He sidled forwards with a fluid grace that belied his brawny frame. She mirrored his stance, hoping to give the impression that she was going to engage with him, even though she had no intention of doing anything of the sort.

As he got within about two metres of her, she dodged sharply to her left, then suddenly switched back to her right, attempting to sidestep around him. But he was too fast. His hand shot out to grab her left arm and jerk her forward; at the same time, he spun himself forward to drop down in front of her whilst kicking the inside of her left leg to somersault her expertly across his body.

Yoko otoshi – side drop.

She slammed into the marble floor, the hard surface knocking the air out of her. And before she had a chance to respond, he was on top of her.

Shit. She was done for.

Groundwork was his forte. The vast majority of MMA fights ended in a clinch on the ground. And when it came to beating someone in that kind of situation, jiu-jitsu stood head and shoulders above any other type of fighting system. That’s why the jiu-jitsu guys always won at MMA. Guys like Shane.

She struggled to move, but he’d already wrenched her around in front of him and got her in a hadaka-jime, his speciality. His forearm was locked across her throat like a vice.

‘Familiar with hadaka-jime?’ he asked, his mouth just millimetres from her ear. ‘Also known as the “rear naked choke”, in case you’re not acquainted with it.’

She squirmed and strained against his grip, already feeling herself starting to go dizzy, as the hold cut off the blood supply to her brain.

‘They also call it the “lion killer”,’ he whispered.

She pushed in vain against him, trying to arch her body up and out of his grip, but he held her firm.

‘The key thing about this hold is the importance of getting your hooks in early,’ he said in a conversational tone as he folded his legs in over hers, rendering her almost completely immobile.

He increased the pressure on her throat. She choked and gasped.

‘And the other thing to remember is to always get the arm under the chin rather than across the chin. That’s a mistake people often make with hadaka-jime. They never quite get the arm under the chin properly.’

He pressed his forearm into her throat even harder. A light-headedness seized her and a blackness began to descend like a curtain across her vision. And the last thing she remembered thinking before she passed out was how annoying it was that she hadn’t watched more YouTube videos on how to counter this particular hold.

68

Bailey awoke to find herself tied to a chair. Her hair was hanging down over her face, having become loose in the struggle with Shane.

She blinked and attempted to orient herself, blowing her hair out of her face to try and get a better look around. The room she was in was relatively bare, lit by several strip bulbs overhead. She wasn’t sure if she was even in the restaurant any more, but then she noticed some metal racking against the wall stacked with large sacks of rice and giant cans of cooking oil and she figured she was still inside the restaurant but in some kind of storage room out the back.