Later in the evening, Natasha met Stark in one of Nick's secret safehouses, looked Stark from head to toe and said, "I didn't expect you to be able to escape from prison without a mech." ”

"What do you think I'm going to do? Wearing steel suits and their fists? This is legal bail. Stark adjusted the position of the microscope and said, "If I don't want to go to jail, no one can catch me in, Pepper has a team of lawyers ready, you are right, only I am alive to find out the real murderer of Rod's murder." ”

"If only you had thought so." Natasha crossed her arms but didn't lean against the wall as lazily as she used to, apparently the current situation made her feel some pressure as well, and she said, "What are you going to do next?" Do you have an idea for an investigation? Is there anything I need to do? ”

"Rod's family didn't want to see me, and I didn't have the shame to meet them, and now that I choose to fight to the end through legal means, they will definitely be disappointed in me, but the clues they provide are very crucial."

Stark stopped what he was doing, looked at Natasha seriously, and said, "If you want to help, go do your old job, and find a way to ask Rod's wife and son if they saw any suspicious people that night." ”

Natasha frowned and said, "You should know that if there are other suspects, Pepper will not allow the police to take you away from Stark Tower, and your team of lawyers will make them look good as soon as possible." ”

"Are you suspicious of me?"

"If I had doubted you, I wouldn't have come here to see you, I'm just as dangerous as you." Natasha took two steps forward, propped her hand on the bench and put her hand close to Stark's face and said, "Think about Rod's death, if you die in the café like this that day, I will also be falsely imprisoned, the murderer obviously wants to kill two birds with one stone, and we are avoiding giving him this opportunity." ”

"Either way, do what you have to do." Stark turned around and said with a heavy face, "Take out the ability you used to get information from me in the first place, and find out what happened that night?" ”

Natasha took a deep breath, took two steps back and said, "If you need anything, call Coulson, he will provide you with all the conveniences, Nick will too, and, save your own life, we will see you tomorrow." ”

Seeing Natasha's neatly turned back, Stark hesitated for a moment, then pursed his lips and said, "Listen, this is cooperation, let me see your sincerity, get back the evidence confiscated by the FBI Laboratory Section, I need them." ”

Natasha looked back and said, "It was handed over to the FBI personally by Rod's family, and he trusted them." ”

"That's just because they don't trust anyone else, but they trust the wrong person, and the FBI doesn't work, all the time." Stark finally walked to the test table, looked at Natasha and said, "This is my only request, if you want things to progress, you better do it quickly." ”

"Every request you make sounds like a threat, Tony, if you could learn to speak well, things would have progressed a long time ago."

With that, Natasha walked towards the door, before leaving the room. "I'll let Coulson do my best to coordinate, but don't expect me to steal them out, that's the hope of the Rhodes family, and the loss of evidence will drive them crazy," she said. ”

After Natasha left the room, she made a phone call and walked towards the car, she drove back to S.H.I.E.L.D. and told Coulson Stark what she wanted.

Of course, Coulson was very embarrassed, no agent in the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. was willing to deal with the FBI, although their scope of responsibility was above the FBI, but the leaders of every department of the FBI were not easy to deal with, and it took a good psychological quality to snatch things from them.

Anyway, Natasha decided to help Stark, because if anyone could find clues to the murderer through technical means, it must be Iron Man, so she planned to drive to Rhodes's house to see if she could ask for more useful information from the family.

Just as she walked out of the S.H.I.E.L.D. building again, opened the car door and was about to sit in, Coulson hurriedly chased after her and said, "The director is going to deal with the FBI himself, I'll go with you." ”

Natasha didn't say anything and sat in the driver's seat, and the two drove all the way to Rod's house, and Natasha silently counted the time in her heart along the way.

According to Jane Foster, Thor's abnormal state began around four o'clock in the afternoon, and improved around half past five, and according to Stark himself, he went to see Rod in the early evening, close to five o'clock in the afternoon, and the time of Rode's death was determined by the medical examiner to be around three o'clock in the morning, and according to his son's testimony, Rod had begun to have abnormalities at half past eleven in the middle of the night.

It takes about two and a half hours to fly from New York to New Mexico at the fastest speed, which means that if there is only one murderer, he must have attacked Thor first and then went to Rhodes, with an interval of about seven hours.

Excluding the preparation time, the time spent on the journey must be less than five hours, which means that the other party can only fly to and fro, and it is impossible to drive by road.

However, among the flights between New Jersey and New Mexico queried by S.H.I.E.L.D. during this period, no suspicious person was found, and the other party either had its own flight equipment or had special methods to hide from airport security.

Natasha couldn't weigh the two possibilities for the time being, so she told Coulson the results of her analysis, and Coulson said after a little thought: "If it's the former, it's either the military or the police who do it, and if the other party has the intention to hide it, we can't find out the movement of the business jet." ”

"If it's the latter, maybe we can check whether the crew security personnel have been bought, but I don't think there's much hope."

"Nick already sensed that someone didn't want him to form the Avengers, right?"

"Yes, and he's highly suspicious of the FBI, that's why he's going to deal with the boss of the laboratory himself, and they're not once or twice in trouble with each other."

Natasha put her hand on the steering wheel and sighed softly, but still turned to look at Coulson and said, "Did you bring your papers?" ”

Coulson reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a stack of papers, turning them through and saying, "Which one do you want?" CIA? FBI? NYPD? ”

"Is there an Air Force?"

Coulson flipped through his body again and finally said, "I only have a pilot's license, and it's not military." ”

Natasha took it and looked at it, and said, "That's enough, listen, I'm Lieutenant Colonel Delina retired from the U.S. Air Force, and you're my husband, Zahak from the Logistics Support Department, and we've worked with Rhodes at different times." ”

"As for the details, I've heard quite a few anecdotes about him and Rod from Tony before, and that's enough."

Natasha won't say, in fact, it's because she knows Rhodes in another universe and knows a lot about his habits, and it's enough to play the role of a colleague.

Soon the car drove to the door of Colonel Rod's house, Natasha stepped forward to ring the doorbell, and Coulson made a worried gesture, because he thought that someone from the FBI and the military must be watching here, and Natasha was so famous that he was afraid of rushing halfway to stop him.

Natasha is confident in her investigation, because she knows that even if the FBI and the military know that she is coming, they will definitely let her in, because they know better than anyone what Black Widow is capable of, and they want to sit back and enjoy it.

If nothing else, Colonel Rhodes' house is now full of monitors, and worse than this may be another trap of the murderer.

Natasha turned her head slightly and lowered her voice to Coulson, "Think about the code of agents, don't touch anything when you enter the house, and act according to the look I look in." ”

The doorbell rang a few times, and the haggard Mrs. Rhodes poked her head out of the crack in the door, and saw that it was a couple of people who rang the doorbell, she breathed a sigh of relief, and slowly opened the door and walked out.

She cautiously did not open the door, but asked through the door, "Who are you?" Come to me for what? ”

"We are former comrades-in-arms of Colonel Rhodes, I am a retired pilot, and now I am a civil aviation captain at American Airlines, and the two of us met when we were recruits, and my husband is still on duty, and he worked with Colonel Rhodes for a while when he was serving in the Air Force Combat Readiness Management Service."

"Oh my gosh, please come in." Mrs. Rhodes hurriedly opened the door and said apologetically: "There are too many police and reporters who have come recently, and they all want to dig up inside information from my mouth, so I have to be careful." ”

"You can rest assured that we're definitely not journalists." Natasha sighed and said, "I'm not hiding it from you, our old boss, General Burke, who is now retired to Hawaii, wants to know what's going on. ”

Hearing the familiar name, Mrs. Rod's expression relaxed a little, and she and the two of them said as they walked inside the door, "Is Lieutenant General Burke okay?" Rhodes had always mentioned him to me before, and he was a noble man that Rhodes had been promoted. ”

What Mrs. Rhodes didn't say was that she knew that Rhodes' faction in the military belonged to Lieutenant General Burke's upper peak, and that there were dead people in her own faction, and they must have to ask.

"Don't worry, ma'am, we all remember you very much, and the military will definitely investigate this matter to the end, and so will we."

Natasha and Coulson walked in the door, Mrs. Rhodes closed it, and she invited the two of them to sit down on the couch.

Natasha exchanged a few words of greeting as usual, and then got to the point, because she had previously revealed that she was also here for the military investigation, so it was not abrupt to ask for details at this moment.

But unfortunately, Mrs. Rhodes behaved no different from the media reports, she only said that Rhodes's death was too strange and that she had never heard of him or seen him have any heart problems before.

But to Natasha's surprise, Mrs. Rhodes didn't believe Stark did it.

Wiping tears from her eyes, the poor lady said, "I know him, I know James, he didn't befriend Tony Stark for money, the two of them are real friends." ”

"Tony has been to our house several times before, and when he was here, he wasn't as rude as the outside world reported, and he tutored Hancock in his schoolwork, and he didn't have any reason to kill his friends, and someone was definitely sowing discord."

Natasha looked at the lady with some shock, but she immediately seized the opportunity to ask, "So is there a suspicion?" ”

Everyone behind the surveillance equipment listened intently to Mrs. Rod's answer.

Mrs. Rhodes was silent for a long time, but finally spoke: "Two days before James died, I heard him mention that General Ross was organizing a capture of the Hulk, because General Ross knew that someone was trying to recruit the Hulk, and the Hulk was his. ”

"My husband has been unhappy about this for a long time, he thinks the military shouldn't make more trouble for this big guy, someone is willing to recruit Hulk and appease him, they are wiping their ass, and Ross shouldn't make a fuss."

"He told Tony about it while he was drinking, and he hoped that Tony would inform Hulk in advance so that Hulk could hide."

Natasha continued thoughtfully as she said, "And if Tony Stark is arrested for Rhodes' death, then he will never have a chance to inform the Hulk." ”

"Thank you, ma'am, for this is a very important clue, and we will take our leave."