Chapter 1821

In the evening, Natasha met Stark in one of Nick's secret safe houses; after looking Stark up and down, she said, "I really didn't expect you to be able to break out of prison without a suit."

"What did you think I would do? Wear an Iron Man suit and punch them? This is legal bail." Stark said while adjusting the position of the microscope, "If I don't want to go to prison, no one can catch me; Pepper has already prepared a legal team; you're right, only if I'm alive can I find the real killer who harmed Rhodes."

"You should have thought of that sooner." Natasha hugged her arms, but didn't lean lazily against the wall as she usually did, clearly the current situation was putting some pressure on her; she said, "What do you plan to do next? Do you have an investigation plan? Do you need me to do anything?"

"Rhodes' family doesn't want to see me, and I have no face to see them; now I choose to fight to the end through legal means; they must be very disappointed in me, but the clues they provided are very critical."

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

Natasha frowned and said, "You should know, if there were any other suspects, Pepper would never have allowed the police to take you from Stark Tower; your legal team would have made them look bad immediately."

"Are you doubting me?"

"If I doubted you, I wouldn't have come here to see you; I'm in just as much danger as you." Natasha stepped forward two steps, leaned on the lab bench, and got close to Stark's face, saying, "Think about Rhodes' method of death; if you had died in the coffee shop that day, I would have been framed and imprisoned too; the killer clearly wanted to kill two birds with one stone, and we are avoiding giving him that opportunity."

"Regardless, go do what you need to do." Stark turned around and said with a heavy expression, "Use the skills you used to get information out of me, and figure out what happened that night?"

Natasha took a deep breath, stepped back two steps, and said, "If you need anything, call Coulson; he will provide you with all the convenient conditions, Nick will too; also, keep your own life, we'll see each other tomorrow."

Seeing Natasha's decisive back as she turned, Stark hesitated for a moment, then pursed his lips tightly and said, "Listen, this is a cooperation; let me see your sincerity; get back the evidence confiscated by the FBI's forensic department; I need them."

Natasha turned back and said, "That was handed over to the FBI by Rhodes' family themselves; he trusts them."

"That's only because they had no one else to trust, but they trusted the wrong person; the FBI is useless, always." Stark finally walked to the lab bench, looked at Natasha, and said, "This is my only request; if you want things to progress, you'd better do it quickly."

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

After speaking, Natasha walked toward the door; before leaving the room, she said, "I'll have Coulson try his best to coordinate, but don't expect me to steal them; that represents the hope of Rhodes' family; losing the evidence would drive them crazy."

After Natasha left the room, she walked toward her car while on the phone; she drove back to S. H. I. E. L. D. and told Coulson about Stark's request.

Naturally, Coulson looked very troubled; no agent in S. H. I. E. L. D. wanted to deal with the FBI; although their jurisdiction was above the FBI's, the leaders of every department in the FBI were hard to deal with; wanting to grab things from their hands required strong psychological quality.

Regardless, Natasha decided to help Stark, because if anyone could find clues to the killer through technical means, it had to be Iron Man, so she planned to drive to Rhodes' house to see if she could get 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 get in, Coulson chased after her and said, "The Director plans to deal with the FBI himself; I'll go with you."

Natasha didn't say anything and got into the driver's seat; the two drove all the way to Rhodes' house, and along the way, Natasha silently calculated the time in her heart.

According to Jane Foster, Thor's state began to be abnormal around 4:00 PM, improved around 5:30 PM, and according to Stark himself, he went to Rhodes' house to reminisce in the evening, close to 5:00 PM, and Rhodes' time of death was determined by the forensic examiner to be around 3:00 AM; according to his son's testimony, Rhodes had already started to have abnormalities at 11:30 PM.

Flying from New York to Xinmoxigezhou at the fastest speed takes about two and a half hours, which means if there was only one killer, he must have attacked Thor first and then gone to find Rhodes, with about seven hours in between.

Excluding preparation time, the time spent on the journey must be less than five hours, which means the other party could only travel by plane, not by car on the road.

But S. H. I. E. L. D.'s search of flights between New Jersey and Xinmoxigezhou during this period found no suspicious people; the other party either had their own flight equipment or had special methods to deceive airport security.

Natasha couldn't weigh which possibility was greater for the time being, so she told Coulson her analysis results; Coulson thought for a moment and said, "If it's the former, the one doing it is either the military or the police; if the other party is determined to hide it, we won't be able to check the movements of official aircraft."

"If it's the latter, maybe we can check if the flight security personnel were bribed, but I don't think there's much hope."

"Nick has already noticed that someone doesn't want him to form the Avengers, right?"

"Yes, and he highly suspects the FBI, which is why he's going to deal with the head of the forensic department himself; they've been making things difficult for each other more than once."

Natasha's hand rested on the steering wheel, she sighed lightly, but still turned to look at Coulson and said, "Did you bring the documents?"

Coulson reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a stack of documents, and while flipping through them, said, "Which one do you want? CIA? FBI? NYPD?"

"Do you have Air Force?"

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

Natasha grabbed it, took a look, and said, "That's enough; listen, I'm retired Lieutenant Colonel Delina of the US Air Force, you're my husband, Zahak from the Logistics Support Department; we've worked with Rhodes at different times."

"As for the details, I've heard plenty of anecdotes about him and Rhodes from Tony before, that's enough."

Natasha wouldn't say that it was actually because she knew Rhodes in another universe and understood many of his living habits; playing the role of a colleague was perfectly fine.

Soon the car drove to the entrance of Colonel Rhodes' house; Natasha stepped forward to ring the doorbell; Coulson put on a worried posture, because he believed that the FBI and the military must have people watching here, and Natasha was famous, so he was afraid someone would jump out halfway to block them.

Natasha, however, was very confident in her investigation action, because she knew that even if the FBI and the military knew she was here, they would definitely let her in, because they knew the Black Widow's skills better than anyone, and they wanted to sit back and reap the rewards.

If nothing went wrong, Rhodes' house was currently full of surveillance cameras, and what was worse than that might be that in front of them was another trap set by the killer.

Natasha turned her head slightly, lowered her voice, and said to Coulson, "Think about the agent's code; don't touch anything after entering the house, act according to my eyes."

The doorbell rang a few times; Rhodes' wife, looking haggard, poked her head out from the crack of the door; seeing that the people ringing the bell were a couple, she breathed a sigh of relief and slowly opened the door to come out.

She cautiously didn't open the main door, but asked through the door, "Who are you? What are you doing here looking for me?"

"We are former comrades-in-arms of Colonel Rhodes; I am a retired pilot, now a civil aviation captain at American Airlines; we met during recruit training; my husband is still in service; he worked with Colonel Rhodes for a period of time when he was serving in the Air Force Combat Material Management Office."

"Oh, my god, please come in." Rhodes' wife hurriedly opened the door and said somewhat apologetically, "There have been too many police and reporters coming recently; they all want to dig out internal news from my mouth; I have to be on guard."

"You can rest assured, we are definitely not reporters." Natasha sighed and said, "I won't hide it from you; our old boss, General Burke, who has now retired and is living in Hawaii, wants to know what's going on."

Hearing the familiar name, Rhodes' wife's expression relaxed a bit; she walked into the house with the two and said, "Is Lieutenant General Burke okay? Rhodes always mentioned him to me before; he was the noble person who promoted Rhodes."

What Rhodes' wife didn't say was that she knew Rhodes' faction in the military belonged to Lieutenant General Burke's superior; someone died in her faction, so they would definitely ask; thinking of this, Rhodes' wife believed Natasha's intention a bit more.

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

Natasha and Coulson walked into the house; Rhodes' wife closed the door and invited them to sit on the sofa.

Natasha exchanged a few pleasantries as usual, and then entered the main topic, because she had previously revealed that she was also here for the military investigation, so asking for details didn't seem abrupt.

But unfortunately, Rhodes' wife performed no differently than in the media reports; she only said that Rhodes' death was too strange, and she had never heard or seen him have any heart problems before.

But what surprised Natasha was that Rhodes' wife actually didn't believe it was Stark who did it.

This poor lady wiped her tears and said, "I know him, I know James; he didn't befriend Tony Stark for money; they are true friends."

"Tony has been to our house many times before; when he's here, he's not rude at all like the outside reports say; he even tutored Hancock; he also has no reason to kill his friend; this is definitely someone sowing discord."

Natasha looked at this lady in shock, but she immediately seized the opportunity and asked, "Then do you have any suspects?"

Everyone behind the surveillance equipment listened intently to Rhodes' wife's answer.

Rhodes' wife was silent for a long time, but finally opened her mouth and said, "Two days before James passed away, I heard him mention it; he said General Ross was organizing a capture operation against the Hulk, because General Ross knew someone wanted to recruit the Hulk, and the Hulk was his."

"My husband had been dissatisfied with this for a long time; he believed the military shouldn't cause more trouble for this big guy; someone willing to recruit the Hulk and appease him is cleaning up their mess; Ross shouldn't be causing extra trouble."

"He told Tony about this while drinking; he hoped Tony could notify the Hulk in advance and let the Hulk hide."

Natasha thought thoughtfully and continued her words, "And if Tony Stark is arrested because of Rhodes' death, then he will definitely have no chance to notify the Hulk."

"Thank you, ma'am, this is a very important clue; we'll take our leave now."