A/N: Here's the multi-chapter case fic I've been promising for the last couple of months. Sorry this has taken so long. Darn real life! Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy this. I'm a little nervous; I haven't written a case fic in quite a while. Please leave me any comments, good or bad... I welcome anonymous reviews too. And any logged review will get a personal reply. You guys have been amazing so far!

By the way, this is set between 5.23 and 5.24... so Lindsay and Danny had their baby, but Stella and Mac haven't gone to Greece. Just to clear that up :D

Many, many thanks to lily moonlight, the most amazing beta in the world! Thanks also to everyone who reviewed As Time Goes By and Welcome the Dawn. You're all amazing!

Disclaimer: I'm in no way affiliated with Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS Productions, or the cast of CSI:NY... although I certainly wish I was.

Chapter 1

Spring would be arriving a little late this year.

It was mid-March, and winter had apparently decided that it wasn't going to go out without a bang. And what a bang it made. In the past twenty-four hours, more than six inches of snow blanketed the city, leaving it looking more like a Christmas card than a Happy St. Patrick's Day card. The sudden blizzard left the weathermen and meteorologists scratching their heads, wondering what the hell had happened to their forecast of warmer temperatures. Obviously the big guy upstairs, whoever he was, had some very different ideas of what made spring. The rest of the city just shrugged and bundled up, going about their merry way. They'd learned a long time ago that the weather guys or girls were just as fallible as the rest of them.

On West Eighty-Sixth Street, one of the hubs of the Upper West Side, a lone man shuffled through the snowdrifts. Though it was after eleven at night, such a sight wasn't so unusual in the city that never slept. The few passersby on the street ignored him, stumbling past him on their way to crash after visiting the clubs downtown. Everyone else was safely tucked away in their nice warm beds. Not that they would've thought anything about him had they been up. He blended in perfectly to his surroundings, a persona that he had very carefully contrived to camouflage with the other West Side inhabitants. But here on the Upper West Side in the middle of an unseasonal snowstorm, he didn't have to worry so much about prying eyes out late at night.

It wasn't like anyone would remember him in the first place. He was a fairly unmemorable person, particularly in appearance. Average height, average build, average looks. The only things remarkable about him were his cold, bitter blue eyes. Hard and unfeeling were two words that would most aptly describe his dealings with the rest of humanity.

In actuality, he was about business.

His business just happened to be illegal. Like so many others.

A shadow loitered next to one of the apartment buildings, puffs of smoke appearing in the cold winter air from the cigarette hanging from his mouth. He was tall and just a little on the pudgy side, dressed in a designer business suit that attested more to his plunging credit than his actual status in the world. The man was a stock broker, one of hundreds of thousands on Wall Street. But he wasn't just any stock broker. His clientele consisted of… well… some of the seedier characters in New York City. It wasn't a fact that he spread around very often, but it was a fact nonetheless. And his ability to afford those designer suits and expensive cigarettes he favored depended on the less-than-honest cash funneled to him by those less-than-honest characters.

He turned his head and saw the other man coming. "I was beginnin' to think you weren't gonna show," the shadow said quietly, flicking his cigarette into a snow bank a couple feet away.

"Well, I'm here now," he replied softly.

The shadow stepped into the light from a nearby streetlamp, revealing a less-than-attractive face with glittering brown eyes and a crooked nose that had been broken one too many times. Snowflakes clung to the fringe of hair on his balding head, and the buttons on his overcoat strained against his protruding belly. "Cold weather we're having tonight, huh?"

He sighed. He didn't have time for small talk. "I should think that you would want to get this over with as soon as possible. You never know who's going to be walking by."

"Yeah, yeah, fine." He reached down and picked up a brown leather briefcase. "Here's the money." Quickly he took two steps closer to the stranger and handed it to him.

"All of it?"

The balding man laughed loudly, the steam from his breath twisting and twirling above his head. "Do you really think I'd try to pull something like that on you? I'd like to keep my head, thank you very much."

He nodded and snapped open the briefcase locks. His eyes scanned its contents, surveying the stacks of bills with a professional eye. He'd done this enough to know when he was being scammed.

Finally he closed the briefcase and slid his free hand into his pocket. "Looks good."

The other man visibly relaxed, a huge grin spreading across his face. He'd never really done anything like this before, bought drugs from a stranger. But this guy came highly recommended. He wasn't looking to score much… just a little to make it through the long, hard economic times ahead. And maybe some for after the stocks went back up… "Great," he said. "You got what you promised? I should get home; my wife's a bit of worrier."

"One of those types that stays up late when you don't make it home?"

"Yeah. It gets a little annoying sometimes. You got one of those?"

He shook his head. "No. But I do feel very bad for your wife."

"Why's that?"

"She's going to be up very late tonight."

Suddenly his right hand flew out of his pocket, gripping a semi-automatic pistol with a silencer protruding from the barrel. Fear flickered across the face of the other man, and any normal human being would've felt at least a little compassion.

But he was certainly not normal. Without blinking, he gently, almost lovingly squeezed the trigger twice.

The soft, high-pitched whine of the bullets coming out of the silencer broke the stillness of the winter night, but there was no one to hear it. Just like there was no one around to see the two bullets slam into the other man's chest, emitting a fine pink mist into the air as the soon-to-be-dead-man's eyes widened in shock. He watched coldly as the other man crumpled to the ground, his blood turning the white snow on the sidewalk to a brilliant crimson.

In the neighboring brownstones, not a light flipped on. Not a dog barked. Not a creature stirred. No one but him was there to witness the man's last gasping breaths as his life slowly leaked out of him.

He shook his head as he slid the weapon back into his pocket and picked up the briefcase, stopping just a moment to gather the spent shell casings and slide them into his pocket.

"Here we go," he whispered.

*****

Detective Stella Bonasera ran a hand through her tangled curls and sighed, thoroughly exhausted. It was close to 11:30, and she wasn't even halfway done with the stacks of paperwork that had accumulated on her desk over the shift. Who would've thought that in an eight-hour shift, they could build up so damn fast?

Paperwork was never a part of the job description. If it had been, she might've given at least a little more thought to another job.

Maybe.

She tossed the pen on her desk and spun around in her swivel chair to stare at the steadily falling snow, tiredly absorbed in her thoughts. It had been a long day at the courthouse downtown, waiting to testify in a trial that had certainly not gone the way she thought it would. When the verdict was handed down, she seriously thought she might strangle the jury foreman for the crime of sheer stupidity.

It wasn't the first case she'd seen go down the tubes, and it probably wouldn't be the last. But this one… this one had gotten to her from the very beginning. A young woman, mother of two young children, had been run over by a reckless driver in the middle of downtown Manhattan. Twenty witnesses pointed out the car that had done it. Stella had found the victim's hair and DNA in the grill of the car. And the jury still returned a verdict of 'not guilty' on the top count of vehicular homicide and convicted on the lesser count of negligence. Stella had to admit, the defense attorney had done a fantastic job of manipulating the jury's sympathies. As much as the ADA had tried to focus the twelve jurors, the damage had been done.

And it burned her.

Stella worked for two things in her life. Two things that drove her to be the best damn cop or CSI she could possibly be: Truth and justice.

Forget how clichéd and Superman-esque that sounded.

She'd never had much of either in her younger years. The nuns at St. Basil's told her that she'd be adopted at any time – an outright lie. Her foster sister and best friend had to kill her pedophile foster father because the system wouldn't do anything about it – where was the justice in that? So when she became a cop, she vowed that she would do her damndest to make sure that the victims she encountered got truth and justice. Someone in the world deserved it.

But juries were funny things. They weren't always concerned about truth or justice for the victim. Sometimes they followed the law, and sometimes they followed their emotions. In this case, as in several others, they'd felt sorry for the guy, buying into his excuses of a messy break-up with his wife and a lifelong struggle with alcohol.

In Stella's mind, whatever vices the guy had didn't negate the fact he'd taken someone's life.

Apparently the jury disagreed.

Releasing another forlorn sigh, she brushed a stray curl from her face and folded her arms across her abdomen, staring out the window. Fat, white snowflakes fluttered down from the darkened sky, swirling about in the stiff northern wind. Despite her hatred of the cold, if it weren't for the stacks of paperwork on her desk and the face of that young mother embedded in her mind's eye, the night might've actually been rather pretty. Even if a meteorologist somewhere needed a refresher course.

"I thought you'd gone home."

The familiar baritone startled her, and she whipped around, a hand over her heart. Mac Taylor, her boss and long-time friend, leaned against her doorframe, top button of his blue dress shirt unbuttoned and a black overcoat draped over his arm. He wore a tired expression on his handsome face, an expression that had over the years become rather habitual.

She leaned back in her chair and smiled wearily at him. She should've known he would check on her. He was her best friend – had been for more than a decade. "Just finishing up some paperwork."

Mac cocked an eyebrow at her. "It's late, Stel. You need to get some rest."

Stella chuckled and shook her head. "I must be in some sort of alternate universe, because this is the weirdest role reversal I've ever seen."

A grin slowly split his face, and his steel-blue eyes twinkled. "Someone's gotta tell you to get some rest."

"Maybe you should listen to your own advice once in a while," she chided playfully. "You on your way out?"

He shifted the coat to his other forearm and nodded. "Yeah. I saw your light on and thought I'd see how you were doing."

Her eyebrow nearly disappeared into her hairline. "Checkin' up on me, Mac Taylor?"

A soft sigh escaped his lips, and he ran his free hand through his dark hair. "I heard about the verdict this morning. I know that case really got to you."

Stella shook her head and gave him a completely fake reassuring smile. "I'm fine, Mac. Really."

The glare he shot her way could only be interpreted as "Bullshit", and Stella couldn't resist a grin. He knew her too well. As he should, after ten years of friendship.

"I'm fine," she repeated. "It's just a case. You win some, you lose some."

"And yet there's still that one case that gets under your skin." He shifted his weight slightly so his back leaned against the doorframe before he continued. "Talk to me, Stella."

She ran a hand over her face and sighed again. "Wha'dya want me to say, Mac? That I wanted to strangle every single member of that jury with my bare hands? That when they read the verdict, it broke my heart to see those two little girls sitting next to their grandmother, asking where Mommy was? That –" She stopped, tears threatening to spill out of her eyes. There was no way she was going to cry. Nuh-uh.

"It's not your fault."

The quietly-spoken words made her jerk her head up sharply and her jaw go slack as she stared at Mac. He hadn't moved from his position by the door, but the look in his blue eyes conveyed a sense of sympathy and comfort.

"What?" she asked.

"It's not your fault," he repeated just as gently as before. "You did everything you possibly could to get justice for that woman. You followed the evidence to a clear conclusion, and from what I know about you, there's no way you didn't present it in a clear and concise manner in court. None of this is on your shoulders, Stella. None of it."

She stared at him for a moment, her brain processing everything he'd said to her. None of it was her fault. Deep down inside, she knew that, but she wasn't sure her heart knew it. Nevertheless, his words touched her deeply. "I still wanted to pull out my Glock and shoot that son of a bitch," she muttered.

Mac chuckled and shook his head. "I probably would've called it justifiable."

Stella joined him in laughter, got up from her chair, and crossed the room in three quick steps. "Thanks, Mac," she whispered as she pressed a tender kiss to his cheek. "You're a good friend."

A slight pink hue tinted his cheeks, and he shrugged nonchalantly. "What're friends for?" he asked, giving her a smile in return. "I'm just returning the favor."

"Well, how about I return the favor?" she asked, leaning against the edge of her desk. "Dinner?"

"It's eleven-thirty, Stel," he reminded her with a grin.

"It's not like you're going to sleep, Mac."

He frowned playfully at her. "Actually, I was thinking about calling it an early night tonight."

Stella gasped and looked up at the ceiling, scanning it for some invisible object.

"What?" he asked.

"Just seeing if I could spot pigs flying. The resident insomniac is going home to sleep."

He shot a mock glare in her direction before breaking out into a grin. "All right, wise ass. How about breakfast?"

She thought about it for a moment and then nodded with a smile. "At that diner down the block?"

"The one that makes those pancakes you like so much?" Mac smiled as she nodded again. "Meet you at seven?"

"Deal. But I'm buying."

"Only if you can beat me to the check."

"Oh, I have ways, Mac Taylor."

He laughed and slowly walked backward down the hall toward the elevator. "I'm sure you do. Get some sleep, huh?"

"You too," she called after him, smiling as he gave her another grin before waving and turning around again, slinging his coat over his shoulder as he walked.

Stella watched as he disappeared around the corner, leaving her alone again in her office. Somehow even seeing him helped the heartache and the anger go away. It always amazed her at how well they knew each other, how they could each say just what the other needed to hear at the time. Mac Taylor was the only constant in her life – her colleague, her best friend, the man that she compared all other men to.

Don't even go there, she admonished herself silently as she shut down her computer. Thoughts like that had no business being thought, especially about him.

She sighed one more time as she grabbed her overcoat off the coat rack near her door. Mac was right. It wasn't her fault. She'd worked a double trying to gather the evidence to solve that case. She'd almost single-handedly pulled Starbucks out of their financial hole with all the coffee she bought during the investigation. And she had been the one to ever so gently tell those two little girls that Mommy had gone to heaven to be with Jesus.

She wasn't the one that dropped the ball.

But she would certainly be the one paying for it in sleepless nights.

She released another sigh and reached over to flip off the lamp next to her computer. At least she could try to get a little sleep tonight.

*****

Morning came far too soon, however. The sun rose slowly from his hiding place, no longer blocked out by dark and foreboding snow clouds. Its rays glistened off the snow, making it glitter with red and pink and golden hues. The city was relatively quiet, buried under six inches of snow, refusing to awaken until the very last minute.

The only people awake at this moment were those bustling around on the other side of the yellow tape, curtaining off a portion of West Eighty-Sixth Street from prying eyes and wandering feet. Uniformed officers stood still next to the crime scene tape, guarding the scene like the guards of Buckingham Palace, stalwart in their duty as officers of the law. On the far side of the tape, next to one of the apartment buildings, was the real action, and their job was to see that it could continue uninterrupted by curious rubbernecks.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

The snow crackled loudly under Mac's feet, protesting the sudden disturbance from its previously peaceful state. Every breath he took vaporized immediately, steam wafting through the air, twisting and curling around his head until it finally vanished into the air. He shifted the silver case from his right hand to his left so that he could thrust it into the pocket of his overcoats, away from the freezing cold.

His gray-blue eyes surveyed the scene in front of him as he ducked under the yellow police tape. To his left stood Detective Don Flack Jr., speaking in low tones to a middle-aged, gray-haired woman in a dark blue coat. The younger detective furiously scribbled notes into a small pad of paper until he noticed Mac standing there, watching him. Flack gave the older man a nod, signaling that he would be there in a moment.

That matter settled, Mac shifted his gaze to the hubbub in front of him. The first thing he noticed was a heavy-set, middle-aged man lying in a supine position in the middle of the sidewalk. Dark crimson stood out brightly against the pure white snow around the body, the coagulated blood frozen to the sidewalk.

The second thing he noticed was Stella bending over the body, snapping pictures of a scene that was almost as beautiful as it was macabre. The flash on the camera whined loudly as she pressed the button again to get another angle. After just a moment, she looked up and gave him a small smile, her green eyes twinkling in the soft morning light.

"So much for breakfast, huh?" she said with a grin as he approached.

Mac grimaced as he set his case down on the sidewalk. "Sorry about that."

"Not your fault."

"I'll still make it up to you somehow." She gave him a grateful smile before he continued. "What do we got?"

Stella slung the camera strap around her neck and put a free hand on her hips. "Two gunshot wounds to the chest." She pointed to the man's overcoat, which had gray streaks on the chest. "Pattern of GSR suggests relatively close range. Hawkes and Danny are on their way."

"And nobody heard a thing." The two CSI's turned as Flack stopped beside Mac. The handsome, blue-eyed detective flipped his notebook closed with a sigh. "Lady that lives here found him when she stepped out to walk her dog. Says she was up until after midnight last night and didn't hear a thing. No voices, no shouts, nada."

Mac frowned and looked at Stella. "How do you shoot a person in one of the quietest neighborhoods in Manhattan, and nobody hears a thing?"

"Silencer, maybe?" Stella shrugged as she bent down next to the body.

"Any ID?"

She reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a wallet. "Wallet's still here." She flipped it open and briefly scanned its contents. "Name on the driver's license is Peter Lombard, address in Brooklyn. Credit cards are still here, along with about a hundred bucks in cash."

"So no robbery," Flack commented.

"Here's something." Stella pulled a card out of the wallet and held it up to the light. "Our vic was a stock broker. Jenkins, Oliver, and Marks. I know this place; it's a financial firm off Liberty."

"Who'd wanna kill a stock broker?" Flack asked, raising an eyebrow at Mac.

Mac harrumphed and glanced at Stella. "In this economy? I can think of about 350 million motives."

A/N2: So... How'd I do? You guys want more? Please let me know! Reviews are a fanfiction writer's payday!