Page 7 of Double Take

Faith came to stretched out on her settee. In the chair across from her sat her very-much-alive husband, his brows drawn into an uncharacteristic, worried frown.

It’s him. It’s really him. How is this possible? Where has he been? How did he find me?

She’d identified his body at the morgue! There’d been a funeral.

“You—you—” With dread, she sprang upright to stare at the husband she’d once loved and then grown to fear and hate.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You passed out.”

He’s the one. He’s the one you’ve been waiting for,whispered that inner voice to her shock and dismay.

Mark wasnotthe one.

If he assumed he could waltz in and resume their marriage, he could crawl back under the rock where he’d been hiding. She had a death certificate, and he could stay dead! “What the hell is going on?”

A muscle ticked in his cheek, and his lying brown eyes looked tormented.

Up to his old tricks. Well, I won’t be fooled this time.

“Where have you been? Who was that at the morgue?” she said and then dropped her jaw when Rusty, the cat who’d come with the cottage, jumped up and settled on his lap. Instead of flinging it off, he let the cat stay and stroked his striped ginger fur. Mark hated cats. He was the type of monster who’d drown kittens for kicks.

“That was Mark Hammond. Your husband is dead.”

“Then who does that make you?”

“His clone. My name is John Bragg.”

“His clone?” She snorted. “Oh, that’s a good one.” He must really have a low opinion of her intelligence. She supposed he had reason to think her stupid, considering how long it took her to realize what a cold, manipulative, lying SOB he was.

“Cloning has been occurring for decades,” he said.

“Yes, it has.” But for animals, not humans, although one company advertised it would extract and store your child’s DNA, so you could grow a replacement in the tragic event the first one died. Commercialism at its crassest.

She curled her lip. “First of all—who would bother to replicate you?” One man like him was more than enough. “Second, for the sake of argument, let’s assume you are a copy—you’d still be a child. My husband would be forty-one. Excuse me, but you look way older than five years old, older than forty-one even.”

Haggard. Heavy scruff darkened his jaw. Red rimmed his brown eyes. His full lips had yet to crack a smile. After she’d had the misfortune to get to know him, she’d discovered her husband never smiled out of genuine goodwill or friendliness. But mocking, plastic grins? Those were his trademark.

“The government has developed an accelerated cloning process. I became a mature adult a year before your husband died.”

She jumped when the tea kettle shrieked. “I was going to have a cup of tea. I’d offer you one, but I know you don’t drink it.”Who wants to drink dirty water?he used to say.

“I’d take a cup.”

Like drinking tea would convince her of anything. She knew her own husband. Oh, how she wished she didn’t.

“Especially if you add a shot of whiskey,” he added.

Whiskey didn’t sound like a bad idea under the circumstances. “Do you take anything else in your tea?”

“Just tea.”

She fixed two cups then carried them into the parlor, along with a bottle of scotch. She plunked the bottle on the low table in front of him, and he added a shot. She poured a measure into her own cup.

She raised the fortified tea to her mouth. “This proves nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“You drinking tea.”

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