Beside the intersection on Seventh Avenue, a gray Chevrolet sat quietly at the curb with its engine off.
The car was quiet inside.
Steve Rogers rested both hands on the steering wheel, his gaze fixed through the shatter-resistant film on the windshield on an underground gambling den diagonally across the street.
In the passenger seat beside him, Natasha was trimming her nails with a nail clipper, her head lowered without so much as a lift of her eyelids.
A faint hiss came from the communicator in the back seat.
Barton lay atop a water tower five hundred meters away, holding a custom compound bow. Cold wind poured down his collar, and he sniffled.
"Cap, target three is out," Barton said in a low voice. "The biker gang leader who got bailed out of Rikers Island last week. He just threw a doorman weighing over two hundred pounds six meters down the alley with one hand. Now he's heading toward the vault with two men."
Steve's gaze darkened.
He and Natasha had been staking out this street for three full hours.
Compared with Daredevil, who had only recently made his debut and still tended to get carried away, Steve and the others were far more patient. He knew that trying to talk things out with Lucian was pointless. After all, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s credibility with Lucian was utterly ruined.
Only by obtaining irrefutable evidence of these serum-injected thugs committing violence in the street would he have the grounds to have a proper talk with Lucian.
"Get ready to move." Steve reached for the round shield beneath the passenger seat. "We need statements and a complete record of their crimes."
"Understood." Natasha put away her nail clippers, and a pair of stun guns slid into her palms.
But before Steve could push open the