Free Disciple of the Wind by Steve Bein

tits hanging out. Now, embroiled in a tug-of-war over her shoulder bag, she drew looks from everyone. “Police!” Mariko shouted, and she unholstered her little stun gun.
    Now she had the man’s attention. The woman seized the opportunity, ripped the bag from his grasp, and swung it at him like a tennis racket. There was something damn heavy in there, because when it hit him in the knee it buckled his leg. Then Mariko was on him. She didn’t need the stun gun to control him; he dropped of his own accord when Mariko reaped his leg out from under him.
    She snapped a wristlock on him and used it to roll him facedown. He struggled, but her wristlock kept his arm as stiff as a crowbar. As long as she kept a little pressure on it, he was pinned to the floor as surely as if he’d been bolted down.
    “Ma’am,” Mariko said, turning to face the woman he’d assaulted, “are you—?”
    She looked up just in time to see the shoulder bag flying at her head.
    Fortunately, Mariko was used to people swinging weapons at her face. She trained in kenjutsu as many nights a week as she could manage, and her current sword master, Hosokawa-sensei, was a big believer in the most traditional aspects of the art. Most modern kenjutsu schools had relegated 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 pacewas 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