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  I felt like I was turning myself inside out.

  This was life or death.

  There was no point in holding back any ounce of energy if I ever wanted to see Patty again.

  And that thought made me pour out even more energy to Lady Luck.

  Around us the warehouse vanished.

  And then nothing for the longest time, or what seemed to be the longest time.

  I just kept pushing energy at Laverne with all my focus.

  Suddenly, we were in my office floating over the city of Las Vegas, in front of the big booth.

  The eight survivors and Laverne and Ben and I all tumbled to the ground in a bad imitation of a mass Twister Game gone horribly wrong.

  The woman with too much perfume smashed me into the floor.

  The only thing I remember seeing was Patty’s wonderful face, panicked as she jumped out of the booth to come and help.

  Then the room went black as I think I passed out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Magic Touch

  I wasn’t sure how long it was, but the next thing I remember was Patty stroking my forehead lightly. I could feel a little energy from her touch reviving me a little.

  Every bone in my body ached.

  And my head hurt from where Hank had hit me with that slot machine handle.

  And I wanted to sneeze something awful.

  I opened my eyes and smiled at the love of my life, who was smiling at me with those huge brown eyes of hers.

  “You all right?”

  “No idea,” I said, honestly.

  She helped me sit up.

  I was still on the floor in front of the booth and Madge was hurrying in with three glasses of water.

  Sherri and Screamer were sitting next to Laverne on the floor and Stan was helping Ben to sit up.

  “What happened to all the people?” I managed to ask with a hoarse throat.

  Patty handed me a glass of water that tasted wonderful and gave me even more energy.

  “Kronos brought Burt and some of the other gods and got them all back to their right places and times,” Stan said.

  Laverne nodded. Then she looked at Stan with a look that I hoped someday to have her look at me with. “Thank you.”

  “Yes, thank you,” I said, smiling at my boss.

  He smiled. “It was worse in the last five hours knowing what I knew from that side, but not knowing how we got there, or if it would even work. Kronos says it did. We’re back in the main timeline. Everything is reset.”

  Patty hugged me, smiling, and I could feel even more energy pouring through me.

  “Mom,” Sherri said, “Let me get you home and into bed.”

  Lady Luck nodded, but didn’t move. “Stan, want to jump us both there and come back. Not sure if I dare risk it yet.”

  Stan nodded and the three of them vanished.

  Patty was working to get me to my feet and into the booth and Screamer was helping Ben up from the floor when Stan appeared.

  “Stan, same kind of help if you don’t mind?” Ben asked.

  Stan nodded and smiled. He looked at me. “We have some talking to do.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said.

  He laughed. “Tomorrow. Great work, once again.”

  He vanished with Ben.

  “You two going to be all right?” Screamer asked.

  I nodded. “After some rest.”

  “Great work,” he said, “as always.”

  “You too,” I said. “Tell Madge we’re done for the night.”

  He nodded and turned and went through the door into Madge’s Diner.

  Outside the windows of my office, I could see the hint of sunrise starting to color the eastern hills. Below, the lights of Vegas looked wonderful.

  It felt great to be home.

  I couldn’t remember being so tired.

  And so satisfied at the same time. Especially sitting there in the booth of my office, holding Patty.

  Finally, she pushed away from me and waved her hand. “You need a shower, big boy.”

  “Sweat?” I asked, smiling at her.

  “Perfume,” she said.

  I stood and she held me as we headed for the door to her apartment below.

  “You might need to soap me up some,” I said, smiling at her. “I’m pretty tired.”

  “Raspberry soap?” she asked, smiling back and hugging me.

  “Of course,” I said. “Just like the first time ten years ago.”

  “I don’t think either one of us has the energy to do what we did that first time ten years ago,” she said, kissing me as we went through the door and into her wonderful apartment.

  And, of course, she was right.

  But the next night we certainly tried to repeat what we had done ten years before in that wonderful shower with that wonderful-smelling soap.

  And we honestly came pretty darned close.

  And in sex and raspberry soap showers, pretty darned close is pretty darned nice.

  Following is a sample chapter from the first book in the Ghost of a Chance series, Heaven Painted as a Poker Chip.

  ONE

  TWENTY-SEVEN MINUTES before she died, Dr. Jewel Kelly stepped out of the front door of her small office in Buffalo Jump, Montana, and set her medical bag on the sidewalk beside her. She then made sure the office door was locked tight. With a control on her key chain, she triggered the alarm. She doubted anyone around this town would take anything, but better safe than sorry.

  She picked up her bag, pulled her ski parka in close around her, and stepped over under the eve of Bernie’s General Store. Her little office was like an outbuilding off of Bernie’s store. Three rooms and a bathroom.

  Enough for her to get the job done, but not by much.

  She again set her medical bag down on a dry spot near the building and turned to face the small town and wait for her ride.

  She was a tall woman at five-ten, with long brown hair she loved to keep pulled back, and green eyes people said could stare right through you. At twenty-five, she liked more than anything else to run to stay fit. And she loved reading a great romance novel. In med school in Seattle, she had had time to run, but not read.

  Now she had more than enough time for both. She usually put in a five-mile run up near the high school every afternoon, staying off the main highway as much as possible.

  The run every day at least made her feel alive.

  A cold mist of a late April spring day covered the main street of Buffalo Jump, Montana, which was also a major two-lane north-south highway. The air had a bite to it, and she had no doubt that later tonight the mist would turn to snow and the road would freeze over.

  She had planned to spend the night in her log cabin a half mile to the south of town, in front of a nice fire, sipping on a glass of white wine and reading the new Nora Roberts novel. Then maybe later, after a nice bath, she would have a date with her best friend, Mr. Buzzy. She had a hunch that in Buffalo Jump, Montana, she was going to wear out good old Buzzy before she found a real man she wanted to date.

  To her right and south was Jay’s Gas and Minimart, across from that was Carol’s Restaurant, a diner that actually had some pretty good food and was pretty clean. Beyond that, the two-lane highway disappeared off into the pine forest, now growing dark as the early evening wore on.

  That was the road out of these mountains to Missoula.

  To her left and north sat the twenty buildings that made up the main part of Buffalo Jump, including an old hardware store and some basic offices, two bars, and two antique stores to catch the occasional tourist who thought to stop.

  She had been in the antique stores, but not the bars. She wasn’t much of a drinker except for a nice glass of good wine after dinner.

  On the other end of town, she could barely see through the light rain the white tower of the only church, a Presbyterian church, whose basement doubled for a meeting room for the big town events. She hadn’t been in there yet either. She had never been much of a
church-goer back in Boise where she grew up.

  A sprawling red-brick school sat off the main street against a pine-covered hillside and serviced all grades for most of the county, with dozens of lumbering, bright-yellow school busses pouring in and out of town every day. There was even had a high school football team.

  Her favorite running route was from her office, up past the school, out a dead-end gravel road for two miles, then back.

  Right now she could run up the middle of the main street and no one would even notice. There was no traffic at all and just a few cars parked in front of the bars.

  A typical late Thursday afternoon in small town Montana.

  Silence closed in around her and she shuddered. Not even a slight wind through the pines around the town broke the oppressive stillness.

  She pulled her dark-blue ski parka in around her, making sure it was zipped, then pulled her ski gloves out of her pocket and put them on. She could never seem to be warm enough here, except when sitting in front of the fire in her cabin.

  Under the parka, she had on a nice white blouse and today she had worn jeans for only the second time. It seemed everyone else in town wore jeans, including the mayor, who ran the small grocery store, so she might as well.

  Besides, jeans were far more comfortable in the cold weather. Not as drafty as the skirts she wore the first month on the job here. Nothing like a cold Montana wind whipping up a skirt and hitting a cotton-covered crotch to give a girl a real thrill.

  And not a fun thrill.

  She was the town’s only doctor, actually the county’s only doctor. And at times like this, she had no idea why she had agreed to the tuition deal to practice medicine here. Sure, she got all her debts forgiven, not a small chunk at all, if she stayed five years, but she wasn’t sure if she could handle five years out in the middle of nowhere like this, even though her dream had been to be a GP.

  She had only been here for six weeks and mostly been bored out of her mind. She didn’t drink and she didn’t go to church. That didn’t leave a lot left to do except exercise, read and give Mr. Buzzy a workout regularly.

  She had delivered one baby in the small building the county called a hospital up beside the school. And she had fixed a few broken bones and one concussion from a bar fight.

  For one night, she had even had a woman in the little four-bed hospital with a gall bladder attack. Jewel had to check in on her every hour to make sure the woman didn’t get worse and need to take a Life-Flight out to Missoula.

  The woman hadn’t gotten worse and the woman’s husband the next day had driven her to Missoula, four hours away, for the operation.

  Today was Jewel’s first call for an injury in Jackson Ridge, another small town about twenty miles away on the highway to the north. The call had come into her cell phone from the county sheriff, and he had told her a deputy would pick her up.

  She had told the sheriff she had her car and could drive fine, but the sheriff, a man named Martin, insisted a deputy go along with her.

  “Trust me,” he had said. “The area this call came from is not a place you go in alone. Especially with that little overseas thing you drive.”

  Clearly, her red Miata had been noticed, and not in a good way.

  “Besides,” the sheriff had said, “it’s going to be snowing soon and the highway’s going to be slick. You don’t want to be driving after dark out in these woods until you get to know the roads some.”

  She had thanked the sheriff and said she would be waiting in front of her office in ten minutes.

  “Deputy Ralston will be there as quick as he can,” the sheriff had said and hung up.

  So now she stood under the eve of the general store, moving from foot to foot, her hands deep in her ski parka pockets, watching the excitement of Buffalo Jump on a late Thursday afternoon.

  Except for the misting rain, nothing moved.

  Nothing.

  Total and complete silence.

  What the hell had she been thinking coming here?

  Read more in the first Ghost of a Chance book, Heaven Painted as a Poker Chip, available from your favorite bookseller.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith published far more than a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres.

  At the moment he produces novels in several major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the Old West, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, a superhero series starring Poker Boy, and a mystery series featuring the retired detectives of the Cold Poker Gang.

  His monthly magazine, Smith’s Monthly, which consists of only his own fiction, premiered in October 2013 and offers readers more than 70,000 words per issue, including a new and original novel every month.

  During his career, Dean also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, he wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies.

  He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of almost a dozen films, from The Final Fantasy to Steel to Rundown.

  Dean also worked as a fiction editor off and on, starting at Pulphouse Publishing, then at VB Tech Journal, then Pocket Books, and now at WMG Publishing, where he and Kristine Kathryn Rusch serve as series editors for the acclaimed Fiction River anthology series.

  For more information about Dean’s books and ongoing projects, please visit his website at www.deanwesleysmith.com and sign up for his newsletter.

  Look for These Other Titles from Dean Wesley Smith

  Poker Boy series:

  The Slots of Saturn: A Poker Boy Novel (No. 1)

  The Old Girlfriend of Doom: A Poker Boy Story (No. 2)

  Dead Even: A Poker Boy Story (No. 3)

  The Gods Aren’t Funny: A Poker Boy Story (No. 4)

  Gambling Hell: A Poker Boy Story (No. 5)

  Luck Be a Lady: A Poker Boy Story (No. 6)

  Sighed the Snake: A Poker Boy Story (No. 7)

  The Smoke That Doesn’t Bark: A Poker Boy Story (No. 8)

  The War of Poker: A Poker Boy Story (No. 9)

  Daddy is an Undertaker: A Poker Boy Story (No. 10)

  Nonexistent No More: A Poker Boy Story (No. 11)

  Fighting the Fuzzy-Wuzzy: A Poker Boy Story (No. 12)

  Pink Shoes and Hot Chocolate: A Poker Boy Story (No. 13)

  Shootout in the Okey-Doke Casino: A Poker Boy Story (No. 14)

  Dried Up: A Poker Boy Story (No. 15)

  The Empty Mummy Murders: A Poker Boy Story (No. 16)

  Living Time: A Poker Boy Story (No. 17)

  Not Saleable For Sale: A Poker Boy Story (No. 18)

  Just Shoot Me Now!: A Poker Boy Story (No. 19)

  For the Balance of a Heart: A Poker Boy Story (No. 20)

  A Night with a Forgotten God: A Poker Boy Story (No. 21)

  The Atlantis Fifty: A Poker Boy Story (No. 22)

  They’re Back: A Poker Boy Short Novel (No. 23)

  The 13th Floor Problem: A Poker Boy Story (No. 24)

  A Des
ert Shot: A Poker Boy Story (No. 25)

  You Forgive the Night’s Scream: A Poker Boy Story (No. 26)

  That Lost Riddle: A Poker Boy Story (No. 27)

  The Match: A Poker Boy Story (No. 28)

  A Storm from the Relic: A Poker Boy Story (No. 29)

  The Secrets of Yesterday: A Poker Boy Story (No. 30)

  The Rules of the Game: A Poker Boy Story (No. 31)

  The Library of Atlantis: A Poker Boy Story (No. 32)

  The Gods Have History: A Poker Boy Story (No. 33)

  Leaking Away a Life: A Poker Boy Story (No. 34)

  The Rude Impossible Presumptive: A Poker Boy Story (No. 35)

  In the Play of Frigid Women: A Poker Boy Story (No. 36)

  A Ghost of a Chance series:

  Heaven Painted as a Poker Chip

  Heaven Painted as a Christmas Gift

  Heaven Painted as a Free Meal

  Heaven Painted as a Cop Car

  Sign up for the WMG Publishing newsletter to receive updates about new releases, bonus content and more at wmgpublishing.com

  Copyright Information

  They’re Back

  Copyright © 2016 by Dean Wesley Smith

  First published in Fiction River: Fantastic Detectives, WMG Publishing, September 2014

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover and layout copyright © 2016 by WMG Publishing

  Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © Trilingstudio/Dreamstime, Chudtsankov/Dreamstime

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.