Some old Volkwagen*Fast and Furious*

Chapter 4 - He's Back in Town, Part 2 (Brian)

"That's it. He's back in town. Toretto's back." – "What did you say O'Connor? You've got to speak up, you know, I ain't got ears like an elephant's or something." – Brian put down his newspaper with a frown. "I didn't say anything, Johnson." – His colleague came over to him with a weird sort of grin. "Sounded much like 'Toretto' to me." – "I was just talking to myself." Inwardly, Brian cursed himself for not being careful when he was at work. Now he'd gotten himself into a fine mess. – "Toretto. Is he back?" – Brian shrugged in an annoyed manner and making as if to go. "How would I know, Johnson?" – Johnson looked at him with that strange smile again. "Yeah, how would you? – I mean, they've been talking that you let him go once and were friends with him. But still, how could you of all people possibly know..." – Brian grabbed his uniform jacket. "Come on, Johnson. See that badge? It means I'm officially forgiven. And I certainly won't make a mistake twice..." He headed out of the office into the bright sunshine of the LA afternoon. No, he wouldn't make that mistake again and get close to the Torettos. Even more, since it would be the last thing he'd ever do: Dom would kill him if he ever saw him again. He had never understood. Well, Brian had betrayed them because he was a cop, but then he had not because he'd never told the police anything about them. Anything that mattered, anyway. He'd let Dom go and he'd called an ambulance for that bastard Vince. He'd done it for them, alright? – But they would never understand. He was a cop which meant he was bad. Always. He couldn't believe it was a year now that everything had happened – and now Dom was back.

It hadn't been hard to deduct, really. Brian still had some informants in the racing scene and they'd told him something was going on: some big races were coming up and quite a few racers had withdrawn their entries. Scared kids they were, Brian scoffed. He'd never feared Dom. Not really. Then in this morning's paper it had said that some small, meaningless garage was re-opening for the summer. That was so very much Dom's fingerprint Brian was surprised the other officers – who spent most of their working-time looking for him – hadn't noticed. Well, the garage wasn't listed as one of Dom's hideouts and the man running it – George Saturn – wasn't listed as an acquaintance of his, but when he left the garage had closed down and now it was open again, just like that. It was a mere detail of course – probably no one of the other officers had thought it necessary to pay attention to those tiny "coincidences". They'd never go through the trouble of checking George Saturn's identity. He didn't exist, by the way. The colleagues on the case probably didn't even realise "Saturn" was a less well known American car brand. And Brian was sure he'd heard Dom and the others talk about the "Saturn's" at some point as one of the places where they were upgrading their own and others' cars to get some money.

When Brian got into his boring, ordinary police-car he imagined he was sitting in that racing car on the night he'd first challenged Dom. It was childish of course, but Brian often caught himself wondering... wondering what might have happened. If he'd thrown that cursed badge of his into the dust and had begged Dom to take him along. Would he have said yes? Perhaps Mia wouldn't have hated him then. And yet he would have defied everything he had once thought important in his life, broken every rule, joined the bad team. He wasn't bad. He'd always wanted to do the right thing. Nowadays, anyway. Sometimes it was just so hard to figure out what was right.

Hopefully, Johnson wouldn't pay too much notice to what Brian had said – it wouldn't put Brian into the favour of his bosses if the word "Toretto" appeared in connection with him. Actually, he would be as good as fired if it did. Johnson was a nosey little bastard, but not even he would get him fired on purpose. He just didn't know this was hot stuff he was dealing with and might easily blab it out. Brian couldn't get fired right now – for the same reasons he had tried to make amends and be taken back into service a year ago: without his job, he had nothing left. When Brian had to stop in front of some traffic lights, he felt like challenging the man in the car next to him for a little race, but he didn't really dare. His bosses wouldn't tolerate any more from him... It was incredible how very much his life sucked nowadays.