Chapter 6 Women Who Hate Men

A/N - Hey everyone. Here's chapter 6 of what will probably be a 10-11 chapter story. Updates will probably be sporadic for a while; my track season is starting tomorrow and practice will be sucking up a good 3 hours of writing time every day from now on.

January 10th

At seven fifteen sharp, Bublanski's team met with newly appointed prosecutor Denise Kristenson a week after the Bellmansgatan bombing, pouring over the latest bombshell in the case.

"White phosphorus?" Bublanski peered over his glasses at Holmberg, "You expect me to believe that Lieve Petersen somehow got a hold of white phosphorus and planted it on Mikael Blomkvist's apartment?"

"Exactly. The chemical summary report states quite plainly that there was a large quantity of white phosphorus and ANNM at Bellmansgatan 1. The body of Monica Figuerola also demonstrates severe white phosphorus burns, but her cause of death was due to inhalation of the chemical fumes. White phosphorus would also account for the large amount of white smoke that was present after the explosion."

"Lieve Petersen was a chemical engineer at the university in Ghent," Modig cut in. She shrugged as the attention suddenly diverted to her from Bublanski and Holmberg's debate, "I'm sure that it wouldn't be too difficult for someone with that background to cook up their own mix."

Prosecutor Kristenson held up a hand. "Now, I won't lay blame towards anyone here because it's no one's issue at this meeting. But how the hell did someone get…" Her eyes dropped to the report, "Five kilos of white phosphorus through customs? According to Holmberg, it ignites on contact with the air and needs to be kept in water to prevent spontaneous combustion." There was a murmur of agreement at the table among the law extension of Bublanski's team. Obviously, someone fell asleep at the wheel and would have to be reprimanded for such a grave error.

"That will be investigated in due course, but for now we need to focus on what's at hand. So far we have two fatalities and a bombing conducted with a highly restricted chemical agent."

Kristenson hopped to the next item on her agenda, "Do you have any suggestions for a motive?"

"No. But the viciousness of the murder of Teleborian should be investigated. If she wanted to just kill him she would have done so, not go out of her way to completely mutilate him while he was still alive and kicking."

"What about the Salander connection?" She asked. Bublanski's team collectively groaned.

"She pops up way too much." Was Erlander's immediate response.

"And where ever Lisbeth Salander goes, Kalle Blomkvist isn't far behind." Andersson bounced back helpfully.

"Andersson, Erlander. Enough." Bublanski snapped.

Holmberg cleared his throat, eying his very aggrevated boss, "At this point in time, I think it is fair to say that Lieve Petersen and Lisbeth Salander are identical twins. Salander does have a twin, Camilla Salander, but she's been missing from Sweden since 1998. Her personal file has been deemed classified since she turned 19 and emigrated out of Sweden."

"So Lieve Petersen is Camilla Salander?"

"It looks that way, yes." Holmberg affirmed.

"Should there be reason to suspect that Camilla Salander may be hiding with her sister?"

"None at all."

Kristenson raised an eyebrow at Bublanski's quick reply. "Bad blood?"

"They beat each other senseless the last time they saw each other. I don't think someone as uncompromising as Lisbeth would forgive someone for past transgressions if they were serious enough to warrant a sisterly beating."

Bublanski looked around at his bleary-eyed team. Holmberg especially looked ready to keel over at any moment with exhaustion.

Kristenson rubbed her temples; a headache was surely in the making. The press would have a field day when the name 'Salander' made its way into the headlines once more.

"To be perfectly clear, this whole situation just downright stinks. That being said, what are you going to do about it, Inspector Bublanski?"

"I'm not sure what we can do at this moment, Denise. The situation stinks for more than just the prosecutor's office. We're talking about a Salander here, with multiple identities and damn good street smarts." He watched her bite her lip, deep in thought. "Our greatest ally without a doubt right now is the media. If you can get them to work with you, we can move forward in this case."

The meeting continued on until nearly ten that morning. Bublanski and Kristenson agreed to call a press conference at three that afternoon. Starting at noon, screening at all customs stops would be exponentially increased to weed out anyone fitting Camilla Salander's descriptions and all ATM withdrawals with foreign ATM cards would be immediately sent to Holmberg's computer to be processed. Bublanski had every hope that she would make a mistake and be caught. The question was whether or not anyone else would go down before that happened.

Less than a four blocks from the Millennium editorial offices, Erika Berger looked out the window of the Stockholm-Slussen Hilton. It looked like they were going to be heading into their third day of icy rain. Blomkvist's profile reflected in the glass as he walked out of the bathroom, fully dressed and ready to go.

They walked arm in arm up the hill from the Hilton towards Millennium. The wind had picked up significantly and Berger regretted not bringing her car. Or at least a hooded jacket.

"Have you booked a printer for Dag's book yet?" She pulled closer to Mikael in the cold.

"Nope. I'll do that today though. Lisbeth still hasn't unlocked the file, so I'm hesitant about setting a date in stone."

"And you have no clue why she did that?"

"Well I really didn't get much time last night to speak with her." He smirked conspiratorially at Berger before donning a sober expression, "But I don't think she would do something like that without good reason. I trust her instincts completely on this." He had yet to tell Berger of his and Lisbeth's gallivanting around Greater Stockholm tracking the Wi-Fi hits from his computer. Christ, he hadn't even told her the computer had been taken. But he didn't feel like worrying her. She hid it well, but Berger was still somewhat shaken by the day they'd been in Mellqvist's when the Yugoslav mafia rolled up and opened fire on them.

Berger's mobile went off as they passed the sushi joint that Lisbeth had been talking about. He saw the hordes of cats sitting outside and instantly knew how they came to have a new furry resident at Fiskargatan 9. Berger was quick and clean in her responses, the call only lasting a few minutes.

"There's a press conference on the Teleborian murder as well as your apartment. Prosecutor Kristenson and Bublanski believe they're somehow linked together."

"What time?" He held open the door to the stairs leading up behind the Greenpeace offices to Millennium.

"Three."

"I'll see you there, then." He gave Berger a quick hug before walking another block down the street to Svartensgatan. There was a very light dusting of snow on the tin roof directly covering Lisbeth's apartment. He wondered if-with her erratic sleep schedules-she would be awake or collapsed over her computer. No doubt she'd be hunting down the woman who'd been linked to Teleborian's demise. Blomkvist shuddered as he trumped up the steps at Fiskargatan. He still couldn't get some of the more grotesque images out of his mind.

The keypad code had not changed in a year, which seemed almost like an unforgivable sin for someone like Lisbeth. Or else it was her subtle way of keeping the door to her apartment somewhat open to him. He noticed he could actually shut the door without slamming it. Salander had gone to town in fixing the thing, though it left about an inch and a half gap at floor level. Blomkvist nearly gagged at the amount of cigarette smoke that hung in the air of the apartment.

Blomkvist found Lisbeth in what would normally be considered the dining room of the luxury apartment. It was more of a second office or a strategizing room than anything in her case. Maps were strewn across the large glass table. Three pop cans were overflowing with cigarette butts. And Lisbeth was slumped over onto her laptop in strangest position possible, dead asleep with the cat tucked in across her lap. He couldn't resist snapping a few pictures with his phone. They might come in handy for bartering for his files, but he knew the futility of it. It would still be fun to tease, though.

The cat saw him and seemed to think it was feeding time, hopping down with a surprisingly loud thud. Lisbeth seemed to wake slightly, muttering a 'fuck off' before turning her head to face away from the kitchen light. At least she doesn't have a Taser in her hand this time. The cat began to yowl at him so he picked up the morbidly obese animal and carried it off the kitchen, shutting the door so just a sliver of light spilt into the dining room.

At quarter past seven, Björn Sandberg pulled his golden Saab into the Svavelsjö MC garage in Norrmalm. Their numbers within the club had diminished by over half and left him with a substantial amount of bookwork to go over, but after the flop with Niedermann, the amount of account balancing had also decreased exponentially.

The books in question were located behind a spare parts cabinet in a defunct air vent in the main garage that needed one strong son of a bitch to move, but Sandberg had cut a false backend out of the cabinet for easier access. All his brawny boys were locked up, anyways.

He pulled out three A4 binders from the vent. When he turned around he came face to face with the barrel of a Glock.

"Drop the folders and turn around." He hesitated, looking down the barrel of the Glock and up at the covered face of the woman holding it. Fuck. Her voice told him everything; 'fart and I will blow your brains across the bricks.' The files slumped from his arms onto the floor. A strip of duct tape was secured across his mouth.

"Are you right or left handed? Hold up your dominant hand." Sandberg held up his right. His left hand was then taped firmly to his side, the gun pressed solidly into his back the entire time. "Move."

She brought him to a bar stool somewhere inside the main room. Plastic crinkled under his feet as she steered him around the lumpy couch that sat in the center of the room. His nose bumped into something hanging from the ceiling. He had a pretty good idea of what it was. She instructed him to hop on the bar stool in front of the bar, which was just high enough that his feet couldn't touch the floor. When she had the noose secured firmly around his neck, she flipped the light on.

A pen was shoved into his hand by a hand covered by a leather glove.

"I want you to write down the names of anyone living that knows Ronald Niedermann or the business he conducted here. I don't care if they're in prison, dead, or have four kids and a dog. I also want to know when you and I should be expecting company."

The woman pulled a notebook out of a tall hiking backpack and slid it across the table. She pulled back the black balaclava she'd stolen from the motorcyclist's helmet two days previously. Sandberg's eyes widened and flicked to the TV hanging above the bar. The same crossbeam that held it was also currently supporting the orange electrical cord noose around his neck.

Camilla followed his gaze. "That's nice. You know who I am. Can you write down what I did to the psychiatrist in Östermalm for me?"

You killed him.

"No, he killed himself. I simply tortured him. He hung himself by squirming too much in the end." She pressed his shaking hand into the paper of the notebook. "Write. Names, addresses."

He came up with a total of eleven people. Five were dead. Two were in prison for a combined sentence total of eighty-seven years. One was a pimp in Uppsala and the other three were weapon traffickers for the Yugoslav mafia. Camilla looked pleased at his list.

"You know," she placed the gun mockingly just out of his reach as she went through the bright blue hiking bag on the counter, "You forgot oneperson on your list."

No. That's it.

"No, no. You definitely forgot someone." She pulled out a suppressor from the bag and attached it to the pistol. "You." The crack wasn't as loud as she thought it would be.

The Svavelsjö clubhouse was formerly a meat packing plant and provided a still functioning cool room. When she cut down the shot and hung Sandberg, she dragged him off on a tarp placed under the stool to minus three-degree room. She couldn't do much about the blood spatter on the sofa, but it would go easily unnoticed once it dried.

Sandberg's car was still idling in the garage. She slipped a large balloon over the exhaust before searching for anything of use in his trunk. It was completely bare save for a tire iron that she could think of no use for other than clubbing someone over the head with. If his scrawl could be believed, no one would show up for another two days to open up the chop shop. It gave her enough time to set up in one of the club's discreet side rooms.

She picked up the A4s Sandberg dropped in the garage and threw them all into the fireplace along with three hundred grams of white phosphorus. With a few turnovers using a poker and all the evidence of Svavelsjö's dealings with Niedermann was reduced to black dust. There were still a few lowlife drug dealers and weapon traffickers she would have to deal with before disappearing from Sweden altogether, but she still had to create the means to deal with them.

Most of what she needed could be bought at a hardware or homecare store. She'd bugged out of Belgium with the rest. Twenty kilos of white phosphorus plainly labeled and ten liters of hydrochloric acid that only required a red tag to be carried on the train. She would never get that lucky again, but she could always make cheap substitutes with store bought products.

Camilla sat down on a clean sofa, feet propped up on a coffee table as she watched the morning news. She was still regarded as breaking news across Sweden. Both her driver's license photo from 2002 and the grainy security video from Östermalm were being shown. There was a 100,000 krona reward for information leading to her arrest.

Mikael Blomkvist was confirmed as alive and well directly after she was deemed armed and dangerous. She didn't really care. Though if the rumors she'd heard around the Stockholm tabloids were true, then she might be able to locate Lisbeth using him. She didn't know whether or not to put much stock in that idea, but she couldn't help but think about her strange encounter with the two of them four days ago. Lisbeth had been sitting on one of the central station benches obviously looking for someone and not fifteen minutes later, Camilla literally walked into Mikael Blomkvist as she was heading out of the McDonald's above T-Central. She decided it was an idea worth at least some investigation.

She discovered that there was no Internet connection anywhere to be found within the clubhouse and had to walk three blocks to the Hötorget tunnelbana station. Nothing of interest popped up in that regards, but a journalist by the name of Tony Scala was supposedly writing an unauthorized biography of Mikael Blomkvist. A quick search gave her an address. It was entirely too easy. At the clubhouse she pulled the half full balloon off of the tailpipe of the car. She'd set her tools up later, but for now she tied it off and stuck it behind the bar with her backpack.

Salander woke to a pair of bright green eyes staring at her from across the table. The sun was up, but she wasn't sure how long she'd been out for. One minute she was rewriting asphyxia to work on mobile phones, the next minute she wakes up to the freakishly large brown cat less than a foot from her face. She was pretty sure at some point that morning Blomkvist had come in, but she'd paid him no attention.

Her back was sore as fuck, but she was pleased to see she'd successfully modified asphyxia before nodding off. Her search parameters for Camilla had been much less successful, but she could always change them around later. There was a somewhat fresh pot of coffee left on the machine. She wondered if she should be surprised that he came back after one of his stays with Berger.

Halfway through making a quick sandwich, her landline began to ring. The cat eyed the food on the counter, ready to strike.

"Don't you think about it," She grabbed the phone from the cradle, "Hello?"

"This is your morning wake up call, courtesy of Millennium."

"You're too late."

"Well in that case I have three things to say, then I'll bugger off for a while. First, unlock my files. Two, apparently someone toilet trained the cat but didn't teach it to flush. Three, Dragan Armansky called and would like to know if you were interested in some sort of job offer. Bye."

Her brow furrowed. Cat? Toilet trained? It was too early for toilet train-wait, job offer? The cat protested loudly when she took her sandwich away from the warm spot on the coffee machine and into the dining room. What could Armansky be up to?

There weren't any 'interesting' cases that she could see in his active client list. There was a recent retirement notice, though.

She picked up her phone, dialing Armansky's direct line while skimming through the retirement notice. She had no clue who the hell the person was, but noticed they came out of Milton's 'operational' division.

"Armansky."

"I heard you had a job offer."

"I'll have a job opening as of February twelfth. It's a permanent position."

"Operations?"

Armanksy hesitated on the other end of the line. "Yes. Operations."

"I'm interested."

"Come in today and I'll see if I can pull some strings within the division, then. Take some rings out of your face and give your hair a good scrub down with some dish soap. The divisional chief doesn't take well to punk queens." The phone clicked off on the opposite end.

For the first time in a long while, Salander smiled. As much as she loved her computer and it's ability to help her fuck with the lives of assholes from a safe distance, her time in Hedestad had set in motion her interest in fieldwork. She could still fuck with people, but on a larger, more personal scale.

The cat hopped up onto the table next to her, cleaning the plate as Salander sat in thought. The only problem was she'd have to work with other people. There was a chain of command and she'd naturally start and probably stay at the lower rung. The offer seemed to have completely come out of the blue, but Salander knew Armansky was a calculating as she was. There was definitely a motive somewhere, how ever miniscule or obscure it was.

She reasoned that the most logical first step would be to research the person she was possibly going to succeed. Salander was surprised that it was a woman. Alice Thorsen, 46, former municipal police officer, currently working as a security consult and counter-measures chief. Definitely interesting set of shoes to fill that wouldn't get boring for a while.

Salander grabbed her keys off the coffee table. She was in the middle of find a 'normal' looking jacket that Mimmi might have left in the coat closet when her computer began to beep. The bitch was online! She shoved the cat off the dining room chair as she watched Camilla perform the search 'Lisbeth Salander + Mikael Blomkvist.' What the fuck? There wasn't much more than aimless scrolling that followed. After five minutes, the search parameters changed to just 'Mikael Blomkvist + life.' A press report to the writing of an unauthorized biography came up, written by none other than the shithead Tony Scala. Another window opened, with a query on the residence of the asshole journalist. Was she thinking of dropping in on him?

The computer went offline after that and Lisbeth wasted no time grabbing the first jacket she saw out of the coat closet before sprinting down the steps to her car. This time she wasn't going to let the bitch escape without her doing something about it first!

Tony Scala stood and stretched in front of his desktop PC. He was almost through with editing his latest work on Mikael Blomkvist. Another week and he'd send it off the printers. It was his chance to really make it big. There was enough hype that the book was already being projected as a best seller based on pre-sales alone.

Moze, his trusted sidekick and longhaired wiener dog was lounging on the sofa when Scala heard a banging at the door. Its floppy ears perked slightly, but the dog was otherwise still as a statue.

"Moze. Door." The dog gave a non-committal half-bark before laying it head down once again.

He shook his head as he turned the deadbolt to the front door. "Some dog you are."

"Hello?" He stuck his head out the door to find a woman holding a notepad and pen. An Internet blogger.

"Tony Scala? Hi, my name is Eli Laastad. I was wondering if you could give me some details on your upcoming biography on Mikael Blomkvist?"

Scala didn't see the Taser slip from her pocket until 50,000 volts of electricity were sent shooting through his thigh.

Salander narrowly missed colliding with a golden Saab on Sveavägen as she slid in behind its vacated parking space. Tony Scala, third floor, unit seven. The door was to the apartment was unlocked just as it had been in Lundagatan. Salander found Scala handcuffed to an old radiator in his office.

"Fuck, not you too! I don't know anything! Fuck!" Salander noticed he was trying to reach for the handcuff key dangling from an end table inches out of his reach. The wiener dog she'd seen on the couch came over to investigate, sniffing and growling at her feet before wandering off.

"Look here and stop fidgeting or I'll toss the key down your sink drain! I don't give a shit for journalists like you, but you're going to tell me what the bitch who chained you up wanted."

"Who the fu- shit you're Lisbeth Salander! Fuck, I'm sorry about all the shit I printed, I swear! Please don't do anything to me, please!"

Salander ignored his profuse apologies and waited for him to realize she was his only ticket to being unchained. She didn't give a shit if he went out and bought her roses and kept apologizing every fucking day for the rest of his life. He'd gone out and destroyed much of Mimmi's life with his printings. Had he not already been chained up to something she was damn sure she would have done it herself.

His blubbering finally came to an end, "Fuck, okay, okay. This chick with black hair tased me when I opened the door. Then I come to and I'm handcuffed here. She wouldn't stop zapping me and kept asking me if I knew where you or Mikael Blomkvist was hiding. She literally just left five minutes before you got here!"

Salander looked down at the chained reporter. She could see the burns where he'd been zapped. But he was still leaving out the most crucial piece of information.

"And what did you tell her?"

"I'm a journalist, not a fucking forensic person! I don't hunt down people who are supposedly dead!" He started shaking the handcuff on the radiator, "Can you just unchain me already?"

"No. Shut up." She dangled the key in front of his face like a reward for his shitty behavior. "You will not scream, bang, or make any noise draws attention to yourself once I leave. I'm going to tie the key to your dog's collar. You can free yourself when the dog sees fit. After that I don't give a shit what do, who you call, or what you print, but you will not mention that I was here."

The dog skittered over on overgrown toenails when she whistled for it. It was a feisty little rat that Scala would definitely have fun trying to coax over to him once she left. She checked the time on her phone as she shut the door to unit seven behind her. Armansky hadn't been specific about when to show up but since she was on this side of Riddarfjärden she might as well drop in on her way home.

The rain really let loose when Salander walked out of the building. A ticket was stuck in between her windshield wipers; apparently she parked in a nonexistent handicapped zone. She gunned the car, watching the paper disintegrate in the rain as the ominous concrete Milton building rose above the Slussen interchange. She could see a silhouette staring down from Armansky's office on the fifth floor as she pulled into the underground parking structure.

Armansky looked up at the sound of his glass door sliding open. "You're soaking wet, for God's sake! Were you frolicking in the rain before coming here or something?" He walked around to his desk, throwing a rubber band at her, "Just tie your hair back and take a seat."

"I didn't have time to wash the dye out. Are you still serious about Operations?"

"If you're still seriously interested yes." Salander nodded as Armansky's expression became serious, "But you will hear me out before I take you down to the division chief. This isn't a job for loose cannons. You don't set your hours and there is a chain of command that you will follow."

Salander thought as much.

"If you refuse an assignment, you're fired. If you piss off someone higher up than you, you're fired. From this point on, your job at Milton is up to the whims of Jaben Singh. You need to accept that before we go any further."

Salander was beginning to like the sound of Operations less and less, but she bit her tongue and went along with Armansky to the seventh floor. It was an area of Milton she might have ventured into once during her stint as a nineteen-year-old coffee goffer, but if was a completely different world compared to the other six floors of Milton. It had a dark, almost subterranean look to it that put Plague's hacker hole to shame.

Armansky opened a door to a conference room tucked at the very back of the open floor. A man wearing a turban sat at the center table typing on an extremely small notebook computer. Alice Thorsen was looking over his shoulder and was the first to notice them both, smiling politely.

Singh pointed to the unoccupied side of the table. "Take a seat Dragan," he shut the lid to his notebook, "Salander, am I right?"

"Yes."

"Good." He made a gesture with his hand and Thorsen promptly stepped out.

"I've spent the last few days taking a good hard look at you, Lisbeth. Dragan, here, took it upon himself to put together a portfolio of the work and reports that you completed from 1999 to 2003. I find no fault in them at all and your attention to detail is beyond anything I've seen."

He paused for effect and Salander could tell that if he weren't a fucking giant no one would really care for what he had to say. She just wanted him to cut the chase, no flash or flair required. She stared at him in the exact way Armansky told her not to do. It had the right effect and he quickly hopped to.

"There are, however, some shortcomings in your own background that cannot be ignored. You lack formal training in the most basic of security protocol and you just recently passed your CEE when you should have already done it ten years ago. Am I right so far?"

Salander was about to nod but Armansky subtly banged on the back of her chair. Use words. "Yes."

"I very much want to hire you, Lisbeth, but your lack of training poses a significant issue to be admitted into this division."

Singh opened his laptop and Salander took that as an opportunity to glare at Armansky. Fucking Armenian. She could feel the shoot down coming from a mile away. Leave it to Armansky to let her get a glimpse at her former Milton goal and then take it all away.

Singh turned the laptop to face them both. Salander had to squint at the screen to read the miniature print, but didn't dare make a move to change the font size.

"But because I'm so brutally stubborn when I see such a good deal such as yourself," Salander's eyes narrowed at his choice of words, "Myself and Armansky are willing to put you on the X2000 to Göteborg tomorrow morning to get you the needed training."

"You're serious?"

"Very." Armansky cut in, smiling at her. Fucking Armenian, she thought once again. It felt too damn good to be true.

"How long can I wait on this?"

"You can't. The training starts in two days and only happens twice a year. You need to be on the train to-mor-row," he pounded his thick fist on the desk for emphasis, "Or no Operations."

"What do I sign?"

The Sikh motioned for the computer. "Just register yourself for the courses and get your ass on the train tomorrow. You don't have to sign anything until you complete the training."

She looked at him skeptically while her fingers flitted across the keyboard. When it was all said and done, Singh just opened the door and pointed her in the direction of the elevators. She took the stairs to the roof instead and lit a cigarette, looking out towards the bright lights of Greater Stockholm. Somewhere out there, her bitch sister was planning absolute fucking chaos and trying to suck herself and Blomkvist into her sick mess. She realized it wasn't a job she could do alone.

The rain had stopped when she chose to ring up Plague. "I need an assistant for three weeks."

"Hi to you, too." It sounded like he was playing some sort of video game in the background.

"I need someone good tailing."

"Why's that?" Plague asked.

"I'm going to be out of Stockholm for a while and need someone to tail someone else while I'm gone."

"What's your rate?"

"Twenty grand a week plus a discretion tip."

"I have someone in mind. I'll give you his Hotmail address and you two can figure the rest out."

"Thanks."

Salander finished off her cigarette and flicked it over the edge of the roof onto the street below before heading back down to the parking garage. The dashboard clock in her car said it was half past seven, but the significance of the time was lost on her.

At home she did a thorough inspection of the apartment and found nothing out of place except for a shoe. She found it on the balcony along with the cat splayed out on its back trying to rip the laces out of her favorite shoes.

She inched closer to it, "Drop the shoe, demon-"

"So you finally named it?" She turned around to see Blomkvist throw his jacket on the back of the sofa. The cat took her slip of attention as its chance to bolt, leaving the mutilated shoe behind.

"Demon? Sure." She held the shoe up for his own inspection. "Keep it away from my shit while I take a shower."

Salander grabbed a bottle of dish soap from the kitchen before starting up the shower. For the first time in over ten years, her hair was restored to its natural coppery-red color. She could see why Armansky was adamant about making the change. She sure as fuck didn't look like Lisbeth Satanic Lesbian Salander anymore. With a startling clarity, she realized how much she looked like her mother. Red was her color. Black was Zala-fucking-Chenko's. She made sure to spray the last of that color down the drain before digging out a small suitcase from the master closet.

A knock came from door to the room as she threw the t-shirt into the bag. "It's open."

Blomkvist took one step in before looking at her completely naked backside while she rummaged deeper into her closet, "I'll just wa-"

"Shut up and come in here, Mikael." Salander slammed the wardrobe shut as Blomkvist walked in, tossing a rolled up sock from the top of her dresser at him. "Open it."

She lit a cigarette as he shook the contents of the bag onto the bed. Something black with yellow stripes rolled out. Her Taser.

"Push the button in," she pressed her thumb over his and watched the electrodes spark to life, "and it'll knock someone on their ass long enough for you to run. Try not to zap yourself if you use it, OK?"

Blomkvist had no idea how to respond to her sudden gift. He'd been to the press conference and had heard the news about the unlikely evidence linking yet another Salander relation to a heinous crime. Was she going to go after her sister just as she had Zalachenko? He looked her square in the eyes and knew that that at least wasn't her first intention.

"You should put some clothes on," he said finally, standing with her latest gift jammed in his pocket.

"Or you could take some off," she countered with a peculiar look in her eye.

She stood and closed the distance between them in three steps, expertly unhooking his belt as her lips moved roughly against his. Her actions took him by complete surprise and he soon found himself pressed against the wall as Salander assaulted his lips with her own, while she worked her way through the fastenings of his pants.

The next morning, Blomkvist let his hand drift to Salander's side of the bed, finding the Taser resting neatly in the molded form of the bed where Lisbeth had been only hours before. A small piece of paper was tucked into one of the folds.

With bleary eyes, he read a hastily composed note in her frustratingly neat scrawl.

I'll be back Friday night. Don't zap "Demon."

I am a complete awkward turtle when it comes to lemons/limes/citrus fruit in writing. Don't shoot me for the scene above. Constructive criticism is mucho wanted for this chapter; don't let me down!

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