Jack In A Box

by Diane Capri

  Jack In A Box

  Diane Capri

  "Full of thrills and tension, but smart and human, too. Kim Otto is a great, great character – I love her." Lee Child, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Jack Reacher Thrillers

  Diane Capri

  Jack In A Box

  A Book in The Hunt For Reacher series, 2012

  For Lee Child

  1.

  FBI Special Agent Kim Otto's slowly descending eyelids abraded like forty-grit sandpaper along her corneas and rested briefly before ascending in gouging retraction. How long had she been sifting here? The FBI headquarters building was quiet here in the basement. Activity was limited to higher floors where essential matters were handled.

  “What are you missing?” she asked the empty room as if she expected the answer to be revealed, when she expected nothing of the sort. If she was going to find anything at all, she’d have found it long before now. But she couldn’t give up, so she thought it through again.

  She'd begun by searching for general information. Finding none, she'd narrowed her search to the fingerprints. Fingerprints never changed, never disappeared, never failed to identify. Every law enforcement officer knew a fingerprint was worth a thousand eyewitness reports and often better even than DNA.

  But like DNA, fingerprints were only useful when compared to known identities. Law enforcement files around the globe were filled with unidentified prints and DNA. The first order of business was to find proof of positive identity. She'd thought that would be easy. Wrong.

  Jack Reacher must have been fingerprinted by the Army, like every other soldier. Maybe a single set of prints made all those years ago could have been misplaced in the days before computers ruled the world. Or maybe accidentally destroyed somehow.

  Kim thought not.

  Relevant military files were integrated with FBI and other agency files now, Kim knew. But Reacher's army discharge was long before 9/11. Back in those days, government agencies didn't share information in the way they did now. Some old files involving military personnel instead of criminal defendants were not searchable in the various FBI databases Kim had the necessary security clearance to examine without raising the alarms she didn't want to trigger.

  Her plan was to check the military files last because they were the oldest. Her accounting background led her to prioritize the most recent information first, or first in, last out.

  Reacher wasn't an army grunt who'd been drafted, served a quick term, and mustered out. He'd spent thirteen years in service to his country, including his last stint with the military police. As an MP his reference fingerprints would have been routinely used to exclude his prints from those left by witnesses and suspects at crime scenes.

  Kim should have found at least a few Reacher exemplars in the FBI databases. But she hadn't.

  Nor had she really expected to find anything relevant, although she hadn’t abandoned all hope. But her realistic plan was only to confirm her assumption that nothing concerning Jack Reacher existed in FBI files. After that, she and Gaspar could move on to conducting additional interviews with victims, witnesses, reporting parties, and informants. Always assuming they could find any of the above.

  “Coffee. You need a caffeine jolt,” Kim said aloud.

  She stood, eyes closed to avoid the gouging, stretched like a cat, then a downward dog, working the kinks out of her stiff muscles. She heard nothing but her own breathing. She stretched her neck and shoulders again before making her way to the elevator in search of java, nectar of the gods.

  Kim pressed the elevator button and completed another round of stretches while she waited. Lights above the door flashed up and down and up and down, stopping at floors high above. The basement was low priority, below stops where others were consumed by important activity, Kim concluded. The only coffee at this hour would be inside the busiest sectors of the building, places she didn't want to be seen. Yet… She sighed, shrugged, headed for the stairs.

  When she exited on the ground floor her personal cell phone vibrated. She checked the caller ID before answering.

  “Good morning, Dad. You’re up early.”

  2.

  FBI Special Agent Carlos Gaspar had planned to leave early even before the classified envelope arrived containing nothing but a copy of Major Jack (none) Reacher’s formal headshot; on the back, a time and place for a meeting.

  Had Reacher planned the meet? Or was it someone else who wanted Otto and Gaspar present? Either way, the big question was why?

  Nothing traceable about the envelope or its contents. He chased down the delivery service but got no further data. The headshot was easily obtainable by any number of people. Hell, he’d been supplied one just like it when he initially received the Reacher file assignment.

  The time and place for the meet was a bit out of the ordinary, but not alarming. The National Gallery of Art, East Building, on Pennsylvania Avenue. Ten o’clock tonight. It would be dark but not deserted. The building was one of those modern designs full of angles and shadows suitable for clandestine activities. But not a bad neighborhood, unless you hated politicians, and the entire town was infested with those.

  He’d tried to call Otto, but her plane was already in the air and flying straight into an early winter storm. She hated flying under the best conditions; she’d be too wired by the storm and her errand to make any sense, even if he’d reached her. They’d talk tonight. In DC.

  Fifty minutes before he planned to depart, his bag was packed and stowed in the Crown Vic's trunk. He’d dressed in his Banana Republic suit. Gaspar popped another Tylenol, rested on the chaise lounge, and watched his youngest daughter from behind mirrored sunglasses that reflected little of Miami’s winter sunlight and none of its heat.

  Today was Angela's fifth birthday, meaning five giggling girls had invaded his home overnight. That was one of his wife's rules. No sleepovers until age five, then five girls for her fifth birthday, six for the next, and so on. His eldest would be thirteen in a few months; the idea raised gooseflesh along his arms and not only because thirteen teenagers in his small house would be ear splitting.

  Thirteen was a dangerous age. Rebellion. Independence. Sex. He clearly recalled himself and his buddies at thirteen. The prospect of launching his firstborn daughter into that realm terrified him, but he acted as if it didn't. He shrugged. No way to stop the clock. It is what it is.

  Gaspar felt his eyelids slide closed and shoved them up again. Yes, he was tired, but that was nothing new. Exhaustion had been a constant companion since his injury. He rarely slept more than an hour before throbbing pain in his right side awakened him. He'd become a quick nap expert to capture missing sleep, but he felt his senses dulled, his reaction times slowed. The healed scrape where a bullet seared his abdomen felt like a burning rash reminding him to stay alert, how grateful he was to have the fearless Otto as his partner, a solid assignment, and how damn lucky he was to be alive to see his daughters' birthdays.

  Cacophonous noise drowned such thinking. Five girls cavorting in the back yard pool, squeals, shouts, splashes. Surely decibel level ordinances in Miami's residential neighborhoods were violated. He'd tried asking them to quiet down, and they did, but joy erupted again louder than ever after maybe five subdued seconds. Was impulse control equal to age? Would the quiet seconds lengthen to six and then seven? Would it be five more years before he might enjoy ten seconds of silence at home from his youngest girl?

  He'd survived many life-threatening situations, but fathering frightened him more than anything. Four daughters already and his wife pregnant with a boy. Job one was keeping his family safe.

  Before his injury he never considered such things, never worried that he'd fail, never gnawed the consequences. Maria had handled the girls effortles
sly and he'd swooped in to count noses and grab hugs before bedtime. Confidence had oozed from Gaspar's pores back then. Four kids hadn't seemed overwhelming. He hadn't felt boxed in so much as engulfed by creatures he loved more than anything.

  Not any more. Adding a fifth child at this point terrified him. A boy. Boys needed a solid role model, a strong father like his own had been, but Gaspar's body refused to perform as required and he could barely keep his head in the game.

  How would Maria manage the girls and a new baby while he worked the Reacher file, traveled all over the country, only coming home for brief stints, not knowing how long this assignment would go on, worried that the work would end too soon?

  He shrugged again without realizing he'd moved this time. It was what it was.

  As Otto said, only one choice. He'd do what he had to do.

  Men work. Husbands work. Fathers work.

  He had to work.

  They needed the money.

  Twenty years to go. Simple as that.

  But he'd bought a big life insurance policy. Just in case.

  3.

  FBI Special Agent Kim Otto had made a quick dash to Wisconsin over the weekend because Grandma Louisa Otto was dying. Not shocking, given her age. Modern medicine had pulled her through heart arrhythmias, osteoporosis, micro-strokes, and cancer, twice. This time she'd had another heart attack.

  Kim doubted Grandma Louisa would actually die. Ever. Pure German stubbornness had kept her alive more than 102 years. Kim figured she had inherited the stubborn gene from Louisa.

  But if death was to happen, Kim didn't want to be there to see it. She was not comforted by bodies in coffins or funerals or memorial services and avoided them whenever possible. Closure? Humbug.

  “God knows how much longer she'll last, Kim,” her father said, probably noticing Kim's lack of enthusiasm for the trip.

  “Is mom going?” Kim asked. Her stomach was already churning without the prospect of playing referee between Grandma Louisa and Sen Li. Kim reached into her pocket for an antacid and slipped it under her tongue.

  “We've been there all week. We'll return Monday,” Dad replied, subdued. “Just go to Frankenmuth, honey. Say goodbye while you still can. You'll be glad you did.”

  In what universe?

  Still, her father rarely asked her for anything. Sen Li had drilled into her children from infancy-when there's only one choice, it's the right choice.

  So she went.

  Just in case.

  Kim had flown out early, before she could chicken out. Adding two plane flights to her life was never her first choice, but too often it was her only option.

  Miraculously, the plane didn't crash and she made it to Madison in one piece. Frankenmuth Otto Regional Hospital was a twenty-mile cab ride from the airport. She'd booked a two o'clock flight back to D.C. God willing, she'd arrive at Reagan National by five thirty. Plenty of time to take care of the things she needed to do before she met Gaspar Sunday. Get in, get out. That was her plan.

  This could work, she thought, right up until the cab dropped her at the hospital's front entrance, when her internal response became, In what universe?

  Nothing ever worked according to plan where her family was concerned. Dad had said he and his five siblings were posting a constant bedside vigil for Grandma Louisa, who had been a widow for decades. Kim shouldn't have been surprised to see the line of Ottos, all blonde and oversized, that snaked down the block from the hospital's entrance.

  Mid-November was bleakly cold in Frankenmuth, Wisconsin. Men, women, and kids alike wore jeans, boots, and sweatshirts under coats, hats, and gloves. Practical, comfortable clothes. The kind Kim favored when she wasn't dressed for work. After all, she was German and oversized herself on the inside.

  Only Kim's father had strayed from the family farm in Wisconsin, and he had traveled to neighboring Michigan at figurative gunpoint because his parents had refused to welcome his pregnant Vietnamese wife.

  These Ottos served their community as farmers, shopkeepers, teachers, nurses, military, and a few, like Kim, were cops of one kind or another. Otto cousins lined up today because they worked during the week and Sunday was reserved for church.

  Kim paid the cab driver and nodded to her cousins as she walked back to take her place at the end of the line. Shivering began immediately. Her suit was too thin a barrier for the Wisconsin wind. She turned up the jacket collar, stuffed her hands into the pockets, and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, attempting to gin up some body heat. The strategy didn't work well. Soon, the snowy concrete had transferred its glacial cold upward through the soles of her shoes.

  Eventually, Kim reached the interior waiting room that had been overtaken by the Otto clan. She was in no hurry to approach Louisa's sickbed. She left the line and stood in a corner near the heat vent.

  Kim absorbed the warmth through her pores while the noxious citrus scented air purifier attacked her sinuses, causing a sharp pain between her eyebrows at the bridge of her slender nose.

  She was too cold to make conversation, but no one spoke much at all, and certainly not to her. Which was just fine. She felt as much an overwhelmed fish out of water as she always had among her fair-haired, blue-eyed, giant-sized cousins. None of the right-sized Ottos were older than eight and their conversational abilities would probably be all about age-appropriate video games anyway. The Ottos rarely spoke to her under normal circumstances; no reason to change things now. Kim shrugged.

  As a child she'd wondered what it would feel like to be welcomed into this big, warm family. A long time ago, she’d realized she would never know that feeling. Every family needed its flock of black sheep. She was a Michigan Otto, born on the wrong side of the blanket as far as the Wisconsin Ottos were concerned. Period. End of story. She shrugged again. It was what it was.

  A low murmur from the group interrupted Kim's thoughts and drew her glance toward the doorway. Attired in a full dress blue Class A Army uniform complete with ribbons, hat in hand, another Otto had entered the waiting area. Only one Otto was currently serving in the Army at that level, and only one Otto would compel the immediate respect that settled palpably over the room.

  Kim had seen him maybe three times in her life before today and never in uniform, but she recognized Captain Lothar Otto instantly.

  Literally the fair-haired boy of the moment, sported the unmistakable Otto family countenance, complete with caterpillar eyebrows and what Kim's father called a high, intelligent forehead, also known as a rapidly receding hairline. He'd grown up in Frankenmuth like all the normal Ottos, attended West Point, and then served the Army and fought in its wars. She’d heard he'd been wounded two years ago, but he looked fit enough today.

  Ottos were not a demonstrative bunch by nature and Kim observed Lothar make the obligatory rounds seeming no more comfortable than she would have been. Men shook his hand or saluted respectfully; women nodded and smiled or saluted; children kept their distance and saluted.

  Lothar’s identification was positively confirmed when he passed close enough for Kim to read his nametag, but he merely nodded toward her without stopping or noticing whether she nodded in reply. She didn't mind; she was no better at small talk than the rest of her family. She did not salute.

  When Kim had absorbed enough real warmth to feel her toes again, she became aware of the lateness of the hour. She needed to do what she came for and get back to Madison for her flight back to DC.

  Yet the never-ending line of Ottos continued unabated toward Grandma Louisa's room. When she could stall no longer, Kim joined the cousin trail, feeling as if the guillotine waited at the end of the line. The piercing pain between her eyes made the prospect of losing her head almost welcome.

  Kim shuffled along with the line advancing at warp speed of two feet a minute, closing the distance in an orderly fashion as each cousin slipped into the sick room alone and stayed precisely sixty seconds before emerging without flowing tears or evidence of sobbing via fists-full of damp
, crumpled tissues. Lack of hysteria salved Kim’s anxiety; the inexorable forward movement did not.

  Grandma Louisa had never inspired open affection from anyone and Kim wondered how she coped when her stoic progeny remained composed. Did Grandma think no one cared? Or was she, herself uncaring? This mystery had plagued Kim most of her life. Was it she who felt nothing for Grandma first? Or, as a small child, had she absorbed the message that Grandma Louisa felt nothing for her and defended against apathy thereafter?

  Kim sighed and raised her hand to knead tension from the back of her neck. Again, she was glad Sen Li was absent. Mom would have created a spectacle of some kind about the Otto family's cold nature, the way she always did, and Kim had no desire to cope with such scenes on top of everything else. At the moment, Kim couldn't recall the precise nature of their last battle. None of it mattered any more. The old lady was on her way out. Whatever the source of their problems, now was the time to set them aside and move on.

  Hushed words hummed quietly among the cousins at volumes too low to comprehend, Kim realized. She was sure the conversations were about crops and kids and church and plans for Thanksgiving. Nothing she would feel comfortable discussing with these near strangers, even if they tried to include her, which they did not. Not that it mattered. She'd be gone soon, and so would Grandma Louisa.

  Too quickly, the Otto in front of her entered Grandma's room. The door closed quietly behind him. Kim was next and she had no idea what she'd say. She had not seen Grandma Louisa for ten years and the last time they'd met ended badly, as had most of their encounters. Grandma Louisa could not forgive Sen Li for taking Albert away from the family. That grudge engulfed Albert's daughters because they resembled their mother. Kim had accepted years ago that she would never be tall and blonde and German on the outside; it wasn't enough for Grandma Louisa that Kim was as fierce as any Otto on the inside.