Page 6 of Double Take

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 theHammond 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. Thebastard 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 withdatesbut withspouses, 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.Heloved 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.

Chapter Four

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