The entrance to the White House reminded Emily of her first day of basic training: thoroughly daunting. Her father dropped her two blocks from the security gate to save him the hassle of waiting around for her clearance. She sent the duffel back to the house with his car.
A light rain shower filled the air with sparkling light, making the September sky glitter like gold. It was the first precipitation she’d seen since rotating to Southwest Asia two months earlier, other than a couple nasty nighttime blizzards in the Hindu Kush.
The guards at the gate eyed her carefully as she kept tilting her head back to catch the shimmering raindrops on her tongue like summer snowflakes.
Let them laugh. If they’d baked their backsides in the Afghan summer… only they weren’t laughing. Somewhere closer
