Chapter 15

February 20th – 24th

For sometime he lay there on the couch, replaying the message over and over again. She'd given him the perfect tools to find her. Plague, the one person who Blomkvist could give just as much credit to as his sister for destroying the prosecutor's defense last year with the dirt he'd pulled from Teleborian's laptop. Then there was the college student he'd seen earlier that day, though Lisbeth's message left him wondering how much he could trust the younger man with certain matters.

And then there was the completely absurd sum of money that he didn't even want to think about, yet knew it was likely the most important clue he had to go by.

Someone had to move all the money into an account. Lisbeth might have been able to rip off banks in Zurich and walk out with suitcases full of cash two years prior, but that money all had to go somewhere.

And two and a half billion was simply too much for her to look after alone. Someone had to be moving and administering the money for her just like someone had to have bought the apartment on her behalf.

Dear Ms. Salander,

Suddenly he sat bolt upright as if Lisbeth herself had pressed a Taser to his skin. He had read for himself the name of her solicitor one day in Mellqvist as he sat calmly slicing through a stack of her mail. Her money man.

Blomkvist needed that name. He knew where he could find that name.

Before he could think otherwise, he flipped open the phone that had been clutched in his hand and dialed Janne.

One ring.

Two rings.

"So soon, Kalle Blomkvist?"

Blomkvist pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd bet all twenty five million kronor Lisbeth had told her hacker lackie to call him that. "How much do you object to breaking into an active crime scene and possibly assaulting a police officer?"

"I might be able to look the other way for a price."

"If you're interested meet me tomorrow at seven pm sharp. Same place as last time."

"Sure."

Exactly at the appointed time, Janne slipped into the corner booth beside Blomkvist. The crowd was a bit thicker this time, but it wasn't so late that it was full-on rush hour.

"Order something. We have some time to sit and wait."

"Wait for what?"

"A train." Blomkvist paused for a moment as a group of five university students walked by. It was better if no one else accidently heard what was coming next. "Tonight you and I are going to break into an active crime scene, which will likely have an overnight guard sitting outside the door watching. I need ten minutes to grab some documents and then get out and after that I'll move some things around to make it look like a crime scene robbery. All you have to do is stick a Taser to a man's throat. So: name your price."

"You want me to name my price?"

"You'll be more involved than this than I will. Tell me an amount, and I will give it to you after the deed is done."

"Let's see." He pulled out an iPhone with a lime green cover, swiping and pinching his fingers across the three-inch screen. "OK. According to this, the fine for a B&E is ten thousand even. Assaulting a friend of law and order: four years and seventy thousand. All that plus an extra twenty and you have yourself a deal."

A hundred thousand kronor for fifteen minutes of work. Blomkvist didn't even flinch. "Done."

"Done? Just like that? Are you going to murder me afterwards or something so you don't have to pay?"

"Right now I could care less about money. What I'm after has no financial value."

"I see."

Blomkvist smiled. "You don't, but thanks anyway."

"I may not see why you want to commit a felony, but I can see why Wasp wants to protect you."

"Because I have many stupid, reckless ideas. Believe me, I've been told many, many times." He shook his good wrist, checking his watch. Seven thirty. The normal dinner crowd was beginning to trickle into the restaurant. Blomkvist had no intention of being noticed here. "I think it's dark enough outside to not be noticed. Let's go stage a robbery."

They walked in silence to the nearest tunnelbana station, eyes glued for the most part to the ground directly in front of them. This area of Stockholm wasn't so bad when it came to people recognizing him, but once they were in Söder more heads were bound to turn. To avoid this, Blomkvist grabbed Janne by the arm and pulled him from the train at Slussen where they quietly made their way up the hill behind Milton.

Blomkvist, now well trained in the art of spotting unmarked cars, quickly noticed nothing out of order on the quiet, dead-end street. But that did not mean they were in the clear yet. A quick look into the parking garage under the building and he found a marked police car parked in Lisbeth's usual spot, as well as what looked suspiciously like key marks along the tank of her motorcycle.

Lisbeth was not going to be pleased about that when she got back.

Back on street level, he handed off the Taser to Janne. For the first time that day, he looked unsure of himself.

Blomkvist sighed to himself.

"Just stick it in your pocket and act clueless. Keep your back to them the whole time; put some headphones in to look like you can't hear. When they come up and tap your shoulder telling you to get lost, whip around and get them in the neck."

Janne looked down at the weapon in his hand. No time to back out now. "You sound experienced in this kind of thing."

"I'm imaginative, it's a prerequisite for a journalist," Blomkvist said, unlocking the front door and giving Janne a good clap on the shoulder, "I'll be on the fourth floor landing, you'll be on the fifth. Give me a shout when you're done."

The whole scenario ended just as he thought. The night officer didn't even have a chance to react before being knocked out cold by the electrical shock of the Taser. After checking there were no wires or alarms that could be set off, Janne gave him the all clear to come up to the fifth floor.

"Did he see your face?"

"No. How long do you think he'll be out for?"

Blomkvist pulled on a set of leather gloves before using his set of keys to slice through the tape that had been used to seal the apartment. "Ten, fifteen minutes. Wait here."

He wasted no time ransacking the apartment, making it look as though someone had decided to break into a crime scene. It was a relatively common occurrence, so he doubted the police would think it was anything more sophisticated. A few cabinets left open, some odds and ends scatter around the floor, and some clever repositioning of some of the more expensive items in the apartment would add to the effect.

Two minutes in, he walked into the office, immediately noticing the collapsed desk covered in fine fingerprint powder. It looked like someone had managed to fall back on it at just the right angle and snapped it in two. The file cabinets had been completely cleaned out, but Blomkvist doubted Lisbeth kept any of her important documents in something that sat unlocked.

If she kept a safe somewhere in the apartment he would be completely fucked, he realized.

The bedroom was also predictably empty of anything that could pique his interest. He did look up to see a few of his own shirts were missing off the back of the bedroom door, but thankfully his passport was still in the top drawer of the dresser. He pocketed it before moving on to the kitchen.

At once he noticed that a cabinet door had been removed and what looked liked a few drops of blood on the linoleum floor. He could only imagine what had gone on inside the apartment in the few minutes Lisbeth had been there.

Time was beginning to run out has he opened every cupboard door. He didn't trust Lisbeth's hacker friend to know what to do if the cop came around again and neither did he. With everything up top scoured, he moved to under the sink and drawers, now breaking out into a sweat. He hated to think of what would happen if the title was in some numbered account in Switzerland instead.

"If I were a deed, where would I be…" His fingers brushed against something with a crinkly texture and a little bit of give to it underneath the silverware drawer. Paper. "Hidden."

Forks and knives were dumped unceremoniously across the floor so he could get a better look at the object. It was a manila envelope and he could almost swear without a doubt it was the exact same one he had removed from Lisbeth's PO box the year before.

Now ten minutes in and with time growing short, he stuffed the folded envelope inside his jacket and stepped out onto the landing, shutting the door behind him. He didn't even bother trying to fix the sealing tape before grabbing Janne and getting the hell out of the building, running back down the hill to the tunnelbana station before parting ways at T-Central.

In Akalla he got off the train and called a cab. By nine he was back in his sister's office, shuffling through the financial reports enclosed within it until he found a handwritten letter.

Jeremy S. MacMillan. Queensway Quay, Gibraltar.

There were no direct flights to Gibraltar when he opened up Stockholm-Arlanda's main website. His best bet was flying direct to Malaga that left six the next morning and then taking a cab to Gibraltar.

I had to get away from it all and caught the first flight out of Stockholm.

The next morning he packed a bag and he left a note on the kitchen counter explaining that he was going to spend a week at Sandhamm.

Eight hours after leaving Stockholm, Blomkvist stepped out of a Spanish cab and in front of a row of neo-classical office/apartment buildings, all having to do with financial services. He found the one he was looking for at the very end of the row.

There was no doorbell or intercom, so he wound up banging on the door. After a solid two minutes of beating furiously, he finally heard the sound of footsteps and a lock turning.

When the door opened the man took one look at him before suddenly slamming the door just as Blomkvist shoved the folder he'd been carrying between the door in the frame.

He hadn't really expected he would get a warm reception from Lisbeth's head bookkeeper, anyways.

"Lisbeth. Where is she?"

"I don't know-"

"You wouldn't have tried slamming the door in my face if that were true. I'm not police or Interpol. I know exactly what happens here, but I honestly don't care. Where's Lisbeth?"

"Let him in! He's not a cop!"

MacMillan continued to eye him suspicious before finally letting him past. The entry was choked with cigarette smoke from a brand he didn't recognize. At the end of the hall was a main office. Wedged in between two bookshelves was Lisbeth, sprawled on her back across a black leather loveseat.

"Kalle, Jeremy. Jeremy, Kalle." She said, pointed at the both of them before addressing him directly. "I'll give you a solid four style points on the break-in, seven for thinking of it and ten for actually having the balls to do it, Kalle."

"Your assistant did all the morally grey work."

Out of the corner of his eye he could see MacMillan sit down, but his eyes never left his backside.

"He also swindled you on the pay."

"A hundred thousand kronor is just a fraction of twenty-five million," he said, "And I'd rather be rid of Wennerström money sooner rather than later."

Her index finger rapidly smashed into the backspace key, "Who said it was Wennerström money? How do you know that I haven't spent the last two and a half weeks emptying other bank accounts?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Have you been emptying other bank accounts?" The idea that she might decide to take even more than what she already had hadn't really crossed his mind, but she certainly could if she wanted to.

"See for yourself." She spun the laptop around to face him, the page filled with a language he couldn't really make out save for a few select words.

"Explain."

"These are all the transaction reports from six different accounts at the Bank of Estonia with the equivalent of thirty-seven million SEK in them. Twenty-five million of it was sent to the account I set up for you to mess with. There's still one more account to crack into, but it's tiny compared to the other ones. Maybe a half a million max."

"Half a million isn't something to joke about." And you don't just give away twenty five million.

She ignored him. "The accounts are relatively simple. The first six, the big six, are all reserve accounts never meant to be used other than for major purchases. The last account is a day-to-day expense type of account. So far drained the ones that are never looked at and then I'll go back for the important one last so they have nothing to fall back on. They won't have shit to there name. Boo-hoo no money, but more importantly Shroder won't have anything to bribe the police with. He'll have some cash laying around the house if he's smart that might be able to get him out of the country, but after that he's going to be completely fucked up the ass."

"So who are you going to give Shroder's address to and how soon can we expect to see a news bulletin on this?"

"I don't have to tell anyone he's broke. Once the police know, he's dead." She looked up at him, frowning slightly. "You can sit if you want. The chairs aren't going to light your ass on fire."

"I spent two weeks sitting in a hospital bed. I'm fine. I'm also assuming Camilla also uses the expense account as well."

"Every fucking day. She's a credit card person. No cash withdrawals. Kind of stupid, kind of smart. I can watch her better this way than with the phone, plus there's no way for her to figure it out until she get's rejected by the bank, and then the jig is up." "Who the fuck uses plastic to buy coffee?"

"Oh don't pull that, you used my card to buy a bagel three days ago." Lisbeth shot him her classic acidic look. MacMillan's hands immediately shot up as he caught the glare directed at him. "I'll butt out now."

"I don't care. Is the system up and working yet?"

"Nope. Still not showing all the totals."

"Fuck. Bring it over here," she said as MacMillan passed the laptop over the desk. "Interpol crashed the party five days ago. I crashed his laptop so they didn't find anything. It's been acting screwy ever since. And if you want I can pay off your next Millennium office with Wennerström money. Get the fucker rolling around in his shallow grave?"

"I'll worry about the finances, thank you. No donations, legitimate or illegal are necessary."

"Bullshit. The insurance you've been paying into won't even cover a quarter of the rebuilding costs. Unless you have a secret pot of gold somewhere I don't know about, you're fucked."

"Thank you for your astute assessment. But I'm going to pass on the charity."

"Your loss. Jeremy, take him on a tour of the Rock. I need to get shit done and have a fucking headache."

"So what was that little bit about Interpol last week?"

They had barely stepped out of the building when Blomkvist asked the question that had been bothering him since the topic was mentioned.

"Not much to say, really. The police in Sweden found some of her financial documents I assume. My name and company were listed, so naturally they decided to come knocking, wondering into the legality of all of it."

"What did you do about it?"

"Handed over the computer, obviously. Lisbeth had a failsafe built into the system. If anyone needed to snoop all they would see is a completely legitimate looking Security Company once the failsafe was tripped." MacMillan made a left turn, taking them closer to the heart of Gibraltar and away from the harbor. "Cooperation always helps dissuade suspicion if you use it in the right amounts."

"How long has she been here?"

"Arrived midday just over two weeks ago. She sleeps maybe two hours a day, then goes back to draining those Estonian accounts. I've never seen her at work before. It's a bit terrifying, actually."

"Even more so if you're on the receiving end." At the end of the street he looked up at the large monolith that loomed over Gibraltar. "So that's 'The Rock,' is it?"

"The one and only. There's a café at the top near the Moorish castle if you're interested."

Blomkvist just shrugged and let MacMillan lead the way.

By the time they got back to MacMillan's office, the streetlights were just beginning to come on. It was brighter here than it was in Stockholm, but it still felt incredibly strange to for it to still be somewhat daylight at six.

Despite their mutual distrust of each other, MacMillan gradually seemed to ease up as the day went on. Blomkvist was still slightly leery of the man, but as MacMillan paused to look into the office before heading up to his apartment for the night, he knew the man had Lisbeth's best interests at heart.

Lisbeth herself seemed to be stuck between sleep and staring at the ceiling when he walked into the darkened office and knelt down beside the couch. Her laptop was still open, but had cut to a screensaver of intertwining beams of light.

"You need to see a doctor."

"What?" She jumped at the sudden intrusion. One look at his face and she seemed to instantly know what he was going on about. "I'm fine."

"You're most certainly not fine. You're solicitor told me what happened. You jumped out of a window and into a rosebush for god sake and on top of that you obviously have some sort of allergy to the codeine you're taking." He raised his hand to trace a few of the red and raised scratches on the back of her arm. "And some of the rosebush cuts look infected."

"Fuck off and let me get hives in peace." She snapped at him as she jerked her arm away. Blomkvist didn't miss the slight wince at the sudden motion. "I'm not going to stop breathing."

"I hope not."

"You should have stayed at Annika's."

"I know. But I missed you." It was the simplest explanation.

"Fucking Kalle…"

It was his turn to frown as he stood and looked down at her. Something didn't quite seem right. "I do not appreciate you telling your hacker friend to call me that."

"Be happy I didn't add in the 'fucking.'" She groaned and immediately raised a hand to shield her eyes as Blomkvist flipped on the end table light. "Turn that fucking thing off! I have a fucking headache!"

"And you're flushed and likely have a fever from an infection to go with that headache." He said, flipping the light off again. "You're not fine at all."

She snorted at that and shut her laptop before resting it on the table directly behind her head.

"I'm going back to Stockholm tomorrow. You can come with or stay here and be hit on by Jeremy." He quirked an eyebrow at that. "Goodnight and go away."

It was still dark outside when Blomkvist was awakened by something heavy dropping to the floor. It took him a moment to remember were he was and yet another moment to realize that Lisbeth was already up and moving.

"It's too early to be up." Blomkvist groaned slightly, rubbing his eyes as Lisbeth flew around the office, packing up whatever had accumulated there in the last two weeks. Most of it was clothing, though he did see a few manila folders of who knew what slide into a dark green duffel bag he had never seen before.

His sweater from the day before was launched at his face from the back of the solicitor's leather swivel chair. "The flight from Malaga leaves at one. Be ready in forty-five or you get left. There's food in the kitchenette down the hall. You might want to shower, too."

When forty-five minutes were up, he joined Lisbeth and surprisingly MacMillan beside the stairs leading up to the solicitor's apartment.

She nodded to MacMillan. "We're out."

After whistling through the border crossing, Lisbeth propped her handbag up against the window and was quickly out like a light while Blomkvist stared out the window at the coast. He'd barely left Stockholm except for his military service, so the view to him was spectacular. He could see the appeal it may have had when Lisbeth had decided to set up her operations in Gibraltar. It was the anti-Sweden; warm, sunny, and no one to recognize her out on the street.

For most of the ride they stayed that way. Lisbeth was still out cold by the time they arrived at the airport and made no attempt to hide her irritation at being woken up. Whatever effects the painkillers had were clearly wearing off by the time they were whisked through customs and onto the plane. As far as he knew she'd left them in Gibraltar and would be in for a very uncomfortable if not downright painful five-hour flight back to Stockholm. Both of them knew how utterly ridiculous it would be to come so far only to be stopped for taking street level painkillers abroad.

Despite whatever discomfort the lack of pills brought on, Lisbeth Salander was dead to the world by the time the plane hit cruising altitude, her head lolling slightly on his shoulder as the plane bounced up and down. Without even directly touching her, he could feel the waves of heat rolling off her face and dissipating into his shirt. Whatever downfall she had planned for her sister using the bank accounts, he hoped it would be quick. He didn't think he could stand the idea of watching her work herself to death.

The sky outside the window as dark as the plane began to pitch forward into its final decent. The sudden drop in altitude sent Lisbeth jolting awake and clutching at her ear, and Blomkvist would have laughed had the exact same thing not happened to him as well. He also didn't feel like having her fist slam into his shoulder, already sore from the feel of her head resting there peacefully for five hours.

By the time they had cleared the final customs checkpoint their luggage had made its seventh trip around the baggage carousel. He watched with visible concern painted across his face as Lisbeth seemed to struggle to hoist her bag up onto her shoulder, but she refused any attempt Blomkvist made to help.

He wasn't really surprised at all.

Her back was killing her. It was a feeling she thought was reserved only for the elderly up until five days ago when she was faced with the split decision of staying in MacMillan's office and possibly being caught by the police or jumping from a second story window into what she assumed was a non-thorny type of bush. Never mind that it was in fact a rosebush in dormancy for the winter and that there was a massive broken brick planter that the damn bush had completely overgrown and obscured.

She had nearly smashed Jeremy's Sony laptop over his head when he asked about it.

At first everything felt fine, but by morning she could scarcely lift her upper body up off the couch without immediately backwards as pain shot up from her lower back. She figured she had just slipped a disc. A bottle of cheap codeine from right over the border would fix it just fine.

A bottle of cheap codeine that had her breaking out in hives within two hours.

Now five days later she had been reduced to kicking her duffel bag along the through the endless rows of long-term parking, looking for her familiar burgundy Honda Civic. Blomkvist had insisted that he go too, but she really didn't want him bumbling around like his usual practical pig self. The constant looks he had shot her when he thought she'd been sleeping during the cab ride to Spain were irritating enough. She didn't want to wait for him to start running his mouth, too.

The squelch of tires spinning out on the rain soaked asphalt caught her attention; her eyes barely saw the two low headlights aimed straight at her before she was suddenly sent hurtling through the air into the side of a van. The last thing she remembered were two black converse shoes walking towards her.

One more chapter to go!

Please review. They make me happy. :)