Chapter 3

When Sgt Tanner entered the room the next morning, he was momentarily shocked by what he saw. The crazy English girl, as Dr Matthews called her, and Vince Richards were curled up together in the narrow hospital bed. The girl had her head on his chest and he had his arms wrapped tightly round her. They looked, to all intents and purposes, like lovers – not the strangers he was convinced they were. The files they had on Vincent Richards had made no mention of a girlfriend; in fact Officer O'Connor had said that Vince was interested in Toretto's sister Mia.

He was so sure that Toretto's thugs were behind the hijackings but he didn't have enough evidence to charge anyone. O'Connor had disappeared and neither the LAPD nor the FBI had found any sign of whoever had shot Vincent Richards. He knew he had no choice but to remove the police guard from the room and tell Vince that the police were no longer investigating him.

"Excuse me, Mr Richards, Miss Armstrong."

"It's DR Armstrong you prick, don't you people ever listen." If there was one thing that Chloe hated it was people not listening to what she told them. She'd lost track of the number of times she's corrected people when they called her Miss. Ok, so she wasn't licensed to practice medicine in the US but she was still a qualified doctor.

"I apologise, DR Armstrong, but I still need to talk to you and Mr Richards – there are a few things I'd like to get cleared up."

"Fine, but don't expect me to get up. It's bad enough you woke me up but there's no way I'm getting out of bed as well." Chloe had woken up when the door had opened and was surprised to find she was still wrapped up in Vince's arms. She'd no idea how long she'd been asleep but judging by how hungry she was she guessed it must have been several hours. "And don't expect me to wake Vince up either – he needs his sleep or he'll never get better, you can come back and talk to him later." Chloe knew that Vince was awake, she could feel his thumb gently stoking her stomach under the covers, but she wanted him to give him an opportunity to listen to what she had to say before he was questioned.

"Ok then, let's start at the beginning. How did you meet Vincent Richards?"

"I really don't see what this has to do with your investigation but if you must know I met him through my friend Mia Toretto. Mia and I are at college together, we're on the same course. I've got to pass the course before I can practice medicine in the US and Mia is studying to be a doctor." Chloe was dreading telling the rest of the story, she hated having to relive her parents' death and the hell that followed it but she knew that she had no choice.

"4mths after my parents died Mia invited me to join her and her family at the beach. I was finding it very difficult to cope with what had happened and Mia thought that I needed a change of scenery." Mia would never know how much of an impact the day at the beach had on Chloe's life. She'd been writing her resignation letter for the college and about to book a flight back to England when Mia called.

"So, if you've known Mr Richards for over a year, why didn't we know anything about you before you turned up here?" Tanner knew that Chloe was lying about her relationship with Vince but he couldn't prove it.

"That's simple, we kept our relationship a secret – Dominic hates me and Vince didn't want to upset him. After all he lives in his house and works in his garage. We decided not to live together until after we're married so Vince has to stay at Dom's house." Chloe was nervous about lying to the police officer – still, most of what she was saying was true. Dominic did hate her – he'd made a pass at her when they were at the beach and she'd turned him down flat. Ever since then he'd been rude and hostile towards her.

"If you'd had 24hr surveillance on Vince, or tapped his phone calls then you'd have known all about me." Chloe was desperately hoping that what she assumed was actually true. If the police had been watching Vince 24hrs a day then she was sunk – her lies would be exposed and she wouldn't be able to do anything about it. The look on Tanners face made Chloe realise that there hadn't been any kind of independent surveillance on Vince. The police had obviously been concentrating their efforts on Dominic so they'd left the other members of the team alone.

"Is there anything else you wanted to ask? Or can I go back to sleep?" Chloe wasn't sure how much longer she could stay cuddled up with Vince – his hand had slowly worked it's way underneath her top and his fingers were gently brushing the undersides of her breasts.

"I think we're about finished Dr Armstrong but I do need to talk to Mr Richards some more so I'll be back later."

"That's fine; I've got some things to do this afternoon, if you come back then I'm sure Vince will be awake." Chloe had been putting off her task for a few days now but she knew it couldn't wait any longer. Someone had to arrange Jesse's funeral and as Vince was still in the hospital, the rest of the team had fled and Jesse's only blood relative was in jail it fell to Chloe to make the arrangements.

"I'm awake now, so ask away." Vince had been listening to everything Tanner asked Chloe and knew that he didn't believe their relationship to be real. Seeing as how actions speak louder than words he decided to show Tanner just how real their engagement was.

"Morning baby, you sleep well?"

Before Chloe had a chance to answer Vince pressed his lips onto hers to kiss her good morning. What started out as a fairly chaste kiss soon became more passionate as their hormones took control. Chloe had kissed her fair share of men but none of them even came close to Vince. She moaned softly and Vince took the opportunity to slip his tongue past her lips, aggressively exploring her mouth, trying to take control of their kiss. Chloe brought her hands up and ran them through Vince's hair pulling him harder against her; she was drowning in his kiss and didn't ever want to let him go.

Burning lungs finally forced the couple apart – panting for breath they stared into each other eyes, oblivious to Tanner who had been watching the entire thing.

"Ahem, when you've quite finished I need to talk to Mr Richards." Tanner's voice quickly brought Vince and Chloe back to reality. There would be plenty of time for passion later – for now they had other things to do.

Carefully untangling herself from Vince and getting out of bed Chloe smiled softly as she told Vince she'd be back later.

"If you gentlemen will excuse me I need to have a shower and get changed before I go out." Chloe had a difficult morning ahead and knew that she'd feel better if she put some smarter clothes on – a cut off t-shirt and shorts just wasn't going to cut it.

With a kiss goodbye and a soft smile Chloe left Vince and Tanner alone, leaving the hospital for the first time in almost three weeks felt more than a little bit strange. She'd grown so close to Vince in the time she'd spent with him and she couldn't help but wish he was there with her – she'd no idea how she was going to get through the morning without him by her side but she knew she had to try.

Back in Vince's room Tanner was getting more and more frustrated. It didn't matter what he asked Vince, he didn't find out anything he could use to build a case. Unless Brian or the truck driver turned up he had no case against anyone on DT and he'd have to let Vince go.

It was gone 4pm when Chloe made it back to the hospital. Things had taken her longer than she thought and she'd been gone for almost 8 hours. As she walked past the nurses' station on Vince's floor she heard someone calling out to her.

"Dr Armstrong, Dr Armstrong – can you wait for a second please?" One of the nurses that was looking after Vince was running up the corridor calling out to Chloe as she ran.

"What is it, what's happened?" Chloe knew that the nurses never ran anywhere unless there was an emergency and all she could think off was that something had happened to Vince.

"I'm so glad you're back, Mr Richards was starting to think you weren't coming back."

As soon as the nurse told her this Chloe felt guilty. She'd not told Vince anything of what she was doing and she'd been gone for hours. It's no surprise he thought she wasn't coming back – after all, everyone else had abandoned him.

Vince was curled up on his side with his back to the door when Chloe entered the room. He didn't look up or acknowledge she was there even though she knew he was wide awake.

"I'm sorry I'm so late, things took longer than I'd anticipated." Chloe knew that she had a lot of explaining to do, Vince was all she had and she couldn't bare him giving her the cold shoulder.

Vince didn't trust himself to speak, he'd been crying ever since he came to the conclusion that Chloe wasn't coming back, so he simply shrugged and kept staring at the wall.

Chloe walked round the end of Vince's bed and knelt down in front of him. Her eyes were level with his and she could see the tear stains on his face. She leaned towards him and kissed him gently before motioning to him to move over so she could lie on the bed next to him.

"I went to see Jesse's dad. I had to tell him what had happened and ask if he had any preferences for the funeral."

Vince didn't know what to say when Chloe told him where she'd been. He'd been convinced that she wasn't coming back and had got himself so worked up that he'd not really given any thought to what she might be doing. He could see how upset she was by the days events so he did the only thing he could think of – he wrapped his arms around her and held her as she sobbed.

When her sobs quietened down Vince carefully lifted Chloe's face so that he was looking straight into her eyes. "Thank you." He couldn't even begin to imagine how difficult it must have been for her to go to Lompoc to see Jesse's dad. She'd never met the man yet it fell to her to tell him that his only son was dead. Vince got angry as he thought about Chloe having to do that. It wasn't down to her – it should have been someone from the team, the same as it should have been someone from the team who stood by him during his recovery. Chloe had been a stranger when she came to the hospital looking for Vince and Jesse but she'd been more a family member than anyone on the team could have been. Chloe was Vince's family now and he was hers.