Chapter 10 Women Who Hate Men
I feel so horrible for taking a month to update, but chapter 10 is here! Anyone check out the cover picture? Just a random redhead I found on the internet, but the smirk looked so much like what I thought Camilla's would look like that I couldn't resist.
Directly across from the Millennium office, Camilla and Horst sat in a small breakfast café. They'd gotten into Stockholm-Bromma slightly earlier than expected and had hailed a cab to from there to Götgatan, where they had been watching everyone going in and out of the number nineteen building for the last forty-five minutes.
Once again, a change was in order and now Camilla sported a head of long brown hair and spoke openly in Russian to Horst beside her about how to carry out her latest set of plans.
"I'm telling you, it's too crowded to throw that thing in there today."
"So the windows might blow out…the whole building isn't going to come crashing down on the street."
"I don't care about that," Horst dropped his voice as a waiter walked behind them, "Someone might recognize you."
"And what are they going to do if they do? We'll be clear of here by the time someone figures it out."
Horst buried his face in his hands as Camilla continued watching the magazine offices from the café across the street. At times she was just too damn headstrong for her own good. Horst did not want to go back to prison, even though he'd heard the Swedish prison system was a joke in comparison to the still very Soviet-esque Estonia.
His hand nudged her bag, tapping the metal container within. "When do you have the time to make all this shit?"
"When I'm alone and not being bothered by you or Jarrod."
"Exactly. There's no time. It's always, 'Oh Cam, here's a list of people late on dues,' or 'Can you take care of a few problems for me?' Fucking slave driver."
"Let's not forget his little hissy fit when he wanted me to get rid of Rüütel, who happened to be the only reason the cops haven't put the house under siege. What a fucking idiot."
Horst nodded. "I miss Ronald. He knew how to negotiate, none of this 'kill, kill, kill' shit." He looked down at her newer, plain-Jane phone she'd bought at a kiosk in the airport. "How'd you figure out your phone was bugged?"
"That idiot that bumped me on the metro a couple weeks ago left a micro card in my phone."
"And you're sure it's Lisbeth behind all of it?"
"It has to be. Who else would want to track me, but not turn me into the cops? She's a fucking tech genius if you remember what Pappa used to say. If she saw the phone switch countries, she'll be here any time now."
"So you think she'll come here and tell everyone that you're back."
"That's exactly what I think she'll do, so we'll wait for her."
Her theory was proven true when less than three minutes later a motorcycle's engine revved along the street, its rider honking their horn impatiently at all the foot traffic flooding through the street. Camilla watched her sister with interest as she stood the bike up on the curb, strapping her helmet to the side rail of her bike. It's a Honda, she thinks. Her hair was back to the shade of red she hadn't seen since they were kids.
"So that's the runt of the litter."
Camilla drained her coffee, setting it down on the table with a solid clunk. "In a way."
"I could crush her like a bug."
"You'd have to get your hands on her first," a finger drifted up to the small indent under her eye where Lisbeth managed to break her orbital socket ten years ago. "She'll smash your face in before you could even start blocking."
They watched as Lisbeth typed in the security code before jogging up the stairs and out of sight. After a minute, they stood, Camilla shouldering a leather bag as Horst swung a jacket around his shoulders. They agreed that he would duck into the tourist t-shirt shop across the street while she ran up to deliver Millennium's surprise.
At the top of the stairwell, she lifted the mail slot to peer in for a brief second before tossing the grenade across the room. She made it out of the building just as the windows about blew out and glass rained down across Götgatan.
First, there was a flash. For a split second, she thought it was only a flash bang. Then sofa she'd taken refuge behind seemed to fly backwards ten feet, dragging her with it. Finally came the sound that left her ears ringing so terribly that no other sound could come through. Bits of glass from the ceiling lights rained down as she laid half pinned between a decommissioned radiator and the sofa.
Then she smelt the acrid fumes of a thousand matches burning. Phosphorus.
Thrusting both legs up, she pushed the sofa away from her, jumping up to survey the damage. There was fire everywhere.
"Mikael?" Why was she yelling? They were all probably deaf!
A figure seemed to clamber to their feet as the room filled with smoke, dragging with them another body. Lisbeth saw their shoes. Mikael and Malin. Check.
She knew Christer was in the loft with Karim and raced up the stairs to find them both groping around through the thick smoke. She grabbed them both and got them down the stairs, leading them around the pockets of fire that would instantly flare up and die down in a span of seconds. Christer and Karim. Check.
Berger stood in the hall outside the door, her arms crossed and her face vacant as Lisbeth shoved Christer and Karim out the door.
Lisbeth grabbed the stupid woman roughly by the shoulder, snarling words she could no longer hear, "Get the fuck out of here and don't touch anything!"
Berger yelled something back, but all Lisbeth could make out was Mikael and back inside. Those words were the only incentive she needed to dive back into Millennium as the smoke began to funnel into the halls. Berger was out and could save her own ass, she reasoned as she dropped to a crouch, looking for anything remotely human looking.
What she found was blood. Followed by a pair a tennis shoes lying on the ground, one knee elevated. Blomkvist? No, she was sure he was wearing dress shoes when she walked in.
Cortez, she realized, seeing the brown hooded sweater he had been wearing earlier.
A hand grabbed her shoulder as she crept towards the body. She looked up to find Blomkvist beginning to mouth something along the lines offlying desk leg before his face contorted to something akin to worry as his hand suddenly flew to her ear, coming away covered in blood. She couldn't feel a thing.
Metal hissed and popped, shooting small particles of phosphorus around the room as Lisbeth assessed how to get the unconscious Cortez out. A piece of hollowed out aluminum protruded from Cortez's thigh, going all the way through and out the back, the wheel of the rollaway still attached at the end. There was no painless way to do the job, she realized. The best thing they could do for him would be to drag him out and possibly tie something around his leg as a tourniquet while they waited for an ambulance outside.
The floor shook as the loft started to crash down around them. "Grab his arms and let's go!"
Mikael didn't need to be told twice, heaving Cortez's torso into his arms as Lisbeth placed his legs over her shoulders. Mikael backed up through the entrance hall as more and more of the building was being ripped apart by the chemical blaze.
Halfway down the stairs, Mikael's grip on Cortez began to slip. He kept trudging on, but Salander could see the pain rapidly crossing his face. When they finally laid Cortez down on the sidewalk, he seemed to crumple against the wall, clutching his arm.
Lisbeth was by his side the second she saw him drop. When she reached out to touch him lightly on the arm, but he waved her off with hand;no, trying to hide whatever was affecting his arm.
She had to pry his hand from his arm, and she was quite positive what she saw she would never be able to un-see. "Shit, Mikael."
She knew the basics to most injuries. If there was blood, bandage it or put a tourniquet on it if there was enough of it. Splints went on broken bones. But burns, especially the chemical ones that had created small but deep pockets across his arm, were complete foreign territory. Was she supposed to cover them? Could she run water of them? His wounds seemed to smoke as if they were still burning; the look on his face confirmed her guess.
She remembered she still had a bottle of water in one of the Honda's side cases and hoped it hadn't frozen.
She looked around for the most sane and least injured casualty. Her eyes settled on Malin as she finished tying a shoelace around Cortez's leg. Smart.
"Malin!" she shouted. She whipped around, barely in time to catch Lisbeth's wallet as she ordered her to buy as much water as possible. Lisbeth dripped what was left of her own water on the deep burns that had opened up in small clusters all across his forearm. The rolled sleeves of his shirt were blackened and singed, but the skin beneath remained unblemished.
"Where else, Mikael?" she asked in what she assumed was a soft voice, "Point for me." Where was Malin with the water she'd asked for?
Faced with the fact that the EMT's might beat Malin back, she looked for other resources. Her eyes settled on the spongy liner that was beginning to fall out of her helmet. It was time to get a new one anyways. Her fingers made quick work to pull it out, dousing the liner with water just as the howl of sirens started to bounce off the buildings. The cool compresses seemed to do there job as Mikael contorted face slowly slackened. It was enough for her to make up her mind. Camilla was going to die and Shröder was going down with her.
Two hours later, Lisbeth paced the distance from the ICU's emergency exit to the nurse's station. It was exactly twenty-three paces; thirty-one if she circled around to the coffee kiosk. Somehow a nurse in the ER managed to keep her still enough to clean and bandage her ear before she managed to escape up to the third floor where the majority of Millennium had been taken. Berger and Malm shared room 321C while Blomkvist was shoved down at the end of the corridor in room 302C.
From the hall, she could see Malm had two bandages over his eyes; the temporary flash blindness would right itself in a day or so from what she gathered from nurses. His partner Arnold sat in a chair beside him, watching Lisbeth with something between gratefulness and suspicion as he held Christer's hand.
Berger was a complete emotional train wreck, but would likely be released by the end of the day after a quick psych evaluation. She teetered on the edge of the hospital bed, her face contorted in rage as she argued with the charge nurse. Lisbeth smirked; that was one way to not leave the hospital. The nurse looked up and saw Salander standing in the hall, flicking the blinds closed.
Lisbeth walked the halls seven more times and counted how many cigarettes she had left twice before Annika and the floor doctor emerged from room 302C. Annika waved a hand for Lisbeth to come over. She couldn't cover the distance fast enough.
"He's in pain, but he's been begging to see you." Without any forewarning, Annika threw her arms around Lisbeth; lifting her off the floor in a crushing embrace. "Thank you!"
She gently nudged the door shut behind her with a boot. His eyes snapped open at the miniscule sound, watching her as she walked around the bed and sat on the edge of the nightstand. The entirety of his right arm was wrapped tightly in gauze, lying limply by his side. The bandages hidden under his hospital gown creaked with every inhalation. Every pained sound he made was a kick in the gut for Salander.
"Hey," he said weakly. "How are the others?"
Fucking Blomkvist, she thought, always others before himself.
"Karim and Malin have already gone home. Cortez is in a different wing."
"Christer? Erika? What about them?"
"Two doors down. Berger is getting a psych eval."
"I think we'll all need one of those after this," he groaned, "Fuck, Lisbeth. Just kill me now."
A hesitant knock came from the door as a nurse came in to restock. Lisbeth continued to silently seethe on the end table as the woman went about her business.
"I'll fucking kill her," she said when the nurse left, "I'll hunt her down and kill her with my bare fucking hands when I find her."
Blomkvist pushed out a long, labored breath, looking at her with drooping eyes. "Does it bother you at all that you would willingly kill your own sister?"
"No. It's necessary."
Before that day, she hadn't exactly delighted in the idea, nor had she been repulsed by it. But now there was no question in her mind that Camilla had to go.
"Killing should never be necessary." His voice was resigned, but he moved his hand over hers. His thumb twitched in a way that could be interpreted as a gentle squeeze of the hand if the rest of his fingers could work.
She pushed it away, irritated by his sudden, naive do-gooder attitude. One day it was going to get him killed. Like it almost did today.
"Get it through your thick fucking skull Kalle Blomkvist: she wants me and would kill you without batting an eye if she could. So deal with it unless you have seven more lives to spare."
She hopped down from the end table, shoving her hands in her pockets as she stormed out into the hallway. Making an immediate left towards the waiting area, she nearly trampled Annika's sleeping form beside the doorway to Mikael's room. The sight instantly made her feel like an utter ass. Way to go Salander, kick a man when he's down. She knew she should probably apologize, but she couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't make matters worse. At a loss for what to do in the matter, she ventured back to the coffee dispenser for a fifth cup.
She saw Sonya Modig's reflection behind her in the laminated plastic of the machine. "Fröken Salander, a word?"
"No." She grabbed her coffee and stood to leave the empty waiting room. Modig was the smallest pain in the ass from Bublanski's horde, but that didn't mean Lisbeth would break Rule 1 just for Modig.
"You weren't credited as a co-writer in Millennium's new issue," Modig called out, "I'd be pretty pissed if I didn't get any recognition for my work."
That made Lisbeth stop in her tracks, her eyes narrowing. No one should have known that, not even the staff at the magazine itself. Plus, the magazine wasn't going to be released to the public for another day. She cursed Modig for peaking her interest, but took a seat on the opposite side of the seating arrangement, ready to spring up and away at a moments notice.
"There's been a formal complaint against you in particular for the article on the Shröder brothers." Salander did not respond.
Modig sighed, "I'm supposed to say that it would behoove you to consider protective custody, but I've already figured I'd be wasting my breath." Salander continued to eye her over the coffee cup until Modig gave up and stood.
"Do your superiors know where I live?" She finally asked.
Modig paused midstride when she heard Salander's voice, "No," she confessed. No one knew a damn thing at all regarding what Salander might have been up to in the months passed since the end of her trial, Modig thought as she turned to face the bizarre woman behind her.
Lisbeth turned in the chair to face Modig, giving her a tight-lipped non-smile that revealed nothing yet spoke so much.
The policewoman gave Salander one final looked over before walking into Berger's room, pulling the blinds shut behind her. Lisbeth couldn't help but crack a true smirk at the persistence of the female cop. Would any of them ever learn?
Finishing off the coffee, she tossed it in the trash and slipped past Annika as she slumped over in the chair outside Mikael's room. The room was dark and Mikael did not stir when she shut the door behind her and took up residence on the couch beneath a window overlooking the Arstaviken. For the longest of times she just sat there in the dark, listening to all the beeps of the cardiac monitor and glaring at the nurses who seemed to walk in every twenty minutes. She knew she wasn't allowed in the ICU rooms after nine, but none of the nurses had the courage to tell her to get out yet, so she stayed.
Lisbeth didn't realize she'd nodded off until she felt someone shaking her shoulder. She opened her eyes to come face to face with a pair of eyes so similar to Blomkvist that for a second she completely forgot that he was out cold from painkillers on the hospital bed beside her. Then reality came back to her and she realized that the Blomkvist imposter was Annika.
"Hmm?" She looked around for the nearest clock in the room. The time on the EKG monitor read nine thirty Shit. She didn't mean to conk out for that long.
"I asked if you've been in here all night."
She sat up, wincing at a stiff neck, "Mostly."
"Go home and change then, for God sakes! You smell like a box of matches! I'll keep him from walking off while you're gone."
"Can I borrow your car? I jumped in the ambulance to get here."
Annika dug her keys from her pocket, "It's the-"
"Forest green Volvo S80 with the moon roof and metro parking exemption sticker on the left rear bumper," she said, slinging her motorcycle jacket over her shoulder, grabbing the keys from Annika as they both walked out of the room, "Got it."
She passed Berger as she headed out into the guest parking lot, twirling Annika's keys on her index finger.
Mikael waited for the door to click shut behind Annika to open his eyes fully. He was aware that Lisbeth had slipped in to keep watch after he'd passed out, though it was a gesture he hadn't quite believed when he saw it. Truthfully he thought she'd already skulked home to plot how best to make Camilla feel equal agony. He had no doubt that she had been to some extent, but the fact that she came back was humbling. At least she wasn't that irritated with him.
He jumped slightly when the door clicked open again. Expecting the morning charge nurse, he was surprised to find Berger wearing a solemn mask and clutching folded piece of paper. She took a seat silently beside the hospital bed, thrusting the paper into his hand, her eyes now glassy.
"What is this?" He asked, squinting as he tried to discern the typing on the paper without his glasses. He looked up in disbelief at the first five words.
"You're resigning?"
"Yes." She bowed her head low, "Effective immediately."
"I can't accept this, Erika."
"Yes you can and you will, Mikael. I can't stay with the magazine knowing that what happened yesterday could repeat itself. I don't want to spend my life with a target on my back because you've pushed the wrong buttons on the wrong person. It's too much!"
"You picked a damn good time to do it, then."
"I agree. I should have just gone somewhere else after SMP."
"Erika, don't say that," he pleaded, "You were being stalked by a luna-"
"And what's going on right now, Mikael? We are being hunted by a lunatic that happens to be a exact copy of Lisbeth Salander!"
"Stop right there." His voice took on a dangerous edge, "I understand you both don't hold each other in the highest esteem, but goddamn it she has done more for both of us and Millennium than you could possibly imagine."
Berger held his gaze with an icy glare that he fully returned. "In that case, I have nothing left to say."
"I think I prefer it that way."
"Goodbye Mikael."
He waited for the door to click shut before crumpling the paper and throwing it at the opposite wall.
Four hours later, Lisbeth stepped out of the elevator onto the third floor. On her shoulder she carried her laptop bag and a second change of clothes. She'd be damned if Mikael was left alone without either herself or Annika watching while Camilla was back. Tucked into the side pocket were no less than seven different newspapers, all with the same headline.
Annika was sitting in the seating arrangement in front of the nurse's station reading a thick novel from her ridiculously oversized bag. She looked up as Lisbeth handed her back her keys. "Hey. Take a nap at home?"
Lisbeth flopped down in the seat across from Annika, flipping her laptop open, "My bike was towed so I had to claim it from the impound lot. Thanks for letting me borrow your car."
"You're welcome. They took him in to get skin grafts on his arm and shoulder," she let out a world-weary sigh, "I hate it when things get like this."
Lisbeth looked up from her laptop at her lawyer and part-time friend. "He's a journalist. They get into loads of shit."
"He has a better shit finding radar than most," Annika snorted, shaking her head, "Forgive me for that. But sometimes he just makes me so mad."
"The annoyance is mutual."
Lisbeth reopened her coordinate tracker for Camilla's phone and saw that it still hadn't moved from its spot in Sundbyberg. Worst-case scenario was that she'd finally gotten smart and ditched it in a dumpster near the airport or something along those lines.
There was nothing else to really do and her battery was flashing that it had less than ten percent juice. "I'm going to set this up to charge. Is the door to his room unlocked?"
"I don't see why it wouldn't be but don't let the nurses see you in it."
She nodded, slipping her laptop back into its bag. She knew just the right place where no one would look to hide it. There was an outlet behind the couch right next to a recess where part of a radiator had been embedded that was just big enough to shove the laptop into. She just hoped the charger wouldn't break when she shoved the couch back against the wall.
With the deed done, she had just begun to push the couch back into position when the crunch of paper drew her attention to under the hideous sofa. A ball of crumpled paper had caught on the foot of the chair. Curious, she picked up the little ball and checked the window to make sure all the nurses were still away on their rounds before smoothing out the twisted paper with the upmost care.
Dear Mikael,
Please accept this as my resignation from Millennium, effective immediately. I regret the inconvenience it will cause, but circumstances have left me no choice. I wish you and the magazine luck in my absence.
Sincerely,
Erika Berger, former Editor and Chief of Millennium
Berger? Resigning? Lisbeth wanted to let out the loudest whoop she could after reading the final line. It was more than a resignation letter; it was practically a divorce. The previous day had been the feather that finally broke the camel's back concerning the slowly degrading relationship the two had shared.
As always, Mikael seemed oblivious to the end. Lisbeth wondered if she should feel sorry for him.
Checking the window to see if the coast was clear, she slipped the paper into her jeans pocket before slipping out of the room carrying her hefty stack of tabloids. She avoided throwing it in the trash and would burn it the next time she was home. Although she hated Berger, Mikael didn't need the media frenzy that would follow if one of the nurses decided to snoop through his rubbish bin.
Annika was reading the March copy of National Geographic when Lisbeth flopped down across from her, dropping the papers on the center table. She didn't care for the front-page taglines. What she really wanted were the press conference bits. She'd discovered the night before that her entrance point into the police database had retired and his account had been deactivated accordingly, closing her off from the Svensk Polis database indefinitely. She could still snoop through her impressive list of police email accounts, but first she needed the press clippings to identify whose email to hack.
Her fingers itched to pull out a cigarette as she breezed through the stack of papers. Nothing. The building was still a volatile mess of phosphorus and no investigative team had been cleared to enter.
With that knowledge, she allowed herself a brief recess to the sheltered smoking area by the ambulance bay. The wind was howling off the bay behind the hospital, causing her to exhaust an entire book of matches before giving up and heading back inside. Nature was telling her to quit, she mused darkly.
She circled around the nurses station for a coffee before heading back into the room. Blomkvist was now there, talking to someone from Millennium.
"Can you pass the message along to Christer and Lotta for me? Right, thanks. Bye."
"Berger?"
"Malin. Everyone is going to lay low for now."
Lisbeth just shrugged as she shifted the couch, pulling her laptop out of the hole in the wall.
He pulled his good arm over behind his head, staring at the popcorn ceiling. The sound of Lisbeth beating the keys on the laptop to death was actually quite relaxing. He'd nearly nodded off when he heard her voice barely above a whisper in its tone.
"I acted like an ass to you when you first got in here. I'll try not to in the future." She paused, hammering away at the backspace key, "Be as ass, I mean."
Mikael let out a barking laugh. Lisbeth glared at him as if she were about to punch his face in. "I can rescind my offer, you know."
"Take my laughter as an awkward 'apology accepted' to go with your just as equally awkward apology. You snore like a Gatling gun, by the way."
"Go jump in a lake."
"I will after you hand me the TV remote." His good arm was up just in time to deflect her surprisingly well-aimed throw from over her shoulder. The door clicked open and Annika walked in, giving them both a questioning look. Lisbeth resisted the urge to glare back.
She addressed Mikael as he flipped through the general cable channels for a news report. "I'm going to head home for a while. The girls saw the reports on TV and are inconsolable right now. How did it go?"
"Don't know. General anesthesia seems to have that effect on people. I'll assume it went well."
"Smartass." Annika turned to Lisbeth, who was studying her intently with an unnerving gaze. "I can give you a ride home if you want so you can get your own car. Folkungatan?"
Lisbeth hesitated slightly. Annika still had no idea on her current residence. Lisbeth realized she no longer cared. "No. Fiskargatan 9."
Annika looked as if she had a coronary.
Please review or PM. Your reviews and constructive feedback is what keeps this story from being shelved.
Follow me on tumblr for daily updates and tidbits on Women Who Hate Men.
: / / indigoassassin . tumblr . c o m