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Mike did not look relieved to see Mel as they pulled the car into park and cut the engine. The window whirred down as he peered back over the glass before giving both occupants of the car a stern glance. Tilting his head to the side he motioned her to follow suit. Beside her Bam was making fists against the material gathered in his lap. She smiled at him as reassuringly as she could before nodding aside to Mike.
“What?” the half-Japanese man grunted.
Though he remained in the drivers seat and she behind hers, the few feet between the stationary vehicles didn’t seem far enough as Mike slumped back into the seat warily. “Don’t be playing games with me tonight Melissa. I don’t have time for this ****.”
“Here,” Mel said, withdrawing some small bundle from the glove compartment.
Though Bam remained silent as she reached across his lap towards the window, the look on his face was painfully nervous. She wished he would say something or do something impulsive to shirk the paternal frown Mike was affording them, but was simultaneously relieved he didn’t. Still, she couldn’t help but shake the feeling that somehow Mike already knew something was up even if he wasn’t so much as putting it into words at the moment. Grunting with the effort of reaching out through the off-drivers side window while still strapped into her seatbelt, Mel handed Mike her package and gave Bam a quick unceremonious thud in the ribs as she drew back into her seat again. Ever the showman Bam shoved her. Mel smirked at him, hoping he could read the look of warning she was giving him.
“Relax,” she mouthed silently.
Several feet away on the other side of his opened window Mike was unwrapping the package.
“What am I looking at?” he muttered as he peeled through the hastily gathered plastic.
Mel stared at Bam intently.
“Syringe. We found it at Ryu’s.”
“When?”
“Not long ago.”
“What were you doing there in the first place?” Mike enquired without missing a beat. Mel had well anticipated he wouldn’t, having sat in on enough ‘business’ meetings to know that Mike was as unflappable and as poker-faced as they came when the mood took him. “I thought I asked you two to-”
“You asked me to get proof,” Mel said, talking over the top of him just as seriously.
Mike studied the contents of the parcel in his hand discreetly before he closed it and lowered it from view beneath the window’s edge. He rolled his eyes aside to meet hers again.
“Back in the beginning, at the very start, remember? Back at the club, you dragged me aside and you asked me to do this-”
“I asked you to do that some six months ago,” Mike corrected, his rich voice seemingly colder for its low tone and almost perfect elocution. “Why now? Why tonight of all nights? Coincidence, isn’t it?”
Mel and Bam locked eyes as Mike leisurely slid his gaze out through the windscreen to the row of storefronts ahead. People were strolling by but not enough to be of any great concern, and surrounded by flashing lights and hissing steam vents most were too distracted to look at them. Besides, beneath the lowered cap and drawn hood of his dark parker all but Mike’s cheeks and nose were lost to the shadows. He looked around lazily like a man with all the time in the world but the tension of the moment was painfully clear – made worse of course by the trio’s stiff and brooding silence. Eventually Mike sighed and wrapped the parcel up again. His head was rotating slowly in keeping with the movements of some tiny brunette clacking past the hood of his car. Mel pursed her lips wryly as Mike cleared his throat with a low rumble.
“So what?” he asked. “What is this supposed to prove? It could be anyone’s. One of his friends. For all I know it could be yours.”
Mel smirked but doubted he could see her face all that clearly amidst the shadows. Bam swallowed loudly.
“You’ve seen the way he’s been acting lately.”
“Yeah. I’ve also seen the way you two have been acting lately. I don’t like it. If I didn’t know any better I would swear you two were setting him up.”
Bam opened his mouth to speak but with a quick jab in his ribs, discreetly covered beneath the cabin’s darkness, Mel enforced Bam’s silence. Mike was looking at them again seriously. Mel smiled at him. She was hoping he could see it.
“Why would I do that?” she challenged.
Her heart was pounding as her mind began reeling with visions of Mike nursing a loaded handgun across his lap cocked and ready and aimed unseen in their direction. She scoffed at it as much to convince herself she wasn’t scared, as it was a menial attempt at sarcasm. Mike’s dark eyed stare wasn’t helping matters at all as he just continued to sit there staring back at them. He snorted at her and even managed a smile himself. It was as if someone had taken a knife and slashed a crooked deep wound across the lower half of his face – framed as it was by his beard – and it wasn’t humorous in the least. Mel hadn’t expected it would be – he was testing her after all.
“I’ve known Ryu for years,” Mike explained, regaling his story to a captive audience of sorts, “Why should I believe he’s got a problem just because you say so.”
Bam was looking at Mel out of the corner of his eye like a cornered animal.
“We’ve all got problems,” Bam blurted.
Mel internalised a groan and sunk her head back into the head rest. She gripped at his thigh again and dug her fingertips in so hard Bam jerked and stifled a yelp in his seat – but just barely. Mike looked at them again. He sighed.
“Yeah,” he agreed distractedly meeting his reflection in the rear view mirror. “Some more than most.”
“Look, you got what you came for.”
“Which is?”
“Proof. That’s his blood in there. I know it. Go see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
“And what makes you so sure it’s his? Why? Did you stab him with it, is that it?”
“Mike-” Bam began to argue.
But Mel shoved him backwards in his seat to lean past him.
“If you don’t believe me, why did you ask me to spy for you in the first place?”
“Because I don’t want you setting up my friends just to save your own ***!” Mike retaliated fiercely.
His brow was burrowed just as venomous at this point as hers was as the two locked eyes through the opened windows.
Mel snorted at him. She scowled and shook her head ever so slightly. Then she smirked at him. Mike continued to frown.
“Fine. Think what you want. But I’m probably the only one looking out for you, even if the rest of them only act like they do.”
“Should I be flattered?”
“Be what you want,” Mel quipped and slumped back into her seat. The car rocked and settled as traffic continued to steadily stream past them. “If you don’t want to take my word for it then don’t. There’s obviously nothing I can do to change your mind anyway, right?”
“Alright, alright, enough with the theatrics, I have enough of that going on around me at the moment,” Mike sighed towards his vehicle’s ceiling. He drew in a long heavy burdensome breath and slowly pushed it out again.