Page 1 of Double Take

Chapter One

Fluffy clouds floated across an azure sky on a warm, sunny spring day. Bright-green new growth sprouted from the trees, and flowers nodded their colorful heads in time to a gentle breeze. There couldn’t have been a more perfect setting for a garden wedding.

In a simple white gown accentuating her slender figure, her face aglow with happiness, the bride put the day to shame. There had never been a more beautiful bride.

“Do you, Faith Connor, take Mark Hammond to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward until death do you part?”

“I do.” Her voice trembled with emotion, and her soft, loving gaze didn’t waver.

Bragg’s heart clenched. He loved her so much it hurt.

“And do you, Mark Hammond, take Faith Connor to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward until death do you part?”

“I do.” His deep voice rang out strong, steady, and sure.

Lying rat bastard.

“Then I now pronounce you husband and wife—”

“You’re still watching that vid?”

Bragg nonchalantly shut off the viewer and swiveled in his chair to face his commanding officer. “Just keeping in practice,” he drawled in his predecessor’s lazy, arrogant manner of speaking.

“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Marshall Clark arched a skeptical eyebrow.

He didn’t reply. Anything said would raise suspicion.

“You need to forget her.”

“Is that an order?”

“Friendly advice.”

His CO was no friend. “There’s nothing to forget,” Bragg said.

“In that case, you need to deliver a cache of weapons to Hammond’s RCA contact.” Marshall tossed a computer chip into a low bowl on the utilitarian metal desk.

After his predecessor got killed in the line of duty five years ago, Bragg had stepped into his life, claiming his identity and livelihood—everything the man had, except for his wife, in deviation from standard protocol. Normally, clone agents assumed all aspects of the deceased’s life. However, in this case, Dark Ops had decided it would be advantageous for Hammond to remain legally dead.

Bragg’s gaze drifted to the bowl holding the computer chip with the deets of his assignment.

Colors swirled in the hand-thrown, kiln-fired pottery piece, an anachronism in a world preferring mass-produced, cheap, disposable goods. The bowl represented what he was not. Unique. One of a kind. Priceless.

He was a disposable replica.

Like with Hammond, if Bragg perished, Dark Ops would crank out another who looked, talked, walked, acted just like him. The organization maintained a huge database of DNA collected from citizens around the world. They could replicate anyone. Due to the agency’s top-secret cloning and growth-acceleration techniques, an adult human could be produced in less than a year.

Education and training took a bit longer. Acting coaches helped with that, as did one-on-ones between progenitor and clone. To ensure operation-readiness, clones were produced before the progenitor died.

Bragg had been his progenitor’s understudy for a year before he’d passed.

“I deliver the arms, then what happens?” There was always more to the story. Nothing was ever what it seemed, truth concealed among layers of deception. He wasn’t even sure what team he played for. The good guys and the bad guys were indistinguishable.

“Then the Russian-Chinese Axis releases the prisoners.”

“How many?”

“We’re hoping for ten.”

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