The Body Shifters (Book 1 Body Shifters Trilogy): A Novel (The Body Shifters Trilogy)

by Leslie O'Kane

  Daniel gestured at Jake to keep his voice down, then turned up the radio, making sure that the neighbors couldn’t overhear. Daniel clenched his fists and seemed to be trying to use his one-inch height advantage to menace Jake. “We need to pull Ellie out of ABTC!”

  “But I don’t want—” Ellie began.

  “When you’re a lowly intern,” Jake interrupted, “and the doctor who runs the entire research facility says: ‘Give me names of female patients who’ve recovered from comas in the last two months,’ you never look twice at the coma patients who died from their injuries. You don’t investigate an Alexis ‘Baxter’ who died over a month ago.”

  “Maybe not, but that doesn’t guarantee that the intern never tallied the number of recovered patients!” Daniel countered. “If he notices that the list of recovered coma patients went from, say, twenty names this morning to nineteen names this afternoon, the only viable explanation is that someone’s tampered with the data. Which means all three of us are in jeopardy!”

  “No, it doesn’t. All four of the interns are bottom-feeders who are just trying to avoid making a big enough mistake to get the boot. The last thing Jennifer wants to do is raise anyone’s curiosity by hinting that this particular assignment is anything more than busy work. Trust me. If the beleaguered intern notices there’s one fewer coma-recovery patient, he assumes he made a mistake. Period. He doesn’t tell a soul.”

  “So in other words,” Daniel scoffed, “you want us to stake Ellie’s life on McBitch intimidating her researcher into doing a cruddy job.”

  “Yes! I know these interns personally. They’re scared of Jennifer, and they’re losers!”

  “What are their names?” Daniel asked.

  “I don’t remember. Why?”

  “Because I know you, and you assume everyone is ‘a loser’ till proven otherwise.” He turned to face Ellie. “You can’t go back to ABTC, Ellie. It’s too risky.”

  Before Ellie could protest a second time, Jake said, “It’s much more risky to have Elizabeth Peterson suddenly quit after just one day of work. Jennifer McGavin isn’t looking for Ellie Montgomery right under her nose! From the McGavins’ perspective, Ellie’s in the unlikeliest . . . and therefore the safest place she can be. Unless, that is, the teenager that Jennifer just hired were to suddenly vanish. Just like I disappeared last month, after they tested my invention on me.”

  Ellie nodded. “I think I should—”

  “You’re wrong, Jake! You’re being stupid and—”

  “You’re the one who’s being stupid! If you—”

  “Stop it!” Ellie cried, stamping her foot. “You keep cutting me off! This is hard enough without having to listen to you two at each other’s throats all the time!”

  “Sorry,” Jake muttered unconvincingly.

  “Apologies,” Daniel said, sounding no more apologetic than Jake had.

  “This is my decision, not yours! I’m the one who has to live in Alexis’s body for the rest of my life! I’m never going to feel safe until I know the McGavins are behind bars. If we ever get them there, that is. I’m going to stay put at ABTC as long as I can make progress.”

  “That’s a bad decision, Ellie,” Daniel said. “They’re an inch away from finding you out. You’re not a trained spy or a stage actress. You’re going to give yourself away.”

  “The McGavins don’t suspect me. To them, I’m just a kid who’s there to enter data about Alzheimer’s patients. But bringing the McGavins to justice means everything to me. Everything.”

  “Ellie’s right,” Jake said. “We have to respect her decision.”

  “I do respect it,” Daniel said. “But she’s wrong. Meanwhile, you’re going to get us all killed by ignoring basic, common sense.”

  “So bail out on us, then,” Jake fired back. “We’ll find another apartment. You and your scuzzy, low-life friends can make us another set of fake documents. You can quit posing as Ellie’s phony half-brother.”

  “You’re the one who needs to get out!” Daniel retorted. “You’re the one who’s going to get us all killed!”

  Daniel and Jake glared at each other with unmasked fury, their hands fisted, and their stances toe-to-toe.

  “Stop it!” Ellie wedged herself between the two men. “Are you going to kill each other? The McGavins would love that!”

  She looked at their faces. Both men were breathing heavily. For a moment, she was afraid the Daniel was going to throw a punch at Jake in spite of her. Instead, he pivoted and stormed out of the apartment.

  “Daniel?” Ellie called, running to the door. She felt terrible. He’d been so sweet to her all afternoon, so supportive when she was so frightened. If only she’d never shown up at his door in the first place! Now his life was in jeopardy.

  “Let him go,” Jake said. “He’ll be back. He needs some time to cool off. So do I.”

  What about me? Ellie thought. Where do I go now? What do I do? She opened the door and stepped into the hallway. He was entering the stairwell. “Daniel?” she called again.

  He kept walking, ignoring her. She watched till the heavy door to the stairwell closed behind him. It took all of her self-control not to chase after him.

  Her eyes were stinging with tears as she shut and locked Daniel’s apartment door behind her. “He should cut and run,” she blurted out. “He should just run the hell away. Move to Europe or South America.”

  “No, Ellie.” Their gazes met, and for an instant, he had such a sad look on his face she could almost believe that his dark brown eyes were about to fill with tears. “That’s what you should do.”

  “If that’s really how you feel, why did you tell Daniel that I was safe as long as I’m right underneath the McGavins’ noses?”

  “You are safe. For the time being. Another week or two. Tops.” Jake strode across the room. He reached inside his bedroom door and retrieved a gym bag, which he set down in front of Ellie.

  “There’s over forty grand in here,” Jake said. “That will get you a fresh start someplace where they can’t find you. Take it and go, Ellie.”

  “No!”

  “If you’re afraid to go alone, I’m sure Daniel will be willing to escort you anyplace you want to relocate. In Europe or South America. I’m the only one the McGavins can physically identify. Provided they never see me with you or Daniel, you’ll both be in the clear. So, if you don’t leave, I will. I’ll hole up in some other apartment. Probably in Maryland, so I’ll still be near ABTC, but there won’t be a tie to my phony Virginia driver’s license.”

  She was so angry she could barely stand to look at him. “You obviously planned this announcement. You intentionally drove Daniel away! It feels to me like you just didn’t want to share the spotlight with Daniel. That you wanted to be the one to tell me to run for cover while you alone risk your life. Nobody likes a martyr, Jake.”

  Jake crossed his arms and glared at her. “Yeah? Well, nobody likes getting murdered, either. And that’s what could happen if you continue to associate with me.”

  Torn, Ellie’s thoughts raced. Should she take the money and build a new life for herself? Jake was probably right that Daniel could create yet another identity for her—one that would allow her to get into a college in Europe.

  But what about her mother? Was she never going to talk to her mom again? If she fled the country, she would have to abandon her mother forever; all the McGavins had to do was alert officials that she had a fake passport, and she’d never get back into the States. Even if she could get around that and return to the U.S., the McGavins would tail her. She’d put her mother in jeopardy.

  An instant later, Ellie had a chilling realization: her mother’s life was already in danger. The McGavins wanted to get to Jake; his family members thought he was dead, so taking one of them hostage would risk letting the cat out of the bag for all of Jake’s family members and friends. Her mom knew that there was a teenager by the name of Alexis Bixby who claimed to be her daughter, and all of their friends already knew a
killer was on the loose.

  “It’s too late,” Ellie said in a half whisper. “The McGavins can get to me through my mom, and they can get to you through me. If they kidnap her, what choice will I have but to surrender you to them?”

  “No, it’s going to be . . .” He let his voice fade as if he’d put two and two together. “Even if they discover you’re still alive, they won’t know that you have the slightest idea of who I am. As long as you don’t know where I am, neither you nor your mom are of any value to them.”

  “That’s like saying I’m safe from my mom getting kidnapped, because I don’t have the money to cover the ransom. The McGavins and their henchman wouldn’t care whether or not they kidnapped my mom for no reason. If she leads them to me and then to you, they’ll be in great shape. If not, they’ll kill her without compunction.”

  “Just leave now and—”

  “And I won’t even know my mother’s life is at stake till after they’ve killed her,” Ellie interrupted. “You won’t be able to stop the McGavins all on your own, Jake. It’s going to be all but impossible as it is. As long as they’re free to try to shift themselves into others’ bodies, my life is always going to be in jeopardy. So is my mother’s life.”

  Jake gestured at the duffle bag. “But if you . . .” His voice faded as if he was unable to come up with a sufficient counter-argument.

  “I’m not willing to live the rest of my life running from them,” Ellie continued. “Neither are you. Meanwhile, there are at least the two of them teamed up against you, so you need me.” Although it pained her to say it, she gritted her teeth and added, “And I need you.”

  Looking stricken, Jake dragged his fingers through his dark brown hair, his eyes wide as he obviously allowed her words to register. “I never meant for any of this to happen to you, Ellie. I still don’t know what else I could have done, but I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be in this predicament.”

  “I shouldn’t be. But I am. It’s like Daniel said when we first arrived. ‘What’s done is done.’ He’s evening up the score for what he did to you. All three of us need to be a united front. Otherwise, we might as well give up right now.”

  Jake picked up his gym bag. Ellie held her breath. If he walked out the door, she was going to scream.

  He walked into his bedroom. She heard a thud as he chucked the bag into his closet. When he still hadn’t reemerged from the room a minute or two later, Ellie peered through the doorway. He was sitting on his makeshift bed, holding his head in his hands.

  She felt a pang of sorrow for him. Maybe, if their positions had been reversed, she’d have done exactly the same thing—swapped out the memory download devices. Yet Daniel was trying his best to make amends toward Jake, and his life was endangered as a direct result. He was the one who recognized that she was “an innocent bystander.” He was the one who pledged to help her.

  She had to let Daniel know how much she appreciated that. She wanted to be the first person that Daniel saw whenever he returned—even if that meant she’d spend the whole night, waiting by the door. Grabbing her Physics book, she called out, “I’m going to study in the lobby, okay?”

  Jake, she knew, would know at once that she was siding with Daniel. The building’s “lobby” consisted of one chair placed between the elevator and the front door.

  Even so, Jake gave no reply.

  Chapter 19

  In the school gym the next day, Ellie stood next to Natalie in front of a basketball hoop. Ellie was glad to feel reasonably alert after such a difficult, angst-filled night.

  Daniel had returned about an hour into her vigil by the front door of the apartment building. He’d eyed her textbook and quipped, “Are you afraid you’ll wreck Elizabeth Peterson’s flawless-but-fictional GPA?” She’d chuckled, then told him that she wanted him to know that she had no idea what she’d have done if not for him. He’d brushed off her praise, which she understood; heart-felt compliments were embarrassing. But, if she was being honest with herself, she’d been disappointed in Daniel’s he’s-the-one-who’s-being-a-jerk attitude.

  Now, trying to get her mind off Daniel and Jake, she mused to herself that, if she somehow wound up spending an entire semester at this school, she would wreck her GPA with this girls-only P.E. class. Currently they were doing a drill that she’d seen basketball teams use for a warm-up exercise. She and her twenty-or-so classmates were standing in one of two lines at either side of the hoop. The first girl in the left line would pass the basketball to the first girl in the right line, who would try a layup, then both participants would go to the end of the opposite line. Ellie considered it a given that she would be unable to catch the pass, let alone sink a basket; her only goal was not to injure herself or anyone else in the process.

  And yet, when it was her turn, she found herself trotting effortlessly toward the hoop. She caught the ball, banked it off the backboard in perfect synchronization with her steps, and heard the swish of the net as the ball dropped through. She’d never experienced such gracefulness before; in that one moment, she’d felt as if she could fly.

  “Nice job, er, Peterson,” the coach said, glancing down at the class roster on his clipboard.

  Ellie was startled at being called by her last name. It made her feel strangely macho, as if she should say, “Thanks, Coach,” and hitch up her pants, or something.

  Natalie missed her own shot, then rejoined Ellie at the end of the pass-the-ball line. “You’ve done this before, I take it,” Natalie said.

  Maybe so, Ellie thought. It was odd that she could be good at this, and yet was such an inept artist. Was that a function of the muscle groups involved—fine motor skills versus athleticism? They’d started this class by doing wind sprints up and down the court, during which she’d verified that, thanks to Alexis’s tall, lean body, she now had excellent foot speed. “I think it was just . . . beginner’s luck.”

  Natalie snorted. “Well, luck plus having an athletic build.”

  “Thanks.” Ellie couldn’t help but smile. She’d never been complimented for her “build” before, and it felt nice.

  “Too bad this is our only class together,” Natalie said. “Otherwise I’d cook up an excuse, like our needing to study for a test, so that you could invite me over to meet your brother.” Her intonations had that kind of forced breeziness that always made Ellie suspect that the line had been rehearsed.

  “Are you being nice to me just to get to Daniel?”

  “Of course not. That’s one of several reasons.” Natalie released a dramatic sigh and clasped her hands over her heart comically. “I realize I’m too young for him, and that he’s out of my league. I just want to be able to look at him.” When Ellie didn’t respond to Natalie’s antics, she added, “You can invite me over to shoot some baskets.”

  “We don’t have a hoop. Plus, Daniel’s got a loser of a friend who’s crashing on his sofa.”

  “Oh, yeah? Is he cute?”

  Totally. Till he opens his mouth. She did owe Jake some credit. The instant she and Daniel entered the apartment last night, Jake had told Daniel that, from then on out, he was going to set aside their differences. Jake then added, “The way things are going, I could die tomorrow, and I don’t want my epitaph to read: ‘Here lies a guy who could really carry a grudge.’” Daniel had nodded, then shook his hand.

  Pulling herself out of her reverie, Ellie said, “You’re a bit boy crazy, Natalie.”

  “Not really.” She grinned. “It’s more like I’m man crazy.”

  Ellie chuckled. It was her turn at the front of the line. She grabbed the rebound and passed it to the girl heading the other line. Instead of shooting like she was supposed to, the girl threw the ball at the next girl in Ellie’s line—Natalie—who shrieked at a basketball unexpectedly coming right at her face. Ellie managed to deflect the pass and grab the ball.

  The girl who’d made the mistake gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. “Oh, my God. Natalie! I nearly killed you!”

  “Nic
e save, Peterson,” the coach said to Ellie. “Let’s try this again, girls. Pass the ball to Meyers—” He glared at the apologetic girl—“who will shoot a basket this time.”

  Ellie dribbled the ball and passed it to Meyers, who missed her shot.

  How strange, Ellie thought. Five or six days ago, she was stumbling as she walked, trying to get used to this body. Now she had some kind of kinesthetic memory. She was using athletic skills she’d never even known she possessed.

  A moment later, Natalie more or less passed the basketball, then rejoined Ellie at the back of the line. “Thanks for saving my face.” She rolled her eyes and added, “Such as it is.”

  “I happen to like your face.”

  “So do I, actually.” Natalie snorted. “It’s being too short for my weight that I detest.”

  Ellie couldn’t dismiss that comment; she knew how Natalie felt all too well. “I’ll talk to Daniel about inviting you over. Give me a couple of weeks.”

  Natalie beamed at her. “Thanks!”

  Awash in guilt, Ellie had to look away. She doubted she’d still be here in another two weeks. By then, the McGavins would either be under arrest, or they’d be sending the man in the ski mask to kill her—along with Jake and Daniel.

  #

  That afternoon at ABTC, Ellie occupied the data-entry room—a glorified walk-in closet—that held a computer devoted to part-time workers. She was getting more annoyed by the moment at a young employee named Tyler, who was currently sharing the space with her. He was a know-it-all from a high school in D.C., and he never seemed to take his eyes off Ellie’s screen.

  Ostensibly, Ellie was entering data from the Alzheimer’s patients she’d interviewed, but her true purpose was to load spyware onto the computer so that, from a remote location, Daniel would be able to see what was being typed into this keyboard.