Monday, March 14 - Sunday, March 20
The tiny redhead stood at the lectern and smiled as she received the applause of her peers. "Thank you for this endowment. With your money and support one day brain damage will be a thing of the past." This announcement was met with another smart applause. Camilla stood back and clapped along with everyone else.
She sat back down in her chair and the rest of the program went on. Camilla Salander had just been awarded one of the largest research endowments and she was utterly pleased as punch about it. After the program ended she shook hands with all the important people and smiled and posed for the cameras. She was in her element. Camilla Salander loved being in the thick of things around smiling and laughing people.
The party went on for a few more hours. Till the liquor dried up. It always amazed her how much doctors drank. The very people who intimately knew what alcohol did to the body seemed to drink the most. Camilla had nursed a small measure of wine the entire night.
Her taxi dropped her off a little after 9 pm. It had been a long day and she was glad to be away from anyone wanting anything from her. It was trying being her sometimes. Everyone always wanted something from her. It was nice to just be alone. Camilla grabbed a drink in the hotel bar. She wasn't one to drink, but she felt that she more than deserved it. She sipped on the mudslide and looked around the bar. Most of the people looked liked as if they had one foot in the grave with the other ankle in the grips of the Grim Reaper.
She rather thought Orlando was a bit of a party town, but the Holiday Inn didn't seem to be on the hip list. Camilla chuckled that at 26 she was using words like hip.
"Can I buy you a drink beautiful," a voice purred in her ear. Camilla flinched back. Nearly turning her drink out on her dress. She turned around in her bar stool to look at the speaker. It was a red faced man with watery eyes and rancid breath.
"No thank you." Camilla said cooly. She was hardly in the mood to get picked up let alone by someone who looked like he had couldn't spell toothpaste.
"Why not?" he slurred.
There was not point in argueing with the man. He was beyond reason. Camilla pushed her drink aside. She reached in her purse and left a twenty on the bar top. "Thank you." she told the bartender as she turned and walked out of the bar. It was time for bed anyways. She had an early flight.
Another couple was getting off the elevator and Camilla managed to slip in after them. She pushed the button for the 15th floor the door was just slipping close when a arm shot in and stopped it. Camilla wanted to groan when she saw it was the man from the bar, but apparently he was a guest and she couldn't very well make a fuss about another guest heading up to his room.
She stepped in close to the wall of the elevator as the doors snicked closed. He turned and grinned at her. "And we meet again." Camilla ignored him. "I dig chicks that play hard to get." He took a step closer to her. "I like the chase." He threw his arm out in front of her face so that he could lean against the wall. They were passing the seventh floor.
"Look I've had an extremely long day, and I've got an early flight in the morning. Leave me alone please." She told the man as pleasantly as she could.
She had already told him no down at the bar and he still wasn't getting the message. This was going to be the last warning she gave him. He threw off her warning and leaned in to try and kiss her. Camilla brought her heeled foot down and about 150 psi of pressure down on his foot.
It took a second for the pain to register, but he howled when it finally did. She brought her leg back as far as it would go and delivered a kick to his balls that left stars in front of her eyes. His yowl got chocked off and he dropped to his knees. Then the snapped her arm back and popped him square in the face. He flew back against the elevator doors just as they were opening. He toppled out into the hallway at the feet of a very startled couple.
Camilla smiled sweetly at both of them. "No means no." she told both of them before striding off to her room.
Once in her room she undressed quickly and ran a bath. Normally she didn't like bathing in strange bathtubs, but she had more than earned a nice soak. She grabbed a cool mineral water from the little fridge and her dogeared copy Harry Potter and the Sorceress Stone. She couldn't explain why but it was her favorite book.
She climbed into the tub and sat there reading long after the water had gone cold. She felt like a prune as she toweled herself off. She climbed into the bed and was asleep before her eyes closed.
Her alarm woke her at 6 am. It was an hour later than she usually got up and she had to a flight to catch. She could go on her morning run when she got home. Camilla packed up her room and was waiting on a shuttle to the airport forty-five minutes later.
Her flight from Orlando to Austin was uneventful and for that she was thankful. She had quite enough. She picked up her car from the short term lot and drove home. She stopped by the pet spa to pick up Dot who was happy to see Camilla.
They went home whee Camille fixed Dot something to eat before she closed herself off in her office. Her eyes fell on the picture in her drawer as she pulled out a stack of papers. It was the only picture that captured the Salander family before everything went bad. Camilla picked up the pictured and stared at it. Camilla in a little yellow dress with daises painted along the neckline and hem stood on one side. Her hair was done up in soft ringlets around her face. Her sister, Lisbeth was brooding like a storm cloud stood on the other side. She had on a pair of torn and filthy black jeans and a Ghostbusters t-shirt. Her hair, what was left of it because in a angry fit the night before she had taken a pair of scissors to it, was sticking out at odd angles all over her head. Their mother stood in the middle of them. Sofia Salander also wore a summer dress, but she had on fishnet stockings. She was the bridge between her twin daughters. At the time Camilla thought it was terribly silly, but looking at it now her mother had always tried to be the best of both girls so they could see the good in each other.
Camilla didn't know she was crying till a tear drop splashed across the picture. She wiped her face and replaced the picture back in the drawer.
~~X~~
Salander had gotten a scholarship to Yale when she left school in Sweden. It was her ticket out. Her golden parachute. Her foster parents had been a god send for sure, but still she wanted to just get away from everything and anything that felt like home. She had worked up the nerve to leave and that's what she was going to do.
The Salander twins may have been as different as a pineapple is to a great white whale, but they were both blessed with genius level intelligence. Camilla soaked in everything that she read. And Camilla did read. By the time she was seven she knew what she wanted to do with her life. She wanted to be a geneticist. Her family was certainly an optimal case study.
Her first semester at school had been hard. The language was easy enough to pick up. Camilla could speak four languages by the time she was 10. Adjusting to life on her own had been more difficult than she thought. She didn't have a buffer zone anymore.
Growing up Lisbeth had been her shield. Lisbeth tried her best to push Camilla away, and Camilla wasn't stupid. She kept away from her sister. But Lisbeth still had enough of that sisterly love left in her to try and protect Camilla and their mother from harm. Lisbeth was everyone's shield if you knew her. Her mother had been worse than nothing when it came to trying to protect them from their father. Oh he didn't so much as physically abuse them, but the mental abuse had been rampant. That's why Camilla just stayed out of his way. Books were her escape. Milla thought she had seen and survived the ugly side of life, and to be truthful she had, but still that didn't prepare her for her first year on her own in the new country and with looks like hers.
She could still remember how his sweat smelled. It had been her first boyfriend. Milla would chuckle now at the use of that word, but at the time she thought it fit. Branford Miller. Oh how handsome he was. She had been smitten at the word go. He sat behind her in Anatomy. It started out as an innocent smile here a stolen glance there. It wasn't until a last minute study night before midterms that she finally worked up the courage to speak to him.
After that it was dinner here a movie there. Nothing he did alerted her to the monster underneath. It was New Year's Eve and they were at a friends party waiting to bring in the new year together. It started as a simple kiss that quickly moved to heavy petting. Milla was a virgin and frankly having sex on a bed full of coats in a stranger's house was not her idea of the perfect recipe for romance. She tried to stop but Bran wasn't having it. He stuffed the sleeve of a jacket in her mouth and raped her. Afterwards he just got off the bed and walked out the door.
Milla had laid on the bed in a trance like state. She hadn't really believed that Bran was raping her. Not her, not Camilla. She was the sweet one. The one that stayed in her place and didn't rock the boat. This wasn't supposed to be happening to her. Another partygoer found her and got her back to her dorm room.
It took her nearly a week to even register that something had happened to her. When it finally hit her she screamed herself horse and cried till she had to go to the student health center for dehydration. They kept her for two days. They wanted her to start taking antidepressants, but she refused them. She didn't need to be drugged up as if she had been the one to do something wrong.
When she was released Camilla lived up to the name Salander. If you were to ask her what changed she couldn't tell you, but after her breakdown she was mad as hell. It took her several days to work out her revenge, and during that time Camilla discovered a fury that she didn't know she had. All those years she had thought her sister stark raving mad for the blind hatred she had for there father. Right now Camilla was damned sure she could have tossed a milk carton full of gasoline into his car window too.
Camilla had invited Bran out to dinner at a sushi place. He was skeptical at first. Usually the girls he raped just scampered off into the sunset never to be seen again. One or two of them turned up at the Miller home demanding justice or child support. All of them were turned out on their ear of course. No on threatened a Miller, but Camilla had invited him to dinner. She sounded to sweet over the phone he had wondered if she had even remembered what had happened.
And Bran was always thinking of his next orgasm. Maybe he could get one more roll in the hay from Camilla. The night had been great. She prattled on and on as if nothing had ever happened. Bran even relaxed back into his usual charming self. He had even let her order for him.
She had ordered something called sashimi fugu for them. He wasn't one for raw fish, but she sung its praises. It turned out to be pretty decent and they ended the evening with a bottle of expensive Sake. Salander drove them back to his place. For some reason Bran felt as if he had drunk an entire keg and he was sure his lips and half of his face were numb. Camilla helped him stumble back to his apartment and after that the world went black.
He woke up the next morning naked in his bed. He assumed it had been a really good night. It took him nearly seven months to realize what she had done. Well it wasn't even Bran that worked out what had happened. It was the family trust lawyer. She had emptied out Bran's account. She left enough vapor to avoid detection, but he was flat broke and no one could explain why. She wasn't the word class hacker like her sister, but she knew enough about it to steal from Bran Miller and make him pay for what he had did to her and countless other girls. Well it was easy when he left all of his banking information laying around in his desk. She sent the money to various banks in the Caymens, then paid a series or drunks or vagrant beer money to empty it out. It took her nearly two weeks.
Then she hopped over to Switzerland and deposited the money in the national bank. It had given her tremendous satisfaction when she was handed her key. Of the ones that she knew about Camilla shared the wealth. Not a lot to raise eyebrows just enough for the girls to get a little vindication.
She even left a post it note in Brans drawer where he kept his banking info. Oh he cursed and raged for weeks when he found it. But Camilla hadn't left any trace of her presence. The money had been moved with Bran's blessing as it was done on his computer and with his password. It was a legitimate transfer. There was nothing he could do, and Camilla loved it.
After that she started take Aikido lessons. It was the perfect martial art for someone who was always going to be smaller and lighter than her opponent. It also taught her knife skills, and other valuable life lessons that Camilla was thankful for learning. She added Judo to her skill set as well. It couldn't hurt and it kept her in shape. Not that she was in danger of becoming a pig or anything, but it felt good to get nice and sweaty from training. Never again was she just going to check out on life when things got rough.
Four yeas later she got her dual M.D./PhD degree in biogenetic engineering and she never had to see Branford Miller again.
~~X~~
The next morning she walked into her office nearly scaring her assistant. "Stop looking at porn on the company computer Sage." She scolded.
"It's not porn. Its performance art." Sage grumbled as she switched off the video. Sage Gibson was studying to get her PhD in genetics and it had taken her two years of applying to get on Camilla's research team. "How was the banquet? Did they serve that horrible chicken again?" she asked.
Camilla hung up her coat before unlocking her office and walking in. Sage followed her with a mountain of notes and phone messages in her hand. "It was actually a really nice dinner and they paraded me around like a championship pony, but its alright. The check they wrote was big enough that I would have worn a saddle for them." She snickered. Sage giggled as well. Though the two of them were boss and employee, and Sage was a year older her and Camilla had developed an instant friendship.
Sage was a lot like Camilla's sister. They both had a unflinching and uncompromising manner about them. It was the thing that made Sage such a good scientist and researcher.
"So we have the money to do the updates to the lab?" she asked breathlessly.
"Yes and we got the green light on the Aurora project." Camilla sat down and started going through the messages Sage had just handed her.
Camilla was sitting at a corner cafe just trying to enjoy her afternoon. She had a stack of application s lying on the table in front of her. She loved her office she really did, but sometimes she just needed to get away from it to get any work done.
She just happened to look up when the face on the TV above the coffee bar caused her to lose the grip she had on her cup. The cup crashed and several people turned their attention to the teenage looking young woman.
She ignored them all as she stood up to inch herself closer to the TV. "In international news Sweden as issued an all points bulletin for the capture of fugitive Lisbeth Salander. Salander is being sought for three murders in Stockholm last week. Salander is considered extremely dangerous and possible mentally ill..." the TV anchors voice went on and on, but Camilla had stopped listening.
"She's finally done it." Her heart started to pound painfully in her chest. "She finally killed someone." Camilla said.
She went back to her table and gathered up her things. Though they did not look a thing alike. Thanks to Lisbeth's make-up choices, Camilla didn't want there to be any mistakes made. She hurried out of the cafe and jumped into her car.
She was on the highway faster than she should have been and she prayed that no one was going to pull her over. She just needed to get home. After that she wasn't sure what she was going to do, but home was where she was safe. She shot off a quick text to Sage telling her that she wasn't coming back into the office.
Camilla Salander had been afforded everything in life that her twin sister Lisbeth had been denied. She had her mother's good looks and curves. She was barely 4 foot 11 to be sure, but she made up for it with gentle lines and a stunning smile. Camilla was as sweet natured as a new born kitten. Which drew people to her like a sixth sense. Of course she knew what their father was doing to their mother, but their mom begged them to say nothing and she always made sure to lock them in their room when he happened to drop in for a roll in the hay. Camilla just wasn't built like Lisbeth. The though of violence sent her rocking and crying into a dark corner to the evil passed. It was the thing that tore them apart. Lisbeth liked being on the edges of decency and compassion. Camilla wanted to be in the thick of it.
They were both very stubborn that way. Though after everything that happened in her first year at school she didn't feel that way anymore. Well violence was never her first choice. It was something that she resorted to at the last minute if the situation called for it. Save that incident at the hotel she had never hit another person outside of sparring at the gym.
As she drove she could remember their last meeting together. It was right before Camilla was to leave for university in the United States.
~~X~~
Lisbeth had been locked away in the St. Stephens because she refused to play by the rules. Camilla knew she wouldn't survive there, so she danced to whatever tune the policemen asked her to do. And she was rewarded for it. Lisbeth hated her for siding with them.
"Where is he?" Lisbeth asked.
"I don't know. Why the hell would I know where he is." Camilla said for the millionth time. Camilla had thought that today was going to be a day of healing and that Lisbeth was coming so that they could at least be a family again. She should have known better.
"I know they told you where he is. Has he stopped by to tuck you in?" Lisbeth asked.
Camilla wanted to scream. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Camilla asked. They were in her father's study. Camilla didn't want Lisbeth in her room and she didn't want to burden her foster family with Lisbeth's presence. When she opened the door she was hit with the cold vibe rolling off her sister.
"Is how you are spending your 30 pieces of silver?" Lisbeth sneered. Her lip ring glinted in the light and for all intents and purposes in Camilla's book she looked like an imp sent from hell to punish her.
"What was the alternative? Spending the rest of my life strapped to a bed so dirty men could touch me." Camilla yelled. She instantly regretted the words, but they were out now and the look on her sister's face caused her to step back a pace.
Lisbeth didn't say anything for a few seconds and Camilla thought she was going to let the offense pass. She should have know better. Faster than her eyes could track her sister snapped her arm back and popped her square in the face.
Camilla screeched and toppled to the ground. "You're just as bad as the rest of them." Lisbeth yelled advancing on her sister.
Something in Camilla snapped. She had suffered the abuse of her mother passively, but she was not going to suffer her sister's wrath for something she didn't have control over. Camilla jumped up and pounced on her sister. Lisbeth was caught totally off guard. The two fell to the ground in a snarl mass of hair and teeth. Camilla landed a few good punches to her sister's face which made her immensely proud.
"Camilla!" her foster mother cried as her parents raced in to separate the twins. It took several minutes to pull the two apart. Camilla's lip was split open and blood was dripping down onto her shirt. Lisbeth was going to have a black eye for several days.
"You don't get it! You're little one woman army routine accomplished nothing! Mother didn't care if father beat her dead as long as he kept coming back to her you silly cow. You saved no one. You only made things worse. Don't ever contact me again!" Camilla raged from the arms of her foster mother who looked shocked at the outburst. Camilla had never so much as raised her voice to another human being let alone deliberately tried to hurt them.
Lisbeth threw off the strong arms of Camilla's foster father and her two brothers. "I think it would be best if you left Lisbeth." Oscar said as he glared at Lisbeth. He had told Palmegren that a meeting between the sisters wouldn't go well, and now that little devil has upset his daughter. For Oscar thought of Camilla as his daughter. They had taken her in when she was twelve and it had then them years to earn her trust and to get her to open up about "All the Evil," as she called it. And now he could see why she called Lisbeth evil.
Lisbeth glared at them all. "Fine." she said so softly they would later contemplate if she had really spoken at all.
No one moved till they heard the front door open and slam. It broke the spell over them all. Oscar let loose the breath he had been holding and Camilla promptly fainted.
~~X~~
She pulled into the driveway of her home and pressed the garage door opener. She could hear her dog yapping from the kitchen door as she climbed out of her Nissa Altima. It was the biggest car she dared to buy. Anything else and she would have been too scared to try and keep it on the road.
Salander opened the door to her two story modern home. She had purchased it with the blood money the Sapo men had given her to ensure her silence. She knew what it was, but it didn't matter to her. She never wanted to dig up the memories ever again and if they wanted to throw money at her to keep her quiet well then that was on them. She hadn't even touched the money to took from Bran Miller. That was her nest egg.
Her dog, Dot jumped up into her arms and licked the side of her face. Dot was always supremely happy to see Camilla, no matter how long she stayed away. That was the mark of a good dog if you asked her. She nuzzled Dot as she walked into her kitchen. She grabbed a bran muffin and a SpecialK protein shake before walking into the living room and switching on the TV. She didn't get any Swedish stations, but she was sure BBC America would be running the story.
Sure enough the anchor was recapping the Salander story. Camilla sat down and listened to the sordid tale of her sister. She could believe that her sister was capable of murder. She had seen first hand the home made firebomb Lisbeth had thrown into their father's car, but Camilla was sure that whomever they were claiming her sister had murdered Lisbeth had a good reason.
Her cell phone beeped. She answered it without looking at the caller ID. "Dr. Salander." she said.
"What," the voice asked as if she weren't really on the line.
"This is Dr. Salander. Who is this?" she demanded.
"I'm sorry to bother you. I didn't think it was possible that there were two of you. My name is Mikael Blomkvist. I'm a friend of your sister's." Camilla racked her brain. She had heard that name before. Wennerstrom.
The name slapped her across the frontal lobe. A reporter. Damnit how had they tracked her down? Camilla and Sapo had made sure to keep her and Lisbeth very separate.
"If you know Lisbeth than you know she doesn't have friends." Camilla cut in. "Why are you calling me Mr. Blomkvist?" Camilla looked around her house as if this Mikael was going to jump out of her potted plants. She was unaware that her Swedish accent was showing through the more she talked to Blomkvist.
"I don't know if you have heard, but your sister is in a lot of trouble and I want to help her." He started to say.
"What does that have to do with me? If you've tracked me down you know that I am no where near Sweden and haven't been for years. Lisbeth and I had spoken since we were 17. And we tried our best to kill each other. I can not fathom why you called me." Camilla stood up displacing Dot from her perch in her lap.
"Dr. Salander, your sister is in very serious trouble and she is going to need all the help she can get. Are things really that bad between you two?" Blomkvist asked softly.
Camilla bit back the retort that bubbled up on her lips. Camilla had often thought about the last thing she said to her sister. She could see the hurt that she caused Lisbeth and she had regretted that it was to be the last words they ever spoke, and now this reporter was pulling on her heart strings.
Could Camilla sit back and watch the system beat up her sister again? Even though they told her it was for her sister's own good that she was shut away in that nut house Camilla knew it was to keep her quiet. Lisbeth was never going to sit back and forget everything that happened. Never and Lisbeth was never going to sit back and watch other's done the same way and do nothing. They knew that Camilla would do just that. Camilla the scared little thing who's only defense was to shed a few tears and look the part of a living doll till someone held her and told her the world was going to be right as rain in the morning.
Could Camilla with the power and knowledge to blow everything apart stand idly by and do nothing, again? She knew her father was the worst sort of monster and still she acted as if nothing was going on. She even went as far as to hug her father each and ever time before he swept out of their life. Even after she saw the aftermath of his love upon her mother's face. Camilla's way of coping was to pretend everything was alright, but it wasn't and it never would be if she did nothing.
Camilla sighed. It was now or never she told her. Either she stood up to be counted or she stuck her head in the sand again till this all blowed over, but if she remembered Hurricane Lisbeth things were only going to be worst before the Red Cross stepped in and sorted out the body parts. "Mr. Blomkvist I will be in Sweden tomorrow." Camilla said.
"Thank you Dr. Salander." he rattled off his mobile number for her. To which she wrote down before hanging up. She called her office to take the time off before hopping onto her computer to book herself a first class ticket to Stockholm. She hadn't been home in years and Lisbeth was calling her back.
Camilla dropped Dot off with a friend with money to get her food and to the spa if she needed it. Dot was in a right state as she backed out of the driveway. She wanted to take Dot with her, but it wasn't feasible. She didn't know where she was going to end up and dragging her dog into the fray was not high on her list of good ideas.
She made it back home with enough time to pack a few staples. She could buy more clothes once she landed in Stockholm. There was no sense in packing up her entire wardrobe. Which had been her first impulse.
After packing she called a car service to take her to the airport. She had a feeling this wasn't going to be a weekend jaunt.
She only had a three hour wait at the airport before her flight left. She had a hour layover at JFK before she touched down in Stockholm a little after one a.m. She phone Blomkvist and waited for him to pick her up.
She felt weird being back home. She had made a promise to herself when she boarded her flight to the United States that she would never go back to Sweden, and here she was.
She stood in the arrivals terminal with her little suitcase and her purse. She saw Blomkvist as he walked up. He was a handsome man, she thought. Even if he was a little old for her taste. He was looking around for her. She had to suppress a smile. He thought she was going to look exactly like Lisbeth. With her scarecrow look.
"Mr. Blomkvist." she called. He turned around to stare at her.
"Dr. Salander?" He wasn't sure she wasn't pulling her leg.
Camilla held out her hand for him to shake, "Camilla Salander. Pleased to meet you." She gave him a strong handshake. To which he returned even as he stood in her face blinking like an idiot.