sparring to their sportier cousin, kendo, but Hosokawa kept the old ways alive. That was awfully handy at the moment, because sword sparring involved lots of strikes to the face mask.
Mariko didn’t have a blade to parry with, so she bobbed her head backward, allowing the heavy bag to swing just past her nose. The woman in white began to run. That left Mariko with a choice: she could arrest the guy she was already holding or she could pursue the woman who had just attempted to deck her.
Back in her days as a beat cop, when an assault and battery case devolved into petty he-said, she-said stuff, Mariko tended to side with the woman. Maybe that was wrong in this case. Mariko hadn’t seen the encounter between these two from the beginning. Maybe he wasn’t trying to get a look at her tits; maybe she’d attacked him first. Maybe he’d grabbed her bag just to keep her from hitting him.
Mariko wanted to side with her anyway, but that was before the woman took a swing at her. Legally speaking, assaulting an officer was a far more serious charge than assaulting a civilian. And now the woman was running from the law. Mariko let go of her wristlock and headed after her.
The bitch was fast. Mariko was a triathlete, and a damn good one at that. Then again, she’d also been up for twenty-five hours straight, and spent more than half that time doing hard labor. She was running on fumes and her shoes weren’t made for sprinting. Even so, it wasn’t often that a perp could outrun her. A barefoot perp shouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell.
But this woman bounded up the next flight of stairs like a gazelle. Mariko hurtled after her, ignoring the burning pain in her legs. The woman gave her the slip, vanishing from view at the top of the stairs.
Mariko ran up there anyway, and saw two people lying on the floor, maybe ten meters apart from each other. It was a sure bet that the woman with the shoulder bag had pushed them down, leaving a simple connect-the-dots problem in her wake. Mariko dashed past the two on the floor and kept on in that direction.
She heard a cry of protest somewhere ahead. Another dot. She made for the sound and saw her quarry barreling through a herd of high schoolers. The woman sprinted up the nearest flight of stairs and Mariko gave chase.
They were on the mall level now. None of the stores were open yet, so the barefoot woman had nothing but wide-open space to increase her lead. But she was approaching the end of her endurance. Her pace was flagging. She looked over her shoulder, saw Mariko, and ducked around the nearest corner.
Mariko rounded the corner at top speed. The woman’s shoulder bag hit her right in the face.
It laid Mariko out flat. The floor cracked her in the back of the head. Her stun gun skittered across the floor like an oversized cockroach. She saw stars, and through them she could just make out her assailant. Mariko curled into a ball, not out of fear but just to shield her vitals. She reached for her pistol with her left hand, and held her right in a kickboxer’s high guard, hoping to ward off the next blow to the head.
The woman reared back for another swing. Mariko lashed out with her foot as hard as she could.
Her kick landed first, blasting the woman’s leg out from under her. The shoulder bag missed its target, landing with a heavy metallic clang right next to Mariko’s ear. She grabbed the bag with both hands and cradled it to her chest. This thing was not going to hit her again.
The woman stood over her, got a grip on the bag, and pulled like her life depended on it. Mariko let fly with a kick and hit her square in the crotch. It was a better target on a man, but not a bad shot on a woman either. Her assailant grunted and doubled over. Mariko had a shot at grabbing her hair, her clothes, anything to bring her down, but she knew she couldn’t afford to let go of the bag. Another shot to the head would be the end of her.
Mariko rolled on top of the bag, pinning it with her bodyweight and freeing her left hand to reach for her sidearm. The woman let go of the bag and