Bully Yanked The Freshman's Ponytail — Didn’t Know She Was Trained in Krav Maga
Chapter 16
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"Walk away," she said—same voice, same geography.Tyler moved first. He came in from the right side and behind, both hands reaching for her shoulders. The grip was fast and hard.What happened next took three seconds: she did not fight the grip; she went with it. She turned sharply into the direction of the pull, using the force Tyler had applied to spin herself faster than he expected. Her right elbow came back and connected with his ribs—not a full strike, a controlled one, enough to break the grip and make him step back. She completed the rotation, put herself two steps clear of Tyler, and in one continuous movement, she faced Derek and placed both palms flat against his chest in a direct, controlled push—not a punch, not a strike, but a push with her full body weight behind it.He went backward three steps and hit the hood of a parked car.She took two more steps back; she was now out of reach of both of them. She stood in the light of the lamp post, hands at her sides now, breathing normally. She looked at Derek. He was staring at her. Tyler was holding his ribs, not badly hurt—she had been precise about that. Neither of them moved."We're done here," she said.She turned and walked toward the campus entrance at a steady pace. She did not run.She knew someone had recorded it. She had seen the phone screen in her peripheral vision as she pushed Derek back: a shape by the far car, a student who had been in the lot before any of them arrived, who had been walking to their car and had then stood very still. She did not know who it was. She did not know if that person would do anything with what they had recorded. But she had learned from her grandmother: when something happens, something exists; the question is always what you do with what exists.Friday morning, 7:00 a.m., Marsh called her."The library footage," he said. "The main camera system."She waited."The segment from last Friday afternoon has been deleted," he said. A pause. "The entire segment between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. has been overwritten."She sat down on the edge of her bed. "Okay," she said."Claire...""I heard you," she said. "I'm thinking."She was thinking about the preservation request—the written, timestamped, sent-to-three-offices preservation request that now existed in the files of student affairs, general counsel, and campus security. The request had been sent Monday afternoon; the deletion had apparently happened between then and now. Which meant someone had deleted footage after receiving a written, formal, official request to preserve it.She said, "What day did the deletion happen?""Security logs show it was Wednesday," Marsh said. "Sometime between 8:00 a.m. and noon."Wednesday—two days after her request. She closed her eyes."Is there a secondary system?" she said. "Camera backup, separate server, something?"Marsh was quiet for a moment. "There might be," he said slowly."The fire exit cameras," she said.Another pause. "How do you know about those?"