Page 42 of Short, Lethal & Claimed

“Neither is letting your men know that you’re not healing,” Jill said with a pointed look at his hands.

“Afraid they’ll drive a stake through my chest before you get a chance?” Logan asked dryly.

“I mean, there is that,” Jill murmured with a heartfelt sigh that had his lips twitching.

“I don’t need your blood, Angel,” Logan said, reluctantly placing his hands on her hips to move her off his lap only to go still when she murmured, “Liar.”

“What makes you think that I’m lying?” he asked, watching her curiously.

“There’s only one way to find out, but I guess we won’t be finding out tonight,” Jill said, placing her hands on his shouldersas she climbed off his lap with a heartfelt sigh and headed for the door, leaving him with no choice but to watch her go.

CHAPTER 22

“Come on,” Jill muttered as she adjusted her hold around the metal pole that she’d pulled off the towel rack from the guest bathroom upstairs and-

“What are you doing?” came the question that had her swallowing hard as she slowly looked over her shoulder to find the teenage boy that seemed to really love glaring at her doing what he did best.

“Embracing my obsession with Pilates,” Jill said, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth as she used her fingertips to push the metal pole closer to the closet door only to end up pushing the pole out of her reach.

Damn it!

“You know that you’re not fooling anyone, right?” Shane said with a heavy sigh as he stepped over her and picked up the metal pole.

“What’s that?” Jill asked as she pushed herself up.

“Your escape plans,” Shane murmured absently as he glanced from the metal pole in his hand to the closet door that she’d been trying to open for the past four months.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jill said, blinking innocently as she got to her feet and held her hand out for the metal pole.

“Yeah, I can see that,” Shane said, ignoring her hand and tossed the pole on the bed before focusing back on the closet door. “What’s in there?”

“What are you doing up?” Jill asked instead because she really didn’t think that it was a good idea to give a teenage boy that loved to glare access to whatever was behind that door.

“Why are you changing the subject?” Shane countered as Jill glanced at the alarm clock by Logan’s bed. She had another hour, two tops, before Logan came back from wherever it was that he went to every night, which meant that she needed to get rid of the evidence of her latest escape attempt.

“Because that’s what I do best,” Jill said as she grabbed the metal pole off the bed and resigned herself to finding another way to get into the closet. She-

“It’s empty,” Shane said, making her sigh heavily as she turned and muttered, “Of course it is.”

“Might want to come up with a better plan,” Shane said as Jill stood there, taking in the empty closet that she’d really been counting on to pull this off.

“I always have a Plan B,” Jill said with a sigh after she sent one last wistful glance at the closet before turning around and headed for the door only to pause by the bureau, grab Logan’s iPad and-

Damn it!

-sighed as she placed his iPad back on top of the bureau while she mentally crossed “Demon” off her list of potential passwords and headed for the door with the teenage boy quickly catching up with her.

“Does your Plan B involve removing your chain?” Shane asked as they headed down the hallway.

“It’s part of it,” Jill said, only to realize that she should probably consider this Plan C since her plan to entice Logan with her blood to get her chain removed hadn’t exactly worked out.

She just…

She had no idea what she was doing.

Madison would have probably already figured a way out of this mess, Jill thought with a sad smile. God, she missed her. She missed hanging out with Marc late at night watching horrible horror movies while they waited for Ephraim and Chris to come home from patrol. She missed the way that Madison used to cheat at Monopoly only to pout when she lost anyway. She missed her grandmother’s cooking and…

She missed food, Jill thought on a wistful sigh.

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