A/N: Thanks for all of the warm responses, guys! Hope you like this chapter as well. I realize we're getting away from the fairy tale a little bit, but stick with me!

Stella changed in the back of the SUV while Mac drove them to the scene. She knew that she should be asking him about the case, but her mind kept flashing back to the stranger she had been dancing with. She could still smell him on her, and she could still feel his hands whispering against her skin. Reaching out, she let her fingers drift across her mask again – it had been a long time she'd ever felt anything remotely like that, and she still couldn't believe that it had been with a complete stranger.

"I hope the clothes fit," Michelle said from the passenger's seat, interrupting her thoughts. "I'm quite a bit shorter than you."

Stella smiled at her. "I'm just happy that I don't have to process the scene in my dress."

"It really is beautiful…it would be shame to ruin it."

"Not that I'll ever have a chance to wear it again."

Michelle chuckled. "You never know."

Stella just shook her head and turned to Mac when she was finally dressed in a t-shirt and a pair of sweats. "It was nice of you to let Danny and Lindsay stay."

He shrugged. "They've been working things out. They deserve a night of fun." He glanced at her in the mirror. "Though if I had known you were so wrapped up, I might have grabbed Hawkes instead."

She blushed. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He smirked at her. "Sure you don't." Glancing back at the road, his expression sobered. "We're here."

Mac parked the SUV, and the three of them got out, moving towards the scene. Stella carried her case over, her eyes running over the body lying facedown on the pavement. As she got closer, she saw that it was a man dressed casually, and that his face was lying in a pool of blood.

"Lovely," Michelle muttered.

"I'm going to take a wild guess and say that this wasn't a mugging," Stella said.

"Don't jump to conclusions," Mac chided her.

She shook her head. "There's too much blood. This looks personal."

Mac crouched down and searched the victim's pockets. "His wallet is still here." Opening it, he nodded. "At least a hundred in cash, not to mention all of his cards. His picture matches – this is Kevin Jordans, lives over on West 90th."

"Looking less and less like a mugging," Stella commented.

"Yes it is. Except…" He felt the rest of the pockets. "No cell phone."

"That's unusual. I'm not sure I've had a vic in the past year who didn't own a cell phone."

"Same here. So until we find out otherwise, we're going to assume that the murderer has it."

Stella raised an eyebrow. "Assume, Mac? That's so unlike you."

He glared at her, but Michelle walked over then, keeping him from making any retort.

"We've got zero witnesses," she announced.

"Who found the body?" Mac asked.

"We don't know. Anonymous call to 911 from a payphone. You guys can dust for prints, but…"

"There are probably dozens, if not more," Stella said. "Most likely a dead end."

"Was the caller a man or a woman?"

"Man," Michelle answered. "That's the only thing the dispatcher was sure of. And that he wasn't using any electronics to disguise the voice. Those always have a distinct sound to them."

Mac nodded. "Alright. Let's roll him over."

Carefully, they rolled the body until it was face-up. Stella leaned over, carefully inspecting the face.

"Mac?"

"Yeah?"

"There's a lot of blood on the face, but I'm not seeing any wounds. His nose isn't broken, and there aren't any cuts that would let this much blood out."

"We've got a gunshot wound to the abdomen," he observed. "That will probably be the cause of death."

Michelle grimaced. "That's a slow and painful way to die."

Mac nodded. "And there are no streaks in the blood on the pavement. So he killed the victim, and then set him face down in a pool of his own blood. That's certainly making a statement."

"It's looking very personal."

"Alright, let's process the scene and get back to the lab. Michelle, find the next of kin – I want to know who hated Kevin Jordans this much."

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"We've got a problem."

Mac looked up as Michelle walked into his office. "Okay."

"Kevin Jordans doesn't exist."

"Excuse me?"

"He's not in any system. There's no Social Security number, no birth certificate…we're running his prints, but so far nothing is coming up."

Mac frowned. "Did you go to his apartment?"

She nodded. "And there's nothing there, Mac. Non-descript furniture and clothes. No photos or any personal paperwork. The only prints we found were his."

"And the neighbors?"

"They recognized the picture, but none of them had every spoken to him. Even the landlord couldn't remember any discussions about things other than the apartment."

"Sounds like we've got ourselves a ghost."

"That's going to make it pretty hard to find his killer."

"And this isn't going to make it any easier."

They both turned to find Adam standing in the doorway, a piece of paper clutched in his hands.

"What did you find?" Mac asked.

"I finally got a hit on the prints. I sent them to Immigration – we just weren't getting hits anywhere else."

"Okay…"

"The prints…they-they came back to a British person. A British woman, actually."

Michelle frowned in confusion. "That's not possible."

"Generally speaking, no. So I went back to Sid, 'cause…well, I didn't know where else to start."

"And?" Mac urged, growing impatient.

"And it turns out that…that Kevin Jordans had surgery to replace his fingerprints with somebody else's. It's a really gross procedure involving another person's skin. It's not pretty."

"And the woman?"

"Kara Mahoney. She moved to the States about ten years ago. And she's dead. Very dead. Buried in a small town in Connecticut."

Michelle turned to Mac. "Who goes to all that trouble to hide their identity? I mean, there was no way this guy was ever going to leave his actual prints anywhere. It's better than gloves."

"I don't know," he admitted slowly, his brow furrowed in thought. "But I can tell you one thing – Kevin Jordans, or whoever he was, couldn't have been up to anything good. And that's probably what got him killed."

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"Wait…so his fingerprints are a woman's?" Lindsay asked as they sat in the diner.

Stella nodded. "A British woman's."

"That's weird."

"Very."

"What are you guys going to do next?"

"We're waiting for the autopsy report from Connecticut. We need to know if Jordans killed this woman."

They fell silent for a moment, neither relishing the idea of a man who killed a woman and stole her fingerprints. Glancing over at her friend, Lindsay decided to change topics.

"So…" she said slowly. "Did you have fun last night?"

"At the crime scene? Of course – that's always a great time."

"Come on, Stella. You know what I'm talking about."

The older woman rolled her eyes. "Fine. Yes, I had a good time."

"See? I told you that you would!" She paused. "I looked around, but I couldn't find you."

Stella couldn't stop the blush that crept up her cheeks. "I, uh…I met someone."

Lindsay's eyes widened. "What!? Why didn't you tell me?"

She shrugged. "I guess I just didn't want to make a big deal out of it."

"But it is a big deal! Who is he?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "We had masks on, remember?"

"And you didn't ask his name?"

"No."

Lindsay sighed. "There wasn't something familiar about him? Maybe you recognized his voice? Come on, Stella. It was almost all cops at that ball. It was probably someone you know."

"I can tell you without a doubt that I had never met this man before. "

The other woman smiled. "But you hit it off?"

Stella shrugged. "We didn't really talk much. But we danced…a lot."

Lindsay sighed dreamily. "That sounds so nice."

Stella finally laughed, shaking her head. "It really was…Oh my God."

She stopped suddenly as her eyes landed on the television behind the counter. Holding up her hand, she gestured for Lindsay to be quiet as she strained to listen to the woman speaking. It was the daily "buzz", where the news would go on about local bigwigs and celebrities – and there on the screen was the man she had danced with the night before. The program showed the outfit he had worn and then pulled another picture up alongside of it of a good-looking man in a business suit.

"New York aristocrat Donald Flack, Jr, looked debonair at the masquerade ball he held for the NYPD last night. Sources say that he spent most of the evening with an unidentified woman, and many are speculating about who the lucky lady might be. But we've heard that the young heir doesn't even know her identity, and that he's doing everything he can to find her. Our own Katie Newman tried to reach him for more information, but so far has had no response. All we can offer you is this picture of the woman in question."

Stella's mouth dropped open as she stared at the screen. The picture was blurry and from far away, but she could tell that it was of her as she danced on the balcony.

"Oh my God," she breathed. "That's him."

Lindsay frowned. "Him? Who?" She looked at the TV again and her eyes widened. "Don Flack? And is that that you? You spent the night with Don Flack?"

Stella closed her eyes. "Oh my God," she repeated.

"But –"

Lindsay was interrupted by the ringing of Stella's phone. The detective frowned as she answered it, her mind still racing with what she had just learned.

"Bonasera. Yeah, Mac, what's up?" She listened for a moment, her frown deepening as she the conversation went on. "Yeah, sure. We'll be right there." She flipped her phone shut and looked at her friend.

"What is it?" Lindsay asked.

"We have to go." She stood up, slipping her jacket on. "Don Flack's niece was just kidnapped."