The sobbing breaks away to hiccups and maybe over an hour later Lissa finds herself no longer crying. Maybe she's cried this pain out of her system, for now, or maybe she's cried all she can handle. Her eyes are puffy and red from crying, her cheeks raw in some places from crying and her nose is running.
"It's…..going….to…be….okay." Lissa finds herself whispering to the room, to Colt and Remy. But she isn't sure of it herself, but she needs to say it and needs to hear it. Out of habit her hand goes to clutch the compass necklace, her sense of home and comfort, but her hand is only met with the bruise and stiches. The minor impact makes her wince in pain. Just when she thinks she'll start crying again, an idea hits her. She stumbles up to her feet and stands in front of the vanity mirror. Once again she pulls the t-shirt collar down and looks at the spot she was shot. It's exactly where the compass pendant rested, exactly.
Lissa sits down at the vanity and turns her computers on. Before she can present this hunch, she needs proof.
Two hours later, it's late in the night but all of The Expendables are awake downstairs in the living room. They are going over the data recovered from Reardon's computer with Maggie taking lead.
"Lissa." Toll says, as he's the first to notice her arrival in the room.
Maggie moves to quickly shut off the TV screen which she was using to present the information. Lissa's eyes flicker to the corner of the screen where Billy's now listed as a member of the team that took Lissa.
"Leave it on." Lissa tells Maggie and crosses the room with a USB drive in hand. She clutches it tightly, like a lifeline. "There's something you all need to see." She tells the group and plugs the drive into Maggie's laptop. She pulls up the surveillance footage she found during her hacking trip to prove her hunch. The grainy footage appears on the screen, showing a black windowless utility van on the side street next to Reardon's apartment. The back sliding door is open with two men in masks armed with guns; a third man stands in the middle, X – the man who stayed with her in the room.
The footages switch to another camera showing the van turning onto Reardon's street. It becomes clear to all of The Expendables that the men in the van were coming for Lissa -either to take her again or kill her. Then the bullet impacts with Lissa's chest and she falls to the ground. X slams the van door shut and the van peels away in the opposite direction.
"They had people on the ground." Gunnar says and looks to Barney, "They were coming for her either way."
"Lissa, this doesn't prove anything." Barney says softly.
"The necklace will." Lissa says and looks around the living room. She spots the familiar silver necklace on an end table and grabs it. Before any of them can react she pulls the oversized t-shirt off, glad she had put a bra on before leaving her room. She slides the necklace around her neck, finding the clasp broken so she has to hold it in place. "Look." She tells them all. The necklace matches up perfectly with the bruise. Through the crack in the metal, the stiches are visible. "We all know Billy is damn good at this job. So tell me why would he shoot here? The chances of doing damage, other than busting up ribs and maybe having cartilage nick the heart, this isn't a kill shot. A shot to heart or the head almost always ensures death. We all know Billy makes his kill shots, but this..."Lissa says and drops the necklace onto the coffee table before tapping her bullet wound gently, "This wasn't one. He knew exactly where the compass would be. Months ago I nearly had to stop wearing it in the field because it didn't work right with my bullet proof vest. But Billy had it adjusted so it would fall into the bra cups right above the band of it. The vest would protect the pendant from being hit into me just like it does my chest. He was aiming for it."
"Why?" Caesar asks, "An arm graze, knee shot, anything would have incapacitated you."
"They were coming for her, the men in the van." Lee says, piecing it all together, "By making them think she's dead, they aborted the mission. The Kid hit her where he knew she'd be protected but also where it would look like a kill shot."
"He was there to kill Reardon. The man in charge must have figured out we found Reardon and wanted Billy to kill him. But Reardon took care of that. So they were going to take me."
"It's a long shot." Cesar says, still not believing it.
"It makes a hell of a lot more sense that Billy shooting here." Toll pipes in.
"And I believe it." Lissa says looking to them all, "Billy didn't try to kill me, he protected me. And now we need to find him."
Authors Note: I have to give credit to those of you reading who figured out Lissa's compass necklace protected her. Whitelion69, kelsey112 and Moviemuncher good job!
