Jonah Havensby by Bob Bannon Page A

read the book samples on the tablet until he fell asleep shivering.
    When he woke up the next morning, the first thing he registered was pain. It felt like the area behind his eyes was on fire. He had never had such a headache. When he opened his eyes, his vision blurred. He rubbed at his eyes until they cleared. The second thing he registered was that he was really warm. No, he was downright boiling.
    He sat up and found himself in his boxer shorts, his clothes neatly folded on the control panel. When the cold air hit his exposed skin, he immediately dove back under the furniture cover that he used as a blanket, but it was still much warmer than it ever had been. And much heavier.
    He sat up and moved the furniture cover and found that he was wrapped in a blanket, a hot blanket. His eyes trailed across it and then to the outlet in the wall. There was another plug in the outlet, above the one for the tablet. He had been wrapped up in a heated electric blanket.
    He immediately threw it off him and jumped up to his clothes. He hurriedly dressed, bent over to stay as far out of sight of the windows as possible, but kept peering down onto the main floor the entire time. Who would have brought him an electric blanket?
    When he was dressed he threw the door to the office open and looked around. It didn’t seem that anything was different. And hadn’t the lock on the knob popped when he tore the door open? Someone brought him an electric blanket but then bothered to lock him back in for safety?
    Just then, he fell to one knee and grabbed his head. In his fear, he had ignored the pain behind his eyes, but now it was back, and it was brutal. His vision blurred once more.
    He stood up, braced by the stairway railing, and moved back into the office. He was headed for his water bottle next to the nest. What he found was two loaves of bread and a jar of peanut butter. His water bottle was on the desk next to his pack.
    He had another moment of panic. He grabbed his coat and put it on then threw the water bottle into his pack and ripped the tablet from the wall. Then he was gripped by another bout of pain and had to steady himself on the desk. When it subsided back to a dull ache, he whipped the pack onto one shoulder and turned for the door.
    Something hit the floor next to the desk when he pulled his pack off of it. He moved to that side of the desk and looked down. It was a spiral-bound notebook opened to the first page. Scrawled across the top of the page in black ink were two words:
    Better Now
    Jonah put the tablet down on the desk and picked up the notebook. He stared at the words. They were outside the lines and weren’t level with each other. He closed the notebook cover and looked at it. He didn’t recognize it. He hadn’t brought it with him. He turned it over and looked at the back. He opened the front cover and stared at the words again. They were true. But that wasn’t really the point.
    He went to the windows and looked out again. No one seemed to be hiding downstairs. Maybe they were outside. But why do this at all? It didn’t make sense.
    He opened the notebook and looked at the words again. They were blocky and appeared to be scratched into the paper as if whoever wrote it pushed too hard. He turned the page over to see how hard the indention went through, but then discovered something new.
    On the second page, written in a fine, curly print, very neatly and perfectly set within the lines were three short sentences.
    You’re perfectly safe. Not to worry. The tablet works now.
    He looked at the tablet then at the words. He dropped the notebook on the floor and turned on the tablet. After a moment, the ‘welcome’ screen lit. He didn’t see anything different. What did the note mean? The tablet did work. It had worked since he found it.
    Then he noticed. In the top right corner, the wireless internet icon wasn’t red, as it usually was. It was green.
    V
    Jonah didn’t know what to do. In a panic, he stuffed his