“You’re a coward,” Harper said softly. The words were barely a whisper, but they carried perfectly over the rain. Logan let out a roar of offended pride. He stepped in, reaching out with both hands to shove her hard in the chest, to put this helpless, mouthy girl on her back in the puddle behind her. He never made contact. As Logan’s hands thrust forward, Harper moved. She didn’t flinch away. She stepped in. She dropped her center of gravity, her lead foot sliding perfectly across the wet concrete outside of his right leg. Zenkutsu-dachi. Front stance. Grounded, coiled, and lethal.
With a slight rotation of her hips, she slipped his clumsy shove. His hands caught nothing but air. The momentum of his own push carried him forward, off-balance, right into the space she had just occupied. But she was already on his flank. Harper’s left hand shot up, her open palm finding the fabric of his jacket at the shoulder. She gripped it tight, an anchor point. She felt his panic in the sudden rigidness of his muscles. He was falling forward, entirely unarmed. “Hey!” Logan managed to gasp. Harper didn’t let him finish.
She pivoted on the ball of her back foot. The kinetic energy traveled up her calf, through her hip, into her core, and down her right arm. She didn’t throw a wild looping punch. It was a textbook Kyokushin short strike, an uraken, a back fist, tight and explosive. She aimed purely by the spatial anchor of her left hand on his shoulder. Her knuckles connected with the side of Logan’s jaw with a sound like a baseball bat hitting a wet, heavy bag. Thack. The impact was devastating. Logan’s teeth clattered together violently. The force of the blow combined with his own forward momentum scrambled his equilibrium instantly. His knees buckled like cut strings. He didn’t even have time to put his hands out. He collapsed onto the wet concrete in a heap, landing hard on his shoulder, letting out a pathetic, garbled groan.
Britney screamed, a sharp, piercing sound of absolute shock. Caleb scrambled backward, his canvas sneakers squeaking wildly on the slick pavement. “Holy shit. Holy shit.” Harper didn’t celebrate. She didn’t smile. She smoothly pulled her right fist back to her hip, returning to a neutral, guarded stance. Her breathing was perfectly even. The sharks had smelled blood in the water, but they had swam into the jaws of a leviathan. Logan did not get up. He lay on the damp concrete, issuing a low, continuous groan that vibrated with the wet rattle of saliva in the back of his throat.
