Read Online Shelly's Second Chance (The Wish Granters, Book One) by L B Gschwandtner - Free Book Online Page A

trash,”
he said and dropped the paper. It blew up and over his head and landed in the
water pool made by the fountain where it bobbed around and around.
    “That’s strange because in
Transition I found a scrap of paper that had names on it of people I’d known
and an old address from when I was a child.”
    Joe leaped to his feet and
reached out as far as he could to retrieve the soaked paper from the pool. He
held the dripping sheet away from his body as if it might bite him.
    “It’s a list of client
names,” he whispered. “Of people I defended. The ones I got off. Except for
this last one. There’s not enough of it to tell what the name is. What the hell
do these guys want from us anyway?”

Chapter Fourteen
     
     
    Shelly marched up to the
counter with more confidence than she’d ever had. She slid three of the
vouchers across to the cashier. The woman’s reaction wasn’t quite what she’d
hoped. Apparently three hundred dollars—while a major, potentially
life-changing stake for someone like Shelly—was chump change here in Vegas.
Within seconds the woman slid a bucket of quarters back toward her, too bored
to even bother meeting Shelly’s eyes. The bucket was so heavy Shelly had to
carry it with both hands as she headed straight for the slots. The glamour
games like blackjack and craps weren’t for her and, after her poker loss years
ago, she’d steered clear of cards. Nah, she was a slots girl. Pump in the coins
and push the button. No waiting, no fuss. Somehow she wasn’t at all distracted
by the bright lights or all the noise. These were, of course, designed to break
down any resistance to the temptations of the game, but Shelly’s defenses
didn’t exist anyway, so she plunged in head first and started swimming.
     She had a system for picking
her machine. Her birthday was June 8 th so she walked to the sixth
row of slots and counted her way down to the eighth machine. Luckily it was
empty. If she’d found the eighth machine on the sixth row occupied, she’d
switch to the sixth machine in the eighth row, a distressing alteration in the
plan. Shelly was methodical and superstitious, something that GA had taught her
was true of most gamblers. One night the sponsor had suggested rearranging the
folding chairs and it had thrown the whole group into a tizzy.
     She slid onto the chair,
wedged the big bucket of quarters between her feet and then bent down with one
of the small plastic cups they kept stacked beside every machine to scoop up a manageable
pile of quarters. Some people played a line at a time or ran a whole board,
even the diagonals, but not Shelly. She was a slot machine purist. Besides, the
statistician in her required certain tools and programs to figure complex odds.
    Bam, she pushed the first
button and a line of lemons dropped down one after the other, snap, snap, snap.
Shelly let out a little whoop, and a batch of quarters poured out, nearly
filling the slot tray. This was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. She
felt a thrill. Not the usual high that came with the uncertainty of an outcome.
This was more like holding a secret. She had power now—an edge. And she was in
the driver’s seat for the first time in her life.
    “Wow! Must be twenty-five
bucks here. And on the very first play.”
    She vaguely noticed Alanna
move to the machine at her left and Joe arrive at the other side.
    “Well,” Shelly said under her
breath, popping in another quarter. “I’m the chosen one, right? So it’s
supposed to be easy.” The machine ate that quarter and she reached
automatically for the next and then another and soon she was feeding the
machine as if it was a hungry mongrel.
     “Chosen one?” Joe said with
a smirk. “Well I guess you are, honey, but it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Chosen by who?”
     “Whom,” Alanna said. Joe
laughed and shook his head. Shelly reached for another quarter and looked down
at her bucket. There were five quarters left. She had