February 3rd
"I can't believe you live in Mosebacke. I could work all my life and not be able to afford so much as a studio there."
Lisbeth merely grunted in response, pulling her iPhone and opening up her security feed app to spy on the cat. The last time she came home it had systematically de-laced every single shoe she owned while leaving Mikael's untouched. Conniving little shit.
When the app finally connected, the eight security screens were snowy and there was no hairball to be seen.
Her fingers like daggers, she stabbed the menu button before searching out Plague's number. She stared out the window at the police tape that barricaded Götogatan while counting the successive rings. Finally, he picked up.
"Stop fucking with my electrical."
"I'm not doing anything to it," she could hear the computerized metallic clank of metal in the background, followed demonic laughter. "Damn it! You're killing me, Wasp!"
"Too bad" She bit back, "How did you find out where I lived the first time you fucked with my system?"
"You're implying I messed with it multiple times? Maybe you just have electrical problems…"
"Waiting."
"I Googled your name. You should cover your tracks better."
Her eyes widened. "Bullshit."
"Nope. It's on a security school website. Lisbeth Salander. Fiskargatan 9, apartment 5. There a problem, rich girl?"
"Big one."
Her fingers raced to undo the seatbelt tethering her into the car as they approached a red light. "Drop me off here."
"There's only two more-" The car door slammed with a solid thunk and Annika watched Lisbeth's retreating form sprinting through the grounds of St. Catherine's as the sun began to set, leaving her laptop behind.
Annika pressed her forehead into the steering wheel, moaning in pure exasperation. Behind her a car honked, spurring her into the snap decision to turn right at the next stops sign and chase after the petite redhead.
She made it there in record time, parking the car under a tree loaded down with icicles. From the passenger's side she retrieved Lisbeth's laptop bag, the strap caught in the door from when Lisbeth bailed out of the car. She was surprised by its heft and wondered humorlessly if there were several laptops crammed inside as she slung it over her shoulder and walked towards the building entrance.
Squatting low on the fifth floor landing, Horst passed a thin, stainless steel torsion wrench into the lock of the penthouse inhabited by a V. Kulla.
In the hours after the Millennium bombing, he and Camilla had taken up lodging in central Ostermalm to wait out the initial police and media frenzy that would follow the bombing. It was a complete accident that he had done a simple Google search of his half sister's name and came back with a hit on her address. At first they thought it was a false lead, a joke even.
For a long while, Camilla brooded on what to do next. She had reasoned to him that Lisbeth would be wherever Blomkvist was, but it would only be a matter of time before she would have to leave for a change of clothes or a shower. If Horst could tail her from the hospital all the way back to whatever hole in the wall she actually lived in, they could go from there. It took more time than needed, but eventually, it had all worked out and she had lead him all the way to that same cream colored building that had been listed over the internet.
A bit of slight raking with a pick and the lock clicked, opening him up to the multimillion-dollar penthouse Salander had somehow managed to acquire. A steel plated security system was secured to the wall to him immediate right, a countdown initiating on the screen. Countdown to what? He checked for any obvious security labels, but the system seemed to be a pretty damn good home assembly.
As the timer ticked closer to zero, he removed a small device no bigger than a garage door opener from his paint stained cargo pants. With the click of a button, the screen went dead and the entry light went out. In the orange light of the sunset he placed the jammer back into his pocket before beginning a self-guided tour of the penthouse, his right hand grasped firmly around the concealed butt of Camilla's prized Glock and ready to draw at a moment's notice.
The emptiness of the apartment was almost haunting. Three rooms were furnished and there were few personal effects. There were signs that journalist also inhabited the apartment; a stack of Millennium draft papers sitting on the coffee table in the living room, a wrinkled dress shirt that looked four sizes too large for a woman of Lisbeth's stature hung on the master bedroom door.
He made his way to into an office that looked seldom used. A few A4 binders sat on the corner of the desk. Curiosity got the better of him as he placed the pistol on the edge of the desk and grabbed the top binder. He quickly thumbed through old police reports from the era of typewriters.
An aged Polaroid picture fluttered out from between the pages, landing face down on the hardwood floor. He slipped the open binder onto the desk as he knelt to pick the up the photo and flipped it over to see the empty eyes and gaping mouth of a long dead corpse. Jumping to is feet, he flipped towards the back of the binder, coming face to face with nearly a dozen more grotesque pictures of dead women.
"What the hell is all this shit?" He screamed into the empty apartment, lobbing the binder into the hallway beyond the door. Seconds later it came flying right back at him, smacking him full in the chest with enough force to knock him back into the IKEA desk.
"I don't appreciate people throwing my things." Came a deceptively soft voice from a silhouette backed by the dark shadows filling the hallway. The sound sent his hand scrambling under the binders on the desk for the hidden Glock. The office was at the end of the hallway, with only one-way in and out.
Pistol cocked, he edged his way out of the office and into the hall, checking every corner and empty room. Everything was going downhill fast. Something metallic sounding fell to the floor down the hall as he realized he was coming up on the kitchen. Maybe she would try to swing a frying pan at him. The sound was there again. Definitely pans.
Soon he was at the swinging double doors of the kitchen, finger ready to squeeze the trigger. Camilla would be pissed at him if it all ended this way, without her there to see her sister off to the very end, but this was a very real possibility they had acknowledged could happen. Horst personally didn't give a rats ass how everything ended, so long as he could make it out the front door on his own two feet.
Which suddenly didn't seem so likely as a cast iron fire poker swung down on his outstretched arms.
He howled as he heard the snap of his own wrist, his finger jerking and firing a single shot into a starch white cupboard as he crashed to his knees. Stunned by the attack, he looked up to see the pintsized redhead raise the poker once again, this time aiming for his head.
The gun in his right hand momentarily forgotten, he reached up with his left to grab the poker in mid swing, using it as leverage to pull her into him for a solid punch to the gut. A look of genuine surprise replaced her almost feral face of rage as his fist made contact right below her diaphragm, giving Horst a small window to make his escape as she dropped to her knees.
He could see the door; he was home free if he could get through them and down five flights of stairs. His steel-toed boots crashed across the wood floors, unaware of the cat that had taken up residence in a newspaper box with its tail hanging out into the entryway.
It was a mistake that sent him screaming in bloody earnest as twenty razor sharp claws were suddenly entrenched in his calf and part of his thigh. He frantically tried to extract the cat from his leg before finally deciding to take the cat along for the ride with him as he heard Salander's heavy footsteps giving chase after him.
The elevator doors dinged once he reached the landing, cat still latched on. In a flash she was out the door, grasping the iron rod liked a baseball bat.
The elevator doors opened, she swung, and he fired.
A bullet whistled just under her left elbow as she swung to kill. The tip of the rod struck where his jaw met his skull; blood and teeth flew from his mouth as he fell backwards down the steps and out of her range.
"Coward! Fucking coward!" She called after him as he half crawled, half stumbled down the stairs as blood poured from where the skin had been split open. She could get him another day; she would get both of them one day.
She threw the poker aside when she could no longer hear the thundering of his boots down the steps. Turning her attention to the elevator, she found Annika slumped against the back of the cage, grasping her laptop bag.
In that moment she knew it would never stop. She could deal with break ins, guns in her face and overly muscular freaks of nature. She could even deal with being shot and buried by the very people society says she should trust and love.
But was it worth the suffering of anyone who was close to her? She was like a bad omen; anyone who got close to her suffered terribly. Mimmi, Blomkvist, all the journalists at Millennium and now Annika had all been affected by her personal demons.
Lisbeth dropped to her knees beside her lawyer and friend and shifted the laptop off of her. She was amazed to see not a single mark on the woman. Had the laptop bag actually manage to stop a bullet from less than ten feet away?
Lisbeth was skeptical, but the visible evidence didn't lie. She'd gotten a good look at the gun on the kitchen floor and knew it wasn't a brand to be fucked with.
"What do you have in that bag?"
"A laptop, seven newspapers, and a copy of Millennium."
"They should make vests out of all that."
Police sirens howled somewhere on the Slussen causeway. Someone had to have called the cops while they'd been going at it in the kitchen. Lisbeth estimated she had less than four minutes to make her break.
"What are you looking for?"
"My wallet."
She threw the broken laptop across the floor as she dumped the bag's contents across the elevator floor. The bullet had gone straight through the j key and out the other side to be buried somewhere in the newspapers. They soon were also tossed onto the floor as her passport toppled out of a copy of Expressen. She slipped that into her inner jacket pocket and found her wallet in the innermost compartment of the bag, wedged beside the new Millennium edition that now sported a single, hollow point bullet. Cop killers. Only a half a centimeter of leather had separated life from grievous injury or even death.
She stopped fumbling and looked up at the woman who had saved her ass when she needed it most. She felt like she should say something. Not necessarily words of comfort or even an apology for all the shit that had befallen her and her brother, but a proper goodbye before disappeared from their lives for who knew how long.
Her voice was harsh and business-like, leaving no room for any stray emotion to break through. Now wasn't the time. "Watch yourself and watch Mikael. Don't let him go anywhere alone. The same goes for you." Out of her pocket she pulled a small can of pepper spray, pressing it into Annika's hand, "It's illegal, but better than nothing. Mikael has a Taser somewhere. Make sure he carries it."
"Where are you going?"
"Away." Lisbeth stood, helping Annika to her feet. She was still shaky, but she would manage fine.
"I'll stay here and keep the police occupied." Lisbeth nodded and turned for the stairs. Three steps down and Annika called out, "Good luck!"
The absurdity of the parting did not escape her as she tried not to slip down the blood-covered stairs. Good luck? Ha! More like good riddance! Why should she wish the one person who had made her life a chaotic hell good luck? The person who's affairs could have easily gotten her killed today and left her husband a widower and her children motherless.
At the bottom of the steps she deviated away from the blood trail leading outside and descended one more level to the garage. With all due haste she pressed the pedal to the floor of her Honda coupe and tore out onto the street, heading in the opposite direction just as the blue flashing lights of police cars passed her heading in towards her apartment. Soon every inch of it would be combed over by scene investigators. Her office alone contained materials that she should have destroyed; she even still had some of the crime scene photos from the women murdered by Gottfried Vanger for fucks sake.
She dug her phone out of her pocket, dialing Annika as she blew through a stale yellow light. She picked up on the first ring.
"Are the police there yet?"
"They just pulled up but aren't inside."
"Go inside my apartment and find my office. Every paper you see needs to be hidden. Pull the covers off the wall vents and shove as much as you can into them."
She dropped the call before anything else could be said. Annika would know what to do. With any luck she would come back and properly destroy everything she'd foolishly kept.
Fishing a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket, she rolled down the window of her car and was greeted with a blast of icy air as she lit up. She was driving without any sense in where she was going. Currently heading south, she pulled a sudden right to head towards Söder hospital. In the parking lot she got out of the car and sat on the hood, looking up at the bright window where Mikael was staying while she finished off her cigarette. She thought of going in and giving him a fair warning, a real goodbye compared to the last time she had departed abroad.
She would go abroad, she decided. Her first stop would be Gibraltar.
After that, she didn't know.
The light on the third floor of Söder General suddenly switched off. With a feeling of great heaviness, she jumped off the hood and got back into the car. The four cylinder lurched to life as she turned on to Ringvägen and headed north to Stockholm-Arlanda.
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