Free Jack In A Box by Diane Capri Page B

hadn’t felt boxed in so much as engulfed by creatures he loved more than anything.
    Not anymore. 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