Free Forbidden by Jacquelyn Frank

this type of car.
    For the first time, she began to feel warmer. Thank God, because chattering teeth were not helping the headache she had blossoming between her ears. Her whole body ached, and the cold only made it worse.
    “We would have waited,” the blond explained quietly. “If you hadn’t been in immediate danger just now, we would have waited. Given you a few days to rest, heal, and Blend.”
    “Blend?”
    “At first I thought that man was a reporter. I expected them to show up again.”
    “Again?” she demanded. She was beginning to sound like a parrot.
    “You’re something of a local … miracle. They’re calling you the ‘Bridge Girl.’ The girl who survived the odds. Your brother has kept you isolated so far, but he had to know that wouldn’t last once they released you.”
    “Bridge Girl?” There she was again …
Polly want a
Docia
? “Really?” She rolled her eyes and regretted it for the instant backlash of pain she received in the seat of her skull. “They couldn’t come up with anything more … I dunno … miraculous?”
    “It would have been better if they hadn’t come up with anything at all,” Ram said tightly. “The attention has allowed those who originally tossed you off that bridge to learn you survived. That makes you a witness. I highly doubt they like the idea of you potentially being able to identify them. Attempted murder is not an easy rap to beat.”
    “Especially not the attempted murder of the ‘Bridge Girl,’” she said wryly.
    “And as you saw, they had little interest in letting you run around with your memory— or anything else, for that matter—intact.”
    “I don’t understand,” she said, finally deserving the label “whining” and not caring if she did. She was frustrated, tired, and cold, and screw Ass-whatever-his-name-was if he didn’t like it! “I didn’t do anything! I’m not anyone special! I’m a tiny little secretary in a tiny little office for a tiny little company!” She made a tiny little box out of her hands in case they weren’t getting the concept of just how tiny she meant.
    “Your specialness goes without saying,” Ram said, reminding her gently that for some reason he disagreedwith the assessment. “And you may not realize why, but you most certainly are special to these people as well. You must have been somewhere at the wrong time. Seen something without realizing it.”
    “Back to your witness theory?” She sniffed. “I walk to work in the morning and walk back home. That’s it. In the morning I stop for coffee and on the way home I either swing by Price Chopper for groceries or Mr. Cheung’s for Chinese.”
    “And that’s it? You never go out? Shop? Anything?”
    “If I shop, it’s on the weekend at my favorite resurrection stores. Oh …” She flushed a little. “And occasionally I stop at Krause’s Candy store for a chocolate-covered pretzel. But it’s sugar-free,” she felt it necessary to point out.
    The detail made him smile softly for some reason, a mysterious sculpting of his lips, drawing her attention to their unusual voluptuousness. Did he know he had girl lips? Well, actually, lips any girl would give her left arm for. On him, there wasn’t anything the least bit feminine about them. No. The way testosterone rolled off him in confident waves, you could stuff him in a frilly polka-dot dress and he still wouldn’t reflect a sense of femininity.
    The thought of him in drag made her giggle a little. Then she took it a step further and thought of Asikri in drag. Now she laughed with energy, her hand going to her head in an attempt to lessen the vibrational pain of the emotion. It was worth it, though. It helped bring her anxiety down to a more manageable level.
    It was another ten minutes of silence before they pulled into a gravel driveway, driving through a heavy pair of spiked gates that crossed each other for stability and withdrew into thick walls of stone that extended pretty far out on