Chapter 7 - THE PALM STRIKE ON THE PATIO
The world resumed in a burst of kinetic violence.
As Marcus’s momentum carried him forward, overextended and completely off-balance, Jessica’s right palm heel drove upward.
CRACK!
The base of her palm struck Marcus directly under the shelf of his jawline.
It was not a glancing slap. It was a focused, compressed kinetic wave delivered with the full rotational torque of her hips and core. The impact drove his teeth together with an audible, bone-cracking snap, sending a sharp spray of spittle and lager into the afternoon air.
Marcus’s head jerked backward violently, his eyes rolling up toward the blue July sky.
Before his heavy frame could stumble backward, Jessica’s left hand shot out like an iron vice. Her fingers locked around the inside of his right wrist, halting his backward trajectory instantly. She stepped across his centerline with her right boot, planting her heel deep into the sod, dropping her center of gravity two inches below his waist.
With a smooth, continuous hip roll perfected through thousands of hours of hand-to-hand combat drills, Jessica used Marcus’s own two-hundred-and-twenty-pound mass against him.
She rotated forty-five degrees and pulled.
Marcus’s boots tore completely free of the lawn. His massive body was launched airborne in a flat, uncontrolled arc over her hip, his camouflage cargo trousers fluttering as his legs flailed against the sunlit canopy of the pergola.
THUD!
The impact of his back slamming onto the sealed concrete patio shook the foundation of the pergola.
A collective, shuddering gasp tore through the twenty relatives.
The patio furniture rattled. A nearby plastic chair tipped over, clattering against the concrete. Marcus lay flat on his back, the wind driven from his lungs in a sharp, wheezing groan, his eyes wide, staring blankly at the cedar beams overhead as his nervous system struggled to reboot.
Jessica stood over him.
Her posture was immaculate. Her breathing was unbroken. Her hands were down at her sides, relaxed, her dark brown ponytail resting neatly against the collar of her plain gray T-shirt. She did not raise a victory fist; she did not sneer; she did not look at the watching crowd.
May you like
She looked down at the large, tattooed man groveling on the concrete with the cold, detached gaze of an inspector reviewing a defective product.
"Next time you load a punch," Jessica said, her voice dropping into a quiet, icy register that carried to every corner of the silent yard, "keep your chin tucked. You leave your entire throat open."
