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unthinkable.
    For a brief, fatalistic moment, he wondered if he shouldn’t be a true warrior: wander into the mountains and let them claim him.
    But no. Emily gave him hope. She had acted like she cared for him. And even if it was only an act, she’d had him convinced. For a while. If she loved him, he couldn’t hurt her like that.
    “God, cabrón , what are you doing ?”
    He threw open the truck’s door and hopped back down to the blacktop. He needed to run. Needed to feel that freedom of a good, long run. Deep into the mountains and back out again. Cold mountain air to fill his lungs. The wind to carry him on its back. Run until his mind was empty.
    But that was impossible. So he set his goal lower. Maybe just around the parking lot a time or two.
    Rafa broke into a brisk jog, testing his prosthetic leg with more impact than he’d ever tried before. The jolts from the parking lot hurt far worse than the treadmill or the trails he’d jogged with Emily. Each step sent a shiver of pain through his knee. The pain felt like it ended at his belly button, a ribbon of fire that arced through his leg and into his bowels.
    He slowed to a walk, wincing. The fire ebbed away, replaced by a throbbing. This is ridiculous, he thought. How am I supposed to live like this?
    And that brought him to a more important question. When the Army gave him his walking papers--oh, wasn’t that bitter irony: walking papers--what was he going to do? Working for his dad’s company wouldn’t be too terrible, but he couldn’t bear the indignity of begging for scraps from the old man. Take that job at The Citadel? As if the students would want a constant reminder of how horrible the war really was? The desk jockeys wouldn’t want to be confronted by the ugly truth, and the actual veterans wouldn’t want the bitter memories. And while he wouldn’t have believed it a month ago when he’d gone on that first blind date with Emily, he didn’t want to lose her, either. There was something there, like the sun rising after a long, lonely night.
    So what then? He stopped in the middle of the lot and spread his arms. The cool mountain breeze whipped right through his workout clothes, chilling him clear through to the bone.
    Go back to the Army? Beg for a staff position? He’d make a fine backdrop for a general. Maybe he could be the slave that whispered in Caesar’s ear, reminding the high and mighty of mortality. God knew Washington could use a few people doing that.
    He snorted. Washington didn’t fight wars. It sent people like him to do it. For duty and honor and country and oil.
    Rafa slapped himself in the face with his good hand, savoring the sting of the blow. Madness lay that direction. Every professional knew that.
    “So what assets do I have? Think, Rafael.”
    He looked at the stump where his right arm ended. At the metal pole that ran from his right knee to his equally metal foot. Asset A: a ruined body trained for a war it could never again fight. It was a wonder that Emily would even look at him.
    He looked at his good left hand. Asset B: Five fingers that could barely type without cramping.
    But he still had his mind. A mind steeped with nearly thirty years of study. Cultures and politics and warfare. He wasn’t fit to teach English, but history maybe. Or political science. Call that asset C.
    So the mind then. How could he use it? Where could he teach? He’d have to investigate that. Even the cultural and political parts of his education would be enough. It wasn’t perfect, and it may not pay half as well as working for a Washington think tank, but it would give him freedom to live his own life.
    And maybe the freedom to keep seeing Emily, if he could find something close enough.
    He walked back to the truck, ignoring the pain coming from his knee. Pain was just weakness leaving the body, after all. And he had a lot of weakness to get rid of.

Chapter 10

    R
    AFA pushed himself until the pain in his leg screamed like a jet