The characters don't belong to me but to the creators of CSI NY tv series.

Thank you Lily Moonlight for the continous help with this English version.

I Can't Say Goodbye

Chapter 10

The following days have been hell for Mac Taylor. His mood alternated between anger, despair, disbelief, sadness... Why, Stella? Above all, why without saying goodbye, without talking about things, without negotiation, without reaching an agreement, without leaving him to be a part of her life? He knew he deserved some punishment, but not this. He hadn't said anything to the team, yet, but he knew that Lindsay knew. The way she had looked at him the following day, with tears that welled in her eyes seeing Mac's tormented face, and the way she grabbed his arm as they looked each other, were the confirmation. He knew that she had discovered it too, but neither of them said anything.

Lindsay had phoned Stella immediately after her discovery the previous day, but she had received no answer. Stella's phone number was disconnected. At the end of her shift, she had sent an e-mail, with return receipt request. When she arrived the next morning and checked her mail, she saw the confirmation. Stella kept in touch somehow, even though there wasn't a reply to Lindsay's questions.

Stella, what's happened? Today I was in your office and your personal belongings aren't there. When are you coming back? I think Mac saw it just before me, and he was really upset. He left without saying goodbye, without even finishing the shift. Didn't you say anything to him either? I don't understand... Stella, please, tell me what's going on. You know we're friends, you can trust me. I can't believe you went somewhere else long term without telling me.

You know we love you anyway. That will always be so, whatever happens. Remember this, please.

Kisses

Lindsay

Mac waited all week and on Friday morning, he went to his team. He asked Sid to come too, and when he arrived Mac began to speak.

" I don't know how to explain this... But I have to inform you that Stella won't be returning to work on Monday like we all expected. She has left the Department and I think the country, but I don't actually know." As much as he was trying to speak with a normal attitude and tone, the knot that had formed in his throat prevented him. He felt powerless to confess that Stella had left without telling him, and he had no idea where she was or what she intended to do. All of them were stunned. Sid was the first to react

"Have you talked to Sinclair? He has to know, if she didn't hand her resignation to you, she had to give it to him. Or better, perhaps she didn't resign and she has only taken an extended leave of absence, or whatever. But he has to know it." Sid said that with a shocked expression in his face, playing nervously with his glasses.

"He doesn't know much, and if he does know anything else, he hasn't told me, it seems he's promised Stella. But he also believed that Stella would have spoken to me, and he was quite surprised that she hadn't, I think his surprise was genuine. I don't know what happened, I really don't know. "

"Well, the day of her birthday ended rather unpleasantly, she was upset at you for something, Mac, and you drank a lot. She left the club shortly after you did, and that's the last time we saw her." Lindsay spoke now in a sad tone that was just a sigh.

"That had been settled, I saw her afterwards... I went to her home to apologize." Now all regarded him with questioning eyes, but Mac didn't want to tell them more. What would he say? That they had gone to bed and made love passionately, as many times as his energy had allowed it? That then he had slept more deeply and peacefully than in his entire life, waking up alone and that the only trace of Stella until today was a note in which she indirectly called him undesirable? He couldn't tell them that.

"I talked to her two days later and once again that first week." Lindsay again attracted Mac's attention. "The first time she said she was fine, just she had had a hangover that lasted longer than she thought, but that her birthday was unforgettable, and the night even more so. I didn't understand what she meant." Mac hoped he hadn't significantly reddened, but luckily nobody seemed to connect the fact that he had gone to apologize, to that Stella had spent a great night.

His only comfort was that at least it was not an illusion of his. What word had Lindsay used repeating Stella's own? Unforgettable. Yes, it really was the most appropriate adjective. Passionate, had also served. Intense, sweet, full, also went well...

He had been distracted from what Lindsay was still saying. "At the end of the week, I called her again and she said she was travelling, she had many things to see and maybe it would take us a while to contact each other again... but I thought it would be during the time her holidays lasted, a month at the most. And now this... I didn't think Stella would do something like this. She knows we all worry about her."

Mac felt the need to apologize for her in front of the others, even when he didn't accept the apology himself.

"Stella was alone most of her life, no one cared about her and she hadn't to think about the feelings of her loved ones, simply because there were no such loved ones. And I think she still isn't used to thinking of anyone as a permanent presence in her life, despite all this time. If she knew that we are in her life to stay, she knew that she can't go and leave us like this, without knowing about her, because we care very much..." His voice had gone down to a whisper. He lifted his head, sighed and turned toward the door. "That was it, we'll keep working."

Everyone started to leave without talking, because nobody knew what to say. They couldn't get used to the idea that Stella wouldn't be there everyday... Heck, if in the few days that it was supposed to be her vacation everybody missed already her voice, her laugh, her mere presence that seemed to light up the lab. Everything would be darker without Stella Bonasera's golden brown curls floating over her shoulders with each step, without seeing her daily with that motion of her hands while talking and that walk of hers, with all the grace of a ballerina. Everyone went to their place to continue their previous activity, thoughtfully.

Adam had said nothing, but after a short impasse in which he seemed to decide where to start, he sat at his computer and his hands began to fly over the keyboard. Well, he had done this thousands of times with all kind of investigations. It would be easy. He would track every trace, that is, everything. In this modern life, we unwittingly leave traces of everything we do, liking or not. Almost all of our common acts end in an electronic transaction. Phone calls, card payments, bookings, including the actual location of our mobile phones via GPS. Stella didn't want them to know where she was, he didn't care, he would discover it.

Barely half an hour later, his frustration couldn't be greater. Stella had actually disappeared from the world. Three days after her birthday, all data relating to her had been blocked. Even the second call that Lindsay had mentioned didn't appear, only the first. The last thing in which her name appeared was the purchase of a plane ticket toWashingtonand a reservation for four nights in a downtown hotel in the capital. After that, nothing. He didn't even find if the hotel had been paid with her card. From a certain point, the system didn't provide information about her, either by the name or by cards, bank account or Social Security numbers... When he tried with his identification as a member of the NYPD the message was that his accreditation wasn't enough.

He went to Mac's office with the frustrating results. They tried to access the information with Mac's accreditation, which also proved inadequate. Adam was confused.

"This is like a change of personality, or a change of identity, Mac. I only saw something similar in a case where we tried to query some information about a protected witness"

"But Stella is not involved in anything unusual... and neither was she called to testify in any pending case, to my knowledge." Mac was scratching his head, tired and thoughtful, "Check her computer to see what she was dealing with."

Stella's computer gave Adam further frustration. Hell, she had erased all but the work folders and files, which were also in the disk files copies; the same that were on the network server, and that everyone could see and consult. Nothing strange about that. But on a personal level, there wasn't any clue. Adam sought the trail of deleted files on the hard disk and found that she had formatted it. Good pupil, Stella! Now he regretted having taught her to erase the traces of her passage through a computer system. Still, his talent made him miraculously recover in a damaged sector a remnant of the recently used applications, an e-mail message and its response to arrival. The texts were missing, but he found a part of the address. The domain belonging to the nation's government, the decipherable part of the address corresponded to the State Department. Mac had joined him in the latter part of the search and they watched one another, helpless. They had just directly and violently crashed into a wall.

Almost three months Stella Bonasera had spent in Athens. She was beginning to feel good despite the heat. The first weeks had been a nightmare, with the nerves caused by her new responsibilities, the desire to do her job properly and all the nostalgia about Mac and her friends in New York, who were really her only family. Every night, alone in her bed, she couldn't stop mourning. Her body yearned for another body that complemented hers perfectly, and that, although their union had been limited to one night, seemed have lasted a lifetime. Her hands and mouth looked for him in the dark to wake up believing inhale his scent... to find nothing but emptiness and loneliness...

To be continued...