Page 18 of Short, Lethal & Claimed

“I’m making it my business,” Jill said as she followed him into the bathroom.

“You may want to rethink that decision,” Logan said, pulling his belt loose.

“Probably,” Jill murmured, folding her arms over her chest as she leaned back against the wall with a glare that she probably thought was going to intimidate him.

It made him wonder what happened to the meek woman from the compound that looked like she was just waiting for a reason to break. Then again, while he was in that cell, he’d found himself wondering what happened to the small woman that had taken him by surprise with a dagger pressed against his balls. He found himself wondering which one was the real Jill Williams, the broken woman on the verge of falling apart or the womanwho’d left him reeling with a few simple words and a well-placed dagger.

“What are they doing here, Logan?” Jill demanded, making him wonder if he’d imagined that frail woman at the compound.

“Shouldn’t you be begging me not to hand you over to the Sentinels?” Logan asked as he pulled his shirt off and tossed it on the floor.

“Are you planning on turning them over to the Sentinels?” Jill asked instead as he took in the dried blood on his skin before taking in the large bruise covering his ribs and-

Found himself watching Jill walk out of the room with a heavy sigh. Curious about that, Logan pulled his phone out of his pocket, swiped it open and watched her make her way to the kitchen, where she pulled two bags of blood out of the fridge and placed them in the microwave. While she waited for the blood to finish heating up, she glanced back towards the room he’d left the children in as she worried her bottom lip between her teeth. She was too fucking kind for her own good, Logan thought as he swiped to the left until he came to the camera feed for the back bedroom and found the children the same way that he found them in that cell, with the little girl and boy cowering in the corner while the teenage boy kept his angry gaze locked on the bedroom door.

It would have been so much easier if he’d grabbed the adults instead. He could have kept them in that compound and waited for Pierce to come to him, but…

Fuck it.

He placed his phone on the counter and reached for a facecloth just as Jill placed a cup of blood on the counter in front of him. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said as she hopped up onto the counter and took the facecloth from him.

“Did you poison it?” Logan asked, only to have his lips twitch when she said, “Yes,” with absolutely no hesitation.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Jill said, throwing him a questioning look as she held the facecloth beneath the faucet and turned the hot water on.

“You didn’t give me a chance,” Logan pointed out, picking up the glass and took a sip of blood and forced himself to ignore the lukewarm metallic liquid as he watched her.

“Fair enough,” Jill said, turning off the faucet before she reached over and forced him to bite back a groan when she took him by surprise and ran the facecloth slowly down his chest. “Are you planning on handing them over to the Sentinels?”

“No,” Logan said, watching Jill frown in confusion as she watched the dried blood on his skin turn to dust as soon as it was wiped off his skin.

“They don’t belong here, Logan,” Jill said as that frown turned to curiosity as she rinsed the facecloth beneath the water.

“They’re marked, Angel,” he said, watching as she went still before she slowly, ever so fucking slowly, turned her head to glare at him through silver eyes.

“You marked them?” she demanded, looking adorably pissed as he finished off the glass of blood and placed it on the counter.

“I don’t mark children,” Logan said as he took the facecloth from her.

“Then, who did?” Jill asked, watching as he finished wiping the dried blood off his torso as the blood made its way through his system, slowly healing the last of the aches and bruises left behind from the night before.

“The asshole that I’m going to kill,” Logan drawled as he tossed the facecloth on the counter and made his way back into his room.

“And who would that be?” Jill asked as she followed him into the bedroom, feigning disinterest as she glanced around his room only to have her gaze linger on that closet door before she shifted her attention back to him.

“It doesn’t matter,” Logan said, watching her for a moment before he asked, “What’s the plan?”

“You tell me,” Jill said, meeting his gaze head-on, something that most people avoided, which, of course, only made him more curious about her.

“I’m going to remove my mark from your neck and hand you over to the Sentinels,” Logan said, shrugging it off as he made his way to the first closet and grabbed a fresh shirt.

“And the children?” Jill asked, watching him curiously.

“Are bait.”

CHAPTER 11

“What did you just say?” Jill asked hollowly as she watched Logan pull on a clean shirt.

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