EXCERPT FROM DOUBLING DOWN
©2017 Bianca D’Arc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter One
“Nice job,” Jay complimented his teammate out loud rather than using the pathway between their minds that had been forged by a series of experiments.
He and Zach had been best friends even before volunteering as a team for an experimental program run on the down low by the U.S. military Spec Ops division. They’d been a highly decorated sniper-spotter team before the treatment that had changed their lives forever. They still operated as a sniper team, but they no longer needed to communicate in words.
They could literally read each other’s minds. Not anybody else’s. This special ability was just between the two of them. As it was between several other pairs of soldiers in their elite black ops unit.
Officially, they didn’t exist. Unofficially, they were the go-to group for impossible missions. The ghosts in the machine of the U.S. Special Forces.
Right now, they were off duty and between missions. They still reported to the base every day for training and the ongoing testing they’d agreed to when they volunteered for this special unit, but their downtime was spent in town or at home.
They lived together, as most of the teams in their unit had chosen to do. Sharing a brain with someone meant it was a lot easier to share living space as well. And cheaper, if that was a consideration.
For Jay, the money didn’t matter as much as to some of the other guys. He’d inherited a bundle, which was split with his older brother, Mike, who was also part of the unit. Mike partnered with his best friend, Peter Foster. There was a long history between the two families. Their dads had been in business together, though Mike and Jay’s dad had been the silent partner.
When both their dads had passed, Peter ended up with fifty percent of the company that bore his name, Foster Electronics. Mike and Jay had split the remaining fifty, which still amounted to a considerable sum.
Which is why Jay was footing the bill for the luxury apartment he shared with Zach. Closer than brothers—even twins—thanks to the experiments they had participated in, it was natural for Jay to share everything he had with Zach. They were two sides of the same coin. Two halves of a whole. What was Jay’s was Zach’s and he knew that went both ways.
Including their taste in women.
That was the real dilemma. Every team in the unit had watched carefully when Mike and Peter had claimed their woman, Lilly. Somehow, she had gone a long with their trio relationship, and the guys had never seemed happier. Jay knew for a fact that Lilly was happy too.
Jay thought of her as his sister in law, even though she’d married Peter on paper. Mike had said they’d flipped a coin and Peter won, but Mike didn’t seem to mind too much. She was part of their little family now and all three of them lived together.
They were happy. Which gave the rest of the guys in the unit hope that they might be able to find a special woman willing to put up with the pairings that could never be split up.
As far as any of them knew, what had been done to them was irreversible. They would go through life as a pair and have to figure out a way to the happy.
It was a big sacrifice, but all of the guys who had volunteered had been carefully screened. To a man, the pairs had been close friends with complimentary skills and points of view. They had shared their outlook on life and had proven their friendships over and over before the Army agreed to take them into the special unit. They’d gone through a battery of psychological testing, as well as physical examinations and extensive genetic and brain scans.
The teams were forever and after creating their unit, the military had stopped creating new teams and had begun studying the results in fine detail. Nobody else would undergo the treatment until the results of this multi-year study were in and had been digested on every level.
For now, Jay and Zack were part of an elite, top secret unit. The rules had been bent to allow one woman—and one woman only—to be let in on the secret for each team. Which was why the duos had to be extremely careful about who they dated and who they ultimately chose for a lifelong partner.
The woman had to be super special and willing to put up with having two men in her life—and in her bed—for the price of one, as it were. Which was why Jay was congratulating Zach on making the first move, and finally asking Becky Guthrie out on a date.
They’d both been eying her for a while now, but they’d held back, studying her, trying to figure out if she could handle both of them. Then they’d had to work out whether or not she was attracted to one of them over the other. Jay had kissed her last night. Just a quick peck that could have turned into something more, if he’d tried, but he and Zach had agreed to take things slow.
They didn’t want to mess this up. Becky could be the one, and this was too important to screw up by moving too quickly. So Jay had kissed her goodnight and today, Zach had finally asked her out and she’d agreed.
Nice work, indeed. Everything was proceeding according to plan.
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