CSI:New York : Who Are You? (Don Flack/OFC fanfic)

The Edge Of Sanity

'Feel like a bite to eat?' Stella asked Mac as she glanced at the watch on her left wrist. It was almost eight-thirty that Sunday night. 'Call it late lunch, early dinner.'

Taking his eyes off the paperwork strewn all over his desk, he smiled up at her. 'I'm not hungry.'

'How is that possible? You haven't eaten anything all day.'

'I could go out and get something to eat with you but I'd just be being polite.'

'Some things never change. So what are you gonna do?'

'Finish up the reports on our case for starters.'

Stella folded her arms over her chest and shook her head. 'I gotta tell you, Mac, when we brought the kid in I was hoping we were just going to have him on a theft charge. But when he started confessing his love for her...' Stella shook her head again. 'I knew right away he had killed her.'

Finn Miller had suffocated the young dancer, Aurora Denton, with his bare hands and cried like a baby while confessing it.

'A crime of passion or so he believed.'

'Do you think he did love her? I mean, really love her?'

Mac shrugged his shoulders. 'Love can make even the sanest man do crazy things. It knows no reason or boundaries, it just is.'

Stella couldn't help grin at that. 'You been reading Shakespeare's Sonnets there, Mac?'

He gave her a small grin back. 'I'm simply of the belief that love can affect people in many different forms. Most of the time love brings us joy and happiness, others it can hurt and often enough when people are hurting and angry, they do desperate things. Finn Miller was desperate. He couldn't handle the way Aurora lived her life. He wanted them to be together, only she wasn't prepared to give any of it up.'

'She didn't love him back,' Stella mused.

'We'll never know.'

'But why kill her, Mac? If he claimed to love the girl so much, why kill her in such a brutal way?'

'Why does anyone do the things they do?'

'Yeah. Well,' she looked back at the door, 'if I can't tempt you into having dinner with me, then I'm going to head down to my favorite Mexican restaurant. I'm getting a hankering for spicy pork wrapped in steamed banana leaves.' She made for the door.

Mac looked at her, one eyebrow lifted. 'Pork? You're throwing out your beliefs for something wrapped in a banana, Stella?'

Turning back, she grinned at him. 'Cute. You're forgetting I'm also Greek. Neither of those factors are going to stop me from enjoying a little of what I like. See you in the morning.' She turned. 'Hey, Don,' she greeted the Homicide detective who was on his way in as she was leaving.

'Stel,' Flack smiled at her. Once inside Mac's office he handed him a blue portfolio of papers. 'The files you asked for, Mac. My boss is asking nicely that you have them back on his desk by Tuesday morning. Heavy on the nicely.'

Captain Thacker was the most belligerent man Mac had ever met during his career on the police force. And while Mac never held back on what he wanted to say, even he knew better than to get on the wrong side of the argumentative Thacker. 'Tell him thank-you and I will.'

'No problem. What you hoping for?' Flack asked nodding at the portfolio.

Mac opened it up and began shuffling through the papers. 'To finally close one of the many unsolved cases on the corner of my desk there.'