Sample Sunday: Fragment from Peccadillo, work in progress, second novel in Amsterdam Assassin Series.

This is a fragment from Peccadillo – A Katla Novel, the second novel in the Amsterdam Assassin Series, to be published before the 2012 Holiday Season.

Katla circled the scuffed red leather punch bag, dressed in a slip and a halter top, hands covered to the wrists with protective bandages. Her punches rained down on the leather; quick underhand jabs followed by hard overhand hits that rocked the bag on the cable by which it hung from the ceiling. Breathing deep, she detected the fragrant smell of marihuana and moved to the trap door, looked down in a pair of amber eyes.

“Sista.” Zephaniah Catadupa smiled. “No possible sneaking up on you, sight?”

Katla tilted her chin to signal for him to come on up and drifted back to the punch bag. While the corpulent Rastafarian came up and sat down on the padded bench of the Nautilus machine, Katla continued her exercises. Zeph wasn’t smoking, but evidently the marihuana smell permeated his clothes. He was checking out her footwork. Although hampered by her crippled leg, her punches were quick and precise, connecting solidly.

Zeph nodded appreciatively. “Like your style. Sober.”

“Fancy moves don’t get the job done, Zeph.”

The punch bag rocked on the chain.

“Them cruel blows, sista. Cause damage, you punch a man.”

Katla smiled, kept on punching the bag.

“Where you learn box?”

“Amsterdam, Paris.” Katla punctuated every word with hard punches to the bag. “London, New York and Seoul.”

“Soul?”

Katla steadied the punch bag with her left hand and gave the bag a final vicious blow. “The capital of South Korea, Zeph.”

“Ah.”

“They have good fighters.” She peeled off the protective bandages and hung them out to dry on a rack in the corner. While she took a towel and dried her hair Zeph rose from the padded bench, walked through the aura of sweat surrounding the punch bag and halted by the window.

“What them doing here?” Zeph pointed at the two guilders lying on the sill, gleaming in the early morning sunlight. “You dust them regularly.”

“No.” Katla draped the towel around her neck. “I use them frequently.”

“For what?”

“To test my speed and accuracy.”

She took one of the guilders, stretched out his arm with the palm down and placed the coin on the back of his hand. “Pull back your hand and catch the coin in the palm before it hits the ground.”

Zeph licked his lips and yanked his hand back, sank swiftly through his knees and caught the guilder in the palm of his hand. “Like that?”

“Swifter.”

He put the coin on the back of his hand and tried again, but Katla shook her head. “Too slow.”

“Okay,” he said, holding the coin out to her. “Show me.”

“Fetch the other one as well.”

Katla limped to the punch bag, turned around to face him and sank through her knees, leaving a slight gap between her body and the bag. She stretched her arms out in front of her, the hands held with the palms turned to the floor and Zeph walked up to her with the guilders.

She tilted her chin forward. “Place one coin on each hand.”

“Same place?”

“Just behind the knuckles, yes.”

Her hands were steady, the fingers straight out, the thumbs folded in. Zeph placed the guilders and stepped back.

“You catch them simultaneously?”

Katla didn’t answer, but closed her eyes. The bag hovered behind her. In the space between two heartbeats her elbows rammed backwards into the punch bag and her hands shot forward to catch the coins. She opened her eyes, turned her hands over and showed him the coins. Speechless, the Rastafarian rested his hand against the leather of the punch bag, still shivering from the double elbow blow. Katla smiled at him, limped to the window and placed the guilders back on the sill.

As she turned around Zeph asked, “What happen if you do that to a person?”

“A person?” She looked at him aghast. “Why would I do that?”

“You train this for fun?”

“Not just fun. Testing my limitations gives me self-confidence.”

“You have them in abundance already.”

“You can never have enough.” She slung the towel back around her neck and shrugged into a hooded bathrobe. “And you never know if it might come in handy.”

“Confidence or combat skills?” he called after her as she limped down the stairs. She could hear him slap the punch bag before he followed her downstairs.

If you like this fragment from my work in progress, check my ‘About’ page for a link to Reprobate – A Katla Novel, the first novel in the Amsterdam Assassin Series. You can download a sample with the first few chapters for free from Amazon, or the whole novel (113,000 words or 380 pages) for only $5.99. If you follow my blog, you will be notified about the exact publication date of Peccadillo – A Katla Novel. And, of course, be able to read more fragments and snippets from the work in progress. If you’d like to become a beta reader for the Amsterdam Assassin Series, email Martyn V. Halm at katlasieltjes@yahoo.com and put ‘beta reader’ in the subject line. Thanks for your support.