Three may keep a secret if one of them is dead 

There are certain smells that bring you back to moments in your life, they have the power that brings you back to a specific moment. The smell of cookies, for example, could have the power to bring you back to your grandmother's kitchen during the holidays. Natasha's moment, however, isn't as cheery. 

When she walked into the police station, the smell of stale donuts, the broken printer, and the morning cup of coffee none of them had bothered to finish had filled her senses. Took her back to the first time she was in this building. After her first murder. After she killed her family. 

Everyone was so sympathetic. She perfectly posed as the scared girl who lost her entire family and was abandoned. She played them, she became the perfect damsel in distress in the eyes of the cops. None of them had even an inkling of what she is capable of. Here she is again, still the troubled girl looking towards the cops to save her once again. 

"Natasha," Clint Barton, maybe the biggest idiot of them all. Believed her act, practically ate it out of her palm. Not to say Barton was an idiot. He's solved many cold cases and has a way of looking at things no one else can. But he can't seem to solve Natasha's case, and that alone makes him more desperate to get her answers, he's failing to see that the killer is right in front of him. 

"Clint, how are you?" She smiled kindly at the man. His hair has greyed since the time they first met. The stress of her case, or perhaps the insane amount of kids this man had on his back. Or maybe it was his new intern who had the energy of a toddler and followed him around like a puppy dog. 

"Well you know," He shrugged. "Been working my ass off, and what does Fury give me? More work and an intern." 

"I thought you liked Kate," She said with a small smile. They had a humourous relationship, and Natasha liked to tease the older man. If he wasn't sniffing around her case with such intensity, she thinks they would have been good friends. In another world. 

"Kate isn't a problem. But sometimes I feel like I am getting too old to be mentoring anyone." He shrugged. "I mean look, it's been years and I still have no leads on your family." He said with a sigh. Inwardly she was relieved. She'd hate to leave Laura Barton without a husband, even if the husband was getting on her nerve. 

"You're doing your best." She shrugged. Clint gave her a soft nod and then moved over to the detective's desk, sitting on the seat that she always sat at when she came here. "I don't blame you for anything." 

"I promised you I'd find your parents. No matter the answers" He had made it his life's mission to find her missing family, she'd be more impressed with him had he actually discovered anything. But no. Instead he fails to see the answer to his mystery in sitting right in front of him, her only disguise was tears and a frown. 

Going over the case with the detective was always interesting. Every so often they'd have the same exact questioning. 'What were their moods that morning?' 'Did you eat together?' 'Did anyone fight' 

Her story was the same. She was gone, out with a friend, it would have been a major red flag if she hadn't a male friend who fancied doing anything Natasha had asked of him. Mason was loyal, even if he didn't know what he was being loyal to. But he was also high out of his mind most days so it wasn't exactly hard to convince him they were out together all night. 

Barton knew about Alexei's abusive tendencies, so he knew sneaking out after Alexei had passed out wasn't that hard to believe. She implied he had been heavily drinking, she could smell it from rooms away. She had just wanted peace for a little bit. While she wasn't with Mason, she had spent the time disposing of the bodies. Far. It had taken a while, but with replying to Alexei's work emails, making appearances as Melina to grab the mail in the view of the neighbors, and relocating Alexei's car so often, it wasn't hard to move up the timetable of the actual disappearance. She also had to account for the time it would take to clean the house. She was taking no chance, she cleaned the house from top to bottom. If Alexei hadn't wanted her to go free, he shouldn't have been her so many bloody noses, forcing her to learn to get blood out of clothing. 

But she always made a slight alteration to her story, nothing too big, just details that would go fuzzy after a while. She couldn't exactly be seen as the girl who recalled some random night perfectly. Especially because in the eyes of the public, it was just a normal day for Natasha, up until she came home to cops surrounding her door for a wellness check. The neighbors had noticed Alexei's car was gone and the door was left wide open, after receiving no answer from inside the neighbor called the police for a wellness check, and just like that, Natasha began the little abandoned girl. 

"How are you doing? How's Maria?" 

"Maria," She smiled, he was so predictable. "Is enjoying vacation, finally. I practically had to force it down her throat, you know how she can get," 

"Did you just say Maria Hill is on a vacation?" Natasha turned, a new female voice filling her eyes. She almost cringed when she saw Sharon Carter and Wanda Maximoff standing in front of her. Sharon was old friends with Nick Fury, and Wanda often worked with the station giving them leads, nothing too serious. Her brother was the PI but hated cops, he allowed Wanda to take some things to the station every so often, something about wanting to see if they could be quicker than him. 

"Yes, what can I say? People change." Natasha told the women. 

"Please," Wanda rolled her eyes. "The moment that woman takes a vacation, that is when you know the world is ending." 

"She lives to work," Sharon said. "It's a miracle you can stand working with her Natasha, hell even sex with her, as great as it is, was a competition" 

"She's my best friend." She said simply. "We don't have competition." 

"Where did she go?" Sharon asked. 

"Tahiti," She said. Wanda looked like she wanted to laugh, and Sharon looked shocked. 

"I never took her as a beach person. London maybe, but the beach?" Wanda rolled her eyes. "But let's be honest she probably isn't out doing anything a normal person does on vacation." 

"Clint," Natasha said getting her focus back onto the detective. "I should really get going." 

"You just got here." Clint pointed out. "Besides there is something I wanted to go over with you." He turned to give the ladies a look. "It's confidential." 

"Right of course." Wanda held her hands up. "We are gone. It was nice seeing you, Nat. I might have to ask Maria how the beaches were." The look in the younger eyes was unsettling to Natasha as if she knew something Natasha didn't. 

"So Natasha, I do have an update for me," Clint managed to get a sort of shocked reaction out of her. There was no possible way for him to have any update for her. "But's not something that you may like, and I want you to know I am doing everything I can to get more information." 

Natasha wasn't a fool, she knew she wasn't the only case that Clint works on, and if it were up to any of the higher-ups, her case would have been considered a cold case. But that could very well be because Nick Fury, the chief himself, took a special interest in her mystery. 

"Listen, it's been years and there is a very slim chance, but we think we may have found DNA in clothes that washed up at one of the lakes near where you lived." Not possible. "But it's water damaged, I'd just like you to look at it, see if it rings any bells okay?" 

"How is that even possible? If it belongs to my case wouldn't you have found it already?" 

"Maybe, but with clothes in water, well it could have gotten caught on something or had been recently disposed of, I just want to take every course of action, to get you and your family answers okay?" Natasha nodded as Clint reached for the evidence bag. She wasn't stupid. Yes, she dumped Melina and Alexei's clothes, but not together and she made sure there was no way they'd wash up. It wasn't there. 

So how exactly was she looking at a bag of Melina's hoodie? It still tears in the sleeves from Melina constantly pulling it down when she was nervous, but it still, despite the obvious damage, was exactly how she remembered it. Cruel turn of fate if you asked her. 

She couldn't hide her emotion, she knew that Clint knew she recognized it. It was weak on her part to expose herself that way, but is she so surprised? She never thought this would come back. Pity that an old coat is all they have. 

"So," Natasha sighed. "What does this mean?" 

"It means if Melina was wearing this the day she went missing we can help put a timetable." 

"You can figure out all of this based on a hoodie?" 

"We can now review security footage, and interview people who live near the lake, this hoodie opened up a world of opportunities for us." He gave her a soft smile he wasn't going to go into detail about how he could use the hoodie to look for stab wounds and see if any identified bodies around the area match the hoodie, but that's what Natasha figured would happen. "Natasha with this hoodie we can find your family." 

Okay. So maybe she did have a problem on her hand.