to the steering wheel." He paused. "On ground near a deserted property in Racine."

Josh widened his eyes. "The same place we found?—"

Dixon nodded.

Then the knowledge hit Josh, crashed into him, robbing him of breath for a moment.

Another horrible death that is somehow centered around me.

What was to say he hadn't just set the wheels in motion for yet more deaths, by telling them about the project?

Josh pushed his chair back, stood, and stepped away from the table, unable to stop the tremors that coursed through him. "This is my fault, isn't it?" The three men gaped at him, all wearing identical masks of horror, but he wasn't about to let them dissuade him. "And don't tell me it isn't, okay? All those people at the mall died because of me. Tanner died. Now Marsh is dead." He wrung his hands. "It all leads back to me, doesn't it?" Ice trickled down his spine. "And now that you know about this mess…." He couldn't bring himself to put his fears into words.

This wasn't right. It couldn't be.

"I should go." Josh headed for the door, his stomach in turmoil. Gary and Michael both called out after him, but he didn't stop.

What brought him to a halt was a pair of strong arms that enfolded him, and he couldn't fight those. He didn't even want to. What he wanted was to let that strength flow into him, make him stronger.

Make him hold on for a little longer.

Dixon pulled him close. "Listen to me, Doc." His voice was low and urgent. "This isn't your fault. You did not kill anyone. Okay, so they might be targeting you, but not one bit of this is because of you, do you hear me?"

Josh melted into Dixon's arms, needing the closeness, Dixon's strength. "I can't do this. I just can't."

"Then don't," Dixon whispered. "Let go of it. Let me shoulder this for you."

Oh, how Josh wanted to do that. He would have given anything not to see that little boy when he closed his eyes at night. Not to see the boy's shattered mother. It didn't matter that he'd directed his lawyer to find out everything about the people who'd died, and to ensure their families had nothing financial hanging over their heads. He paid for the funerals, then paid off any outstanding mortgages, credit cards, and loans. He took away anything that would add to their burdens. In the grand scheme of things, he knew his efforts amounted to very little, especially considering what they'd lost, but he also knew he'd done it in the hopes of assuaging his own guilt.

Newsflash. It hadn't.

"I don't want anyone else hurt," Josh whispered. Pain seared his heart.

"Dixon, take him to your rooms." Michael's voice was gentle. "Josh, we'll talk more about this later, okay? But right now you need to… decompress a little."

Decompress? As if.

Dix encouragedDoc to lie down on the bed before pulling the blanket over him. It almost killed him when Doc broke down sobbing.

He's a gentle soul. This is tearing him apart, and I can't stop it.

Dix couldn't help feeling bad about Marsh's horrific death, even if he had badgered Dix about his role in this whole debacle. Except horrific didn't even come close. Agent Chalmers had intimated that Marsh would have been alive when the vehicle was set ablaze, hence the handcuffs.

Doc didn't need Dix to tell him that. He was no fool. He could read between the lines.

"I'm sorry," Doc whispered.

Dix's simmering anger rolled and boiled until it was white-hot rage.

If this isn't the work of the government, who else stands to gain from hurting Doc?

Or was the goal something else?

He stroked Doc's forehead. "I already told you, this isn't your fault." Dix did his best to keep his voice soft. He toed off his shoes, then slid under the blanket beside Doc, wrapping his arms about the slender body. One word filled his head.

Protocol.

What would be protocol in situations like these? In Dix's younger days, he'd have gone and beaten the crap out of someone to solve his problems. Unfortunately—or should that be fortunately?—that wasn't an option.

Doc needed him to use his head for this one, which was tricky. With his big body and overly large fists, Dix wasn't really equipped for an intellectual approach. He was more about using intimidation to get what he wanted.

Then Doc rolled over and nestled into Dix's embrace, his face buried in Dix's chest. Dix ran his hands over Doc's back, remembering how it had arched the previous night, recalling how Doc had cried out Dix's name while Dix moved in and out of that deliciously tight body.

I am totally fucking ensnared.

Not that he wasn't before, but now? He had to protect Doc. Even if it was from himself.

Dix held Doc close, breathing in his familiar scent. "I've got to be honest with you, okay? I know you don't believe me when I say none of this is your fault. Your mind is wired differently than most people's. It has to extract and dissect every angle, doing your best to figure out what you could—not should—have done differently. But see, that's the problem here. You're one of the smartest men in the world?—"

"There are a lot of people smarter than me," Doc interjected, his voice muffled.

Dix kissed the top of his head. "Shut up. This is my story, okay?" When Doc remained silent, he continued. "As I was saying, you're one of the smartest men on the planet, and you need to know why things happen the way they do. Your brain will churn the information over and over, until you get something useful out of it." He raised Doc's chin with a couple of fingers, until Doc looked him in the eye. "But the thing you need to understand is, nothing will ever make sense. Maybe in the broadest terms, sure, but not with the little stuff you're sweating. You have to understand there will always be that one variable you can't account for. The X factor. And if you dwell on it, that sucker will keep tripping you up." Dix kissed him on the lips. "Not everything is an equation that can be solved, Doc. Sometimes in life, we have to accept that and move on."

And you need to believe that, Doc.

Josh didn't wantto accept it. That little boy's face kept rising up, staring at him accusingly, and with it came that still small inner voice, admonishing him that if he'd done something years ago, well before the kid was ever born, then he wouldn't have had to die.

Both the specter and the voice weren't wrong. Why did I wait? Why was I only worried about myself and my family? If he'd been thinking in broader terms?—

"Stop that," Dixon demanded.

Josh blinked. "Excuse me?"

Dixon snorted. "You think I don't know you well enough by now to have an idea what's rattling around inside that amazing brain?" He gripped Josh's shoulders. "Did you make mistakes? Maybe. Who can say for sure? That right there is another one of those variables. You can't know what might have happened if you'd taken a different path. Maybe the government wouldn't have backed off, and right now you and your family would be dead. Maybe they would have stopped, but honestly? I doubt it. People like that? They rarely ever just stop."

Josh stared at him. "How'd you know what I was worried about?"

"Because you mutter." Dixon smiled. "Bet you didn't know that, did you?"

"I don't mutter," he retorted. That made him sound like some bumbling professor, or even worse, one of those people he passed in the street who ambled along, having long conversations with an invisible friend.

Dixon widened his eyes. "You're forever talking to yourself. Which I understand completely, by the way." Another smile. "If you want a genius solution, you need to talk to the resident genius."

"I do not mutter," Josh repeated, aghast at the suggestion. Do I?

"I didn't record it, which in hindsight, I now see was a mistake, but I can't tell you the number of times I've stopped in the lab to see you and found you poring over something or other, talking to yourself about what you found or what you were seeing."

I did that? How mortifying.Josh made a mental note to keep a check on himself in the future.

"And when you were doing that, I never bothered you because it was another thing I saw that made me…." Dixon sighed. "I'd never met another person like you. You're amazing. You can be kind of aloof. While you're working on something, your head is in the clouds." Dixon kissed him again, then peered into his eyes. "You're a fascinating man, Dr. Joshua Malone, and I can't tell you how grateful I am that we met."

The words were uttered with such vehemence that Josh believed them wholeheartedly. Not that he was fascinating, but that Dixon perceived him in that way.

"You're not so bad yourself." Josh cupped Dixon's cheek. Then he sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm trying so hard to be clinical about all this, to hold on to nothing but the facts, but I've never had to watch people die like that." He swallowed. "It's burned into my brain, and it won't go."

Dixon took Josh's hand and kissed his palm. "Then don't try to force it. You need to accept what happened, but use it as fuel to keep you moving forward. I'm not telling you to forget that little boy, because he's the anger burning inside you, the very thing that'll help you when you're hacking to get your answers." He pulled Josh closer, and Josh snuggled against his firm body. "I need to share something with you. In my time with the military, I've seen dead bodies. Lots of them. And like you, I grew detached from it, because that was the only way for me to retain my sanity. It was part of the reason I wanted to get out of the mall that day. Seeing that kid? It drove a spike into my brain, and right now he's the one I'm fighting for, because even though I don't think it's gonna happen, I want him to be the last person who dies because of whoever is doing this." Another sweet kiss. "The one good thing to come out of that meeting with Gary and Michael? You've finally told your story, and that must make you feel better. Because the weight you've carried all these years is now being carried by all of us, not just you."

Josh's heart quaked.

Oh hell.

"Dixon?"

Something in the way Doc said his name had the hairs rising on Dix's arms, and he had no idea why. Then he saw Doc's expression, and whatever optimism he'd felt died. "What's wrong?"

Doc sighed. "I didn't tell you, Gary, and Michael everything."

What the fuck?

"But you said?—"

"I know I said I would, okay? But…." Doc took a deep breath. "There are things that they—especially Michael—aren't ready to know."

Right then, Dix didn't want to know either, judging by Doc's grave demeanor.

"That bad?"

Doc shivered. "Worse. After I found out about the so called ‘accident,' I dug deeper. And then I saw the autopsy reports. There were pictures too." Another hard swallow. "I sanitized it by saying they'd died of the toxins, but that wasn't the full truth. It made everything sound benign, but what they did?" Doc's eyes were full of pain. "It was torture, pure and simple."

Dix girded himself. "Tell me."

"The toxin didn't kill people instantly. It never does. According to everything I read, first it made the ‘subject' experience a… sensation." Doc grimaced. "They'd feel as if their skin was on fire."

Oh dear Lord.

"They couldn't wash it off, though," Doc continued. "They had to have been so terrified, because they tried scratching the skin, ripping the flesh down to the muscle in some cases."

Dix's stomach roiled. "That's sick."

Another shiver rippled through Doc. "I wish that was the worst of it. About an hour after exposure, their lungs would fill with fluid. They literally drowned as their bodies betrayed them."

"But if they wanted people to die and leave the town untouched, why?—?"

"It was the first trial. These people were lab rats, nothing more. There were other tests scheduled on progressively larger towns, followed by a city. They'd committed atrocities on a hundred fifty people, but their main goal was to test it on one of three places—Chicago, Tucson, or Tulsa."

Dix wanted to throw up. "How could they expect to get away with that?"

"If they were ever in danger of being discovered, they'd put together a story that would do a science fiction writer proud. We're talking underground canisters filled with a type of nerve gas, left behind from World War Two, buried. Decades later, the canisters began to crack, flooding the water table. Their contents were released in small doses into the air. The people would never know, until it was too late to do anything about it." He shivered. "Some cover story, huh?"

"And this was our government?"

"It wasn't the federal government," Doc told him. "Well, not entirely. There were people involved throughout all levels of government, from local to national. They'd start small, perhaps with a city council's elections, knowing it would pave the way to bigger and better things."

"But why would anyone even contemplate doing something so… heinous?" That was the part Dix couldn't get his head around.

"They believed that war was imminent and that this time there would be mass casualties. They sought to take a city without using force and make it their new base of operations for the government." Doc shrugged. "Think of it like North versus South, but this time with access to much deadlier weapons. They could explode missiles over areas like Iran, China, Russia. Anyone they deemed the enemy could be systematically destroyed."

Everything Doc was saying chilled Dix to the bone, and it took a lot to generate that intense a reaction.

To think there are people out there who are so evil, they'd willingly kill to get what they want.

He could understand why Doc hadn't told Gary and Michael. Gary was coping with his own problems. Despite everything Michael had seen and dealt with, he was a good person at heart who clearly thought he was ready for the realities of life. Gary and Dix had seen those realities. Hell, they'd been smacked in the face by them enough times. No, Michael certainly wasn't ready.

But even the cruelest people Dix had dealt with seemed to have a human side, some kind of line they wouldn't cross. Usually the death of kids was off the table, but this group? They didn't see it like that, apparently. All they appeared to see were insignificant things to be squashed beneath their heels on their climb to the top.

"Doc?"

"Yeah?"

"When you're doing your… research, find out what happened to those people who'd been part of this group. There must be something you can learn. Maybe one of them would have an idea of what's happening now."

"Okay, I will." He sat up, but Dix pulled him back down and held him. Doc frowned. "I need to get up. I've got stuff to do, remember?"

Dix stroked his hair. "Rest first, okay?" Doc's frown deepened, and Dix leaned in to kiss him. "Do it for me. You've been running on fumes for too long. Get some sleep, and I'll find you something to eat for when you wake up and?—"

"No."

Dix blinked. "Excuse me?"

Doc stuck his chin out. "If I'm going to rest, I need you here with me. You…. You keep the nightmares at bay, and I need that right now."

There was no way Dix would argue. Instead, he wrestled the two of them under the comforter and snuggled in. He kissed Doc on the head. "Then let's rest for now. When we wake up, we can start figuring out what's happening here. Okay?"

"Sounds good." Doc rested his head on Dix's chest. "And thank you."

You don't need to thank me, Doc. Not now, not ever.

Because even if they weren't together, Dix would kill to protect the precious man he held in his arms.