"Understood. But running when you're already free is different from getting free so you can run." He moved to face her. "Hands up. Defensive position."
She raised her hands awkwardly, fingers spread.
"Fists. You're not surrendering, you're protecting." He adjusted her stance, hands briefly covering hers. "Elbows in, protect your core. Chin down."
They worked through basic strikes—palm heel to nose, knee to groin, elbow to solar plexus. Sarah was a quick study, her movements becoming more fluid with each repetition. She had natural coordination, the kind of body awareness that couldn't be taught.
"Good. Again." He held pads while she practiced combinations. "Drive through the target. You're not trying to hurt them, you're trying to stop them."
Sweat beaded on her forehead as she worked, determination replacing uncertainty. When she connected solidly with a cross-elbow combination, the impact rang through the basement.
"That's it," he said, genuinely impressed. "You've got power."
"My dad made me take self-defense classes in high school," she panted. "Said every soldier's daughter should know how to defend herself. I thought I'd forgotten everything."
"Muscle memory. It comes back." He set down the pads. "Now the hard part. Restraint escape."
He produced a handful of zip ties, and Sarah's face went pale.
"You're going to tie me up?"
"I'm going to teach you how to get untied. Zip ties are easy to apply, hard to escape if you don't know the trick. But there's always a trick."
He demonstrated on himself first, sliding the plastic restraint around his wrists. "The mechanism has a weak point. You exploit physics, not strength."
"Okay..." She watched as he positioned his hands.
"Thumb dislocation. Temporary, mostly painless if you do it right, but it reduces your hand width enough to slip free." He pressed his thumb against his palm at an unnatural angle.
Sarah made a strangled noise. "That's horrible."
"That's survival." The zip tie slipped off. "Your turn."
"Not. Happening." She clenched her fists, backing away.
The fear on her face froze him in place. Idiot. What was he thinking? She’d barely ever held a weapon, let alone…. Idiot. He raised his hands, palms out. “You’re right. My bad. That’s probably a little much.”
“It’s a lot much.” She tried to smile and sat heavily on a bench, flexing her fingers. "How do you know all this?"
"Training. Experience. Too many missions where someone got grabbed." He reached in the minifridge for a cold water and handed it to her. "You did good today. Better than good."
She accepted it. No more traces of fear, thankfully. "Is this what your life is always like? Learning horrible things because someday you might need them?"
"Pretty much."
"Doesn't that get exhausting? Living as if the worst is always coming?"
He considered the question. "In my line of work, the worst usually is coming. But today, the worst didn't win. You're alive. We have proof of the conspiracy. My team is coming to help. Those are victories."
"Small ones."
"Small victories add up." He sat beside her on the bench. "Tank used to say that. Every mission we completed, every person we saved, every bad guy we stopped—small victories that made the world a little bit better."
"He sounds like a good man."
" He believed in justice, in doing the right thing even when it was hard. Even when it cost him everything." Griff's voice roughened. "He had faith that things would work out. That God had a plan."
"And you don't?"
