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

The Standoff

From behind his desk the Head of the New York Crime Lab,  Mac Taylor quietly watched the display before him. In the three months since Olivia Cordukes had arrived from Boston to work on his team he had never witnessed her this wound up over a case. But he had been expecting it. Prowling his office floor she reminded him of a caged animal waiting for it's next meal.

"Olivia, I think you should take stock and try to calm down," he gently advised. Her head spun round, dark red curls jumping wildly around rigid shoulders as green eyes landed on him. In spite of what he knew about her Mac was taken aback - if only for a second - by the anger in her marble-hard gaze.

"He's going to get off and we both know it. He kept that child locked in a closet for two months, abused her in every sick way you could imagine and then ends her suffering by taking a knife to her throat and he's going to get away with all of that because of a damn technicality?" she raged. "Because he's not guilty by reason of insanity?"

"You know the law as well as I do. We did all we could on this one, Olivia," Mac told her.

"No." She shook her head vehemently. "We didn't. Because that piece of crap would be on Death Row instead of warm and safe in his own padded room, and Emily Graham's family would have the justice they deserve."

Many a grown man would have cowered beneath the harsh steeliness of the look she was sending his way. Not Mac Taylor. Many of his other CSIs wouldn't have thought of speaking to him this way let alone actually do it. Not Olivia Cordukes. But then, wasn't her headstrong attitude one of the main reasons he had chosen her to be a part of his team? She had been hovering on the brink of suspension from the Boston Crime Lab because of her unusual ethics when it came to handling child cases, her confrontations with co-workers and the resolute inclination that made her unable to let something go.

Detective Derek Sanders Head of the Boston Crime Lab had warned Mac that she was unstable, a loaded gun likely to go off at any given moment. Over the last three months Mac had kept a close eye on his newest team member and had come to the conclusion that Olivia Cordukes wasn't difficult, she was misunderstood. A workaholic who could be found around the lab at all hours of the day and night - not too unlike himself in that respect - which led Mac to the assumption she was most probably insomniac and most likely a little anti-social, too. She could be abrasive and somewhat aggressive, but then he hadn't hired her for her sunny disposition. But she was also thorough. She had an excellent eye and her attention to detail had been the mainstay behind Mac's reason to hire her. When she worked a case she gave it her all and the last few weeks she had worked the Emily Graham case giving it nothing less than just that. So to be told the case was to be closed due to a lack of insufficient evidence, Mac could perfectly relate to her frustration.

Despite both the departments and Chief Brigham Sinclair's concerns over her being a risk to the lab, Mac had gone ahead and hired her anyway. Before Sinclair came into office, Chief Highborne had been in charge and he had expressed his concerns over another hiring of one of Mac's handpicked risks, Danny Messer. Aside from the subway incident when Danny had mistaken a cop for a shooter and taken fire, the snarky CSI was still one of the best Mac had ever had on his team, and he had never regretted hiring him. So far, apart from the odd run-in with her co-workers - ironically, mostly Danny - things had run pretty smooth.

"You can't make this case personal," Mac cautioned.

"Meaning what, exactly?" she replied, her tone clipped.

"That I understand how easy it is to become affected by these types of cases."

"So why put me on them?" Olivia argued.

"If I took into consideration the pasts of every one of my CSIs when assigning cases, we wouldn't get much done around here."

"So this is about my past," Olivia bit out. She gave her head a shake and turned away. Child cases always brought back unwanted memories of her own horrific past. She had always struggled with the pain of those recollections; crawling into bed most nights with a bottle of vodka helped to blot them all out. But no amount of booze stopped the night terrors that often woke her, sweating and crying.