Chapter 638

In broad daylight, under a perfectly clear sky, a well-dressed gentleman had been kidnapped from a coffee stand in the heart of New York City.

Evenson hadn’t found that particularly remarkable.

This was America, after all.

Freedom meant people apparently had the freedom to get kidnapped over coffee.

Still, Evenson had been unusually relaxed that day. If he’d been paying closer attention, he would have realized there was far more to the incident than met the eye.

Take the gunman, for example.

His size wasn’t suspicious by itself. Kidnapping someone was hard physical work. A man built like a starving monkey wasn’t exactly ideal for hauling unwilling adults around.

What was suspicious was the route he’d taken.

Every seemingly casual movement had carried him neatly around the street’s security cameras. Either he’d meticulously scouted the area and rehearsed the route many times, or he’d received extensive training in this kind of operation.

The events that followed strongly suggested the latter.

The gunman had used an envelope to conceal his weapon, meaning he’d been walking through the street with a loaded gun already in his hand.

Yet he hadn’t shown the slightest sign of nervousness.

From the moment he’d identified his target to the moment he’d fired and disappeared into the crowd, less than a second had passed.

That wasn’t something an amateur could manage.

He’d also been roughly fifteen meters from his target. An excellent distance for a handgun.

Except the entire weapon had been concealed inside the envelope.

There was no red-dot sight.

No iron sights.

Nothing.

He’d simply raised his hand and fired from instinct.

And there was another problem.

It hadn’t been an ordinary firearm.

It had been a tranquilizer pistol.

A tranquilizer weapon already had relatively little kinetic energy, and its long, narrow projectiles were fired from a barrel without conventional rifling. In practice, it behaved much more like a smoothbore weapon.

Add a layer of paper over the muzzle, and the projectile’s accuracy should have been questionable at best.

Yet he’d still hit his target’s neck from fifteen meters away.

More importantly, he’d avoided the carotid artery and trachea.

The shot had been precise enough to incapacitate without killing.

That was not the work of an ordinary kidnapper.

Evenson ignored every one of those details.

He hadn’t known any of the people involved. The NYPD wasn’t paying him to police the streets, and he had no intention of volunteering for the job.

Unfortunately, the incident had consequences for someone under his command.

Moira had nearly blown a gasket over it.

Because the man who had carried out the kidnapping was no ordinary criminal.

His name was Simpson.

He was an active police officer.

Before joining the NYPD, however, he’d spent eight years in the military’s special forces.

That explained the shooting.

His career history also explained something else.

People who served in the military before becoming police officers often developed a powerful sense of responsibility toward society. Simpson was no exception. He took his job seriously and genuinely wanted to protect people and uphold the law.

Then he met Kilgrave.

Technically, Simpson didn’t remember their first encounter. Kilgrave had already taken control of his mind by then.

The result was that an otherwise exemplary police officer had been turned into a weapon.

Kilgrave ordered him to kill Trish Walker, Jessica Jones’s best friend and a popular talk-show host.

Under normal circumstances, Simpson should have completed the assignment without difficulty.

Unfortunately for Kilgrave, Trish was extremely paranoid about her own safety.

Her home was practically a government safe house, and she’d spent years training in self-defense.

When Simpson came for her, she fought like someone who had been waiting for exactly this situation.

Every kick and strike seemed designed to ruin his future as a man.

Even eight years of special-forces training couldn’t make fighting Trish pleasant.

The struggle dragged on long enough for Jessica Jones to arrive.

Simpson eventually managed to knock Trish unconscious.

He was just about to finish the job when Jessica intervened.

Eight years of military training couldn’t compete with overwhelming superhuman strength.

Jessica sent him flying across the room.

Simpson was still under Kilgrave’s control and barely thinking clearly. When he saw Trish lying motionless on the floor, he assumed she’d died.

So he moved on to Kilgrave’s final command.

Find a tall building.

Jump.

Die.

He’d barely thrown himself from the building when Jessica caught him and hauled him back up.

He couldn’t kill anyone.

He couldn’t even successfully kill himself.

For most people, that would have been an astonishing run of bad luck.

For Simpson, it was practically a miracle.

Because he’d completed Kilgrave’s final command, the mind control ended.

Simpson regained control of himself.

The realization hit him all at once.

This bastard made me kill someone, then ordered me to kill myself?

Not only had Kilgrave tried to turn him into a murderer, he’d intended to leave Simpson dead and disgraced.

Simpson immediately decided that Kilgrave was his mortal enemy.

There would be no compromise.

So he practically begged Jessica to let him help.

He also approached Trish with a sincere desire to atone for what he’d done.

Under normal circumstances, Trish should have wanted nothing to do with the man who had nearly murdered her.

Instead, after one long night of talking...

They somehow ended up together.

It was difficult to say whether Simpson’s charm was simply that powerful, or whether Trish had discovered some unexpected virtue while repeatedly targeting his lower body.

Either way, somehow, it worked.

"Talk!"

Inside an abandoned warehouse, Simpson held a small knife against a bald security guard tied to a support pillar.

"Where did they take him?"

The man he was interrogating wasn’t Kilgrave.

Kilgrave was many things, most of them unpleasant.

But the man had to be given credit for one thing: he was extremely cautious.

Kilgrave understood his own weaknesses.

His ability might have been terrifying, but physically he was fragile. If an enemy attacked without giving him an opportunity to speak, he had virtually no way to defend himself.

So he’d spent a fortune on private security.

After Jessica and the others had tied him up and put him into a vehicle, they hadn’t gotten far before his security team tracked the locator he’d been carrying.

Armed with pistols and stun batons, they’d caught up and rescued him.

Jessica had been left staring after them in disbelief.

What kind of villain hires his own extraction team?

Unfortunately, neither Jessica nor Simpson was ordinary.

Jessica’s strength and Simpson’s military training had at least allowed them to knock out one of Kilgrave’s guards.

That unfortunate man was now tied to the pillar.

"I really don’t know, man."

The bald guard looked utterly miserable.

"When he hired us, I figured he was just some rich guy with paranoid delusions. I didn’t realize someone was actually after him."

He shook his head desperately.

"His safe houses are changed randomly. Only the driver knows where they’re going. I swear, I have no idea where they took him."

Jessica and Trish had already accepted that he was telling the truth.

Simpson hadn’t.

He held the knife against the man’s knee.

"You won’t talk?"

He smiled coldly.

"Fine. I hear there’s a particularly sensitive bit of flesh just below the knee. Maybe I’ll start there."

The guard nearly wet himself.

"Don’t! I’m telling you the truth! Three thousand dollars a month isn’t enough to justify losing the use of my legs!"

Simpson raised the knife.

"If you’re serious about interrogation..."

A calm voice drifted through the warehouse.

"...you should start three inches below his ear. That’s how I taught you, isn’t it, Sergeant Simpson?"

Simpson froze.

The voice was familiar.

He couldn’t place it.

He didn’t have time to think.

He immediately snatched up the tranquilizer pistol and aimed it toward the speaker.

Then he saw who was standing there.

The woman wearing a beret and long coat was unfamiliar.

The woman dressed like a cowboy was another matter.

She slowly tilted up the brim of her wide hat.

Simpson’s eyes widened.

He lowered his weapon.

"Sergeant Major?"

He stared at her in disbelief.

"What are you doing here?"

The woman was McKenna.

Back when she had served in the U.S. special forces, she’d been Simpson’s sergeant major.

She’d also lost an arm in a suicide attack while protecting him.

McKenna looked at him with a mixture of disbelief and amusement.

"You’re asking what I’m doing here?"

She gestured toward him.

"I’m wondering why you’re here. Was police work too boring for you? Did you decide you needed some excitement?"

"I..."

Simpson barely managed a word before McKenna barked:

"Attention!"

His body responded before his brain did.

Snap.

Simpson straightened instantly.

McKenna nodded with satisfaction.

"Now step aside. This has nothing to do with you."

Simpson almost obeyed on reflex.

Then he stopped.

"Wait."

His expression changed.

"Is this another military operation? Is that bastard another failed military weapon? Some kind of mind-control experiment?"

McKenna rolled her eyes.

"Years later and your imagination is still running wild, Simpson."

She’d always known the man had a tendency to overthink things.

Apparently, he’d never grown out of it.

"Sergeant Major..."

Simpson pulled off his knitted cap.

His expression became pained.

"Why are you still involved in things like this?"

McKenna’s smile faded.

"Have you forgotten what happened to us?"

Simpson’s voice hardened.

"Orion."

He looked at her.

"Our team existed to handle the jobs nobody wanted to acknowledge. Then we were sent on another supposedly routine assignment. We were hit by a bomb."

His jaw tightened.

"Everyone else died."

He paused.

"And if you hadn’t been involved in that project, I would have died too. I was a candidate for another classified program."

McKenna’s expression became serious.

"I don’t want to talk about the past."

She stared at him.

"And if you want to stay alive, you should stop talking about Orion."

"Sorry to interrupt the reunion."

Moira stepped into the conversation.

Her tone was polite.

Her expression was anything but.

"Jessica Jones, would you care to explain yourself?"

Jessica turned toward her.

"You agreed to wait for our scheduled time. Instead, you acted two hours early."

Moira’s eyes hardened.

"Did you really have so little faith in us?"

"Yes."

Jessica didn’t bother lying.

"That’s exactly it. I don’t trust you."

They’d reached an understanding over Hope’s case.

Samantha had even personally promised to drop the charges.

But Jessica had never been able to shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Samantha had initially been determined to put her behind bars.

Then Jessica was taken away, Samantha disappeared into a room with Moira and the others for less than half an hour, and suddenly the prosecutor’s attitude had changed completely.

A total reversal.

Why?

Had they genuinely reached an agreement?

Or had they simply played Jessica?

She would help them capture Kilgrave, only to discover afterward that nothing had changed and Hope was still going to prison?

Jerry had been watching the situation, but Jessica had never fully trusted him either. He might have been an old friend and a veteran of the legal system, but that didn’t mean she was willing to gamble Hope’s life on his judgment.

So Jessica had made her decision.

Act first.

Capture Kilgrave.

Force him to reveal the truth.

Get evidence.

Then take it to court.

Even if she ended up being charged with unlawful imprisonment, torture, or any number of other crimes, it would be worth it if Hope went free.

And even if the court refused to admit the evidence, Trish would make it public.

Eventually, public opinion would turn in Hope’s favor.

That was the gamble Jessica had taken.

Moira’s hands curled into fists.

Her knuckles cracked.

"You have no idea what you’ve done."

Her voice was frighteningly calm.

"You absolute idiots."

Her hand snapped upward.

A streak of black energy erupted from her palm.

It lashed through the air like a whip and slammed into Jessica.

Jessica crashed into the wall.

"Kh!"

She doubled over, coughing from the impact.

Even she had felt that one.

Moira lowered her hand.

Her voice shook with barely contained anger.

"Do you have any idea how dangerous what you did today was?"

She stared at Jessica.

"Do you understand that if the bullet had deviated just two centimeters to the right, none of you would have walked away?"

Her voice rose.

"You would have all died right there!"