Page 3 of Double Take (Cosmic Mates #5)

One month later

As long as she doesn’t see me, no harm done. I’m not going to approach her.

Ensconced in the café across the street from All Fired Up, Bragg watched Faith at work. Seeing a lump of clay take shape into a bowl or a vase fascinated him, but everything she did enthralled him. The better to emulate his progenitor, he had studied every vid of the two of them: their wedding, vacations, charity and art galas.

Hammond acted the loving husband, but, schooled in reading body language, Bragg couldn’t help but notice his indifference and how his eyes had strayed to other women. Hammond had used her with Dark Ops’ blessing.

She deserved better.

Better than me, too. Love wasn’t enough. He had no future to offer her. He’d been forbidden from contacting her in any way. If HQ found out he’d followed her to Terra Nova, his ass would be grass on principle alone. That didn’t take into account the potential damage if someone recognized him.

Bragg impersonated a dead man who’d adopted the disguise of a mild-mannered accountant as cover for being a Dark Ops spook pretending to be a criminal to hide that he probably was a criminal. One misstep could topple the precariously placed dominos and set off a cascade of trouble.

The widow had built a new life on Terra Nova. Bragg needed to accept the situation and move on.

Except he had to see her one last time before letting her go. A farewell visit.

He’d seen her in person once before. How bittersweet it had been. Torture—because he’d realized he wasn’t infatuated—he’d fallen in love.

Alive then, Hammond had needed to be in opposite parts of the world simultaneously. He had a deal going down in Russia but an opportunity to meet with a Chinese spy on a senator’s payroll had arisen. Although risky to send operative and clone into the field at the same time, both meetings were critical, so HQ dispatched Hammond to Moscow and sent Bragg to a Washington charity gala with Faith to rendezvous with the spy.

Did she remember that night? He’d never forgotten the best moment of his life. He squeezed his eyes shut, recalling with vivid detail how he’d held her hand, embraced her as they slow-danced, and stolen a kiss in a vacant moonlit corridor.

Other than a quick meeting with the spy, he’d spent the entire glorious evening with her until he’d been forced to catch a red-eye for a “business trip.” HQ had forbidden him to go home with her. And, despite his numerous affairs, Hammond probably would have objected to his stand-in sleeping with his wife.

Not that Bragg would have done so. While Dark Ops blurred moral lines, he liked to think he maintained some integrity.

Or so he told himself.

Inside the shop, Faith paused, removing her hands from the clay to scan the street. He held his breath, even though he’d concealed his appearance with dark glasses and a growth of scruff. If she noticed him, he would appear to be a stranger enjoying an alfresco snack at a café.

He bit into his tasteless sandwich, and she returned to her pottery.

After Marshall had mentioned Cosmic Mates, he’d checked her profile. Seeing her status marked “pending,” an indication she had an open match request, had given him heart palpitations. When her profile had disappeared altogether, he’d nearly had a full-on heart attack, fearing she’d accepted the match.

She deserved happiness. It couldn’t be with him, so why not with somebody else? Would he condemn her to a life of loneliness because that’s what he faced? No.

But he had to see her in person one more time.

Kicking himself every which way to Wednesday, he’d submitted a furlough request. Regulations allotted clones one month of leave per year, and he had five months of unused time on the books. However, since he’d had to replace a dead man; he couldn’t venture just anywhere. HQ had held up his leave until he’d presented an acceptable, i.e. secure, itinerary—a trip to Patagonia, Argentina. South America was far from Hammond’s normal milieu, so it was unlikely anyone would recognize him.

With the agency’s own regulations on his side, HQ approved the furlough but granted him only five weeks instead of the five months he’d requested.

He’d bided his time in Patagonia until he was reasonably sure no one had followed him and then caught a jumper to Buenos Aires, where he’d booked a space flight to Terra Nova.

He’d spent a week in Willow Wood, becoming a regular at the café where he could watch her from a safe distance. It made him feel like a creepy stalker, but he couldn’t openly approach her.

It wasn’t just the rules forbidding contact. Bragg wasn’t long for the world.

Impersonating a man with few friends but a long list of bitter enemies, he was a dead man walking. It was only a matter of time before one of the many people who would see Hammond dead succeeded in killing his body double.

One day, Bragg would bite the big one. Depending on the situation, HQ might substitute a replacement clone or retire the Hammond persona. But it wouldn’t matter to him because he would be dead.

He finished his snack just as she finished her project.

She cut the vase from the potter’s wheel and carried it into the back room, where it would probably dry on a shelf awaiting bisque-firing. His obsession with the pottery artist had led him to learn quite a bit about pottery. A customer entered the shop, and Faith emerged. She showed the woman different styles of pottery. The indecisive buyer took her sweet time making a choice. Finally, she settled on what appeared to be a soup tureen. A practical choice.

All Faith’s pottery was beautiful—he’d perused her wares on the HyperSphere—but Bragg liked his purchase the most. The uniqueness of the uneven shape of the colorful low bowl had appealed to him from the moment he’d spotted it in her virtual store. Nothing else she’d ever created looked like it. As a carbon copy of another human being, he valued unique design. He’d brought the bowl with him, unwilling to leave it behind at HQ. He set it out on the dresser in the room he’d booked at the Happy Night Inn.

The customer left with her bagged purchase, and Amity breezed into the shop. The two women greeted each other with a hug, and then Amity made shooing motions. Faith shook her head. Amity shooed more vigorously.

Then Faith gave a shrug and a capitulating headshake. Collecting her purse and a cloth bag, she left the shop. Despite her seeming reluctance to leave, she had a smile on her face and a spring in her step as she strolled down the narrow main street of the village.

Keeping his distance, Bragg followed. At a stand outside a tiny market, she purchased vegetables and a loaf of bread, which she stowed in her bag.

Leaving the grocer’s, she seemed to sense him, pausing to scan the street behind her. Quickly, he bent to pet a dog tied to a tree. He held his breath until she resumed walking. Cursing his stupidity, his lack of willpower, he followed at a safer distance.

He could see her relax as she came to her residence, a storybook stone cottage with a thatched roof, fronted by a garden of flowers in springtime bloom. A ginger cat in the window leaped down as she strode up the flagstone path to the arched wooden door.

The animal curled around her legs as she entered the cottage. He caught a glimpse of a cozy, comfortable parlor.

“Did you miss me, Rusty?” She picked up the cat and closed the door.

Bragg wondered if she’d brought the cat from Earth or had acquired it here. Hammond hadn’t liked animals; in particular, he’d hated cats. Bragg got a tiny zing of satisfaction at the notion she had acquired something her late husband would have objected to.

He applauded how she’d opened her own shop and pursued the art Hammond had dismissed as “folly.” Had she any inkling how disparaging he’d been? Bragg did. Hammond had often mocked his wife’s efforts.

She had the freedom to create. But, was she happy? Faith lived a solitary life, friend and cat notwithstanding. Government edict kept Terra Nova agrarian, purposefully undeveloped and low-tech. The village of Willow Wood, while quaint and charming, offered little in the way of excitement, attractions, or amenities. Terra Nova was the place you fled to when you wanted to go off the grid.

It killed him to contemplate her remarrying, but she deserved a full, happy life with a good man who loved her. Her solitary single state seemed to indicate she still grieved. The bastard wasn’t worth it. A single tear shed was one tear too many.

But she joined Cosmic Mates.

Didn’t that signify an interest in dating?

Except Cosmic Mates didn’t hook people up with dates but with spouses , generally aliens. The program had been started on Caradonia, a planet in dire need of women after a nano-virus decimated the female population. After the matchmaking program’s tremendous success, Caradonian Governor-General Krogan had franchised it.

Faith had signed up and gotten a match.

Then she’d deleted her profile. Had she gotten cold feet, or had she accepted the match? In the week he’d been in Willow Wood, he’d observed no evidence of a man in her life, but what if Mr. Pending had become Mr. Confirmed and was enroute to Terra Nova? His heart stuttered with renewed despair. She has a right to be happy with someone else. She deserves it. He loved her to the depths of his being. Shouldn’t her happiness satisfy him?

I never should have come. Seeing her emphasized the bleakness of his existence. He should leave Terra Nova, return to work, and forget her. There was a ship going to Earth in the morning. If he hurried, he could book a passage.

Be happy, Faith. Be happy.

He turned and strode away.

Halfway down the tree-lined cobblestone lane, his feet did a pivot.

Don’t do it. Don’t do it.

Instead, his feet increased the pace, marching up the flagstone path to the cottage, whereupon he rapped on the arched door.

It opened, and she stood there in the flesh.

“Mark?” Color drained from her face, and she collapsed in a faint.