We were still heading off the driveway when another car pulled up. Scott and Trevor. Two more from the team. My heart eased a little at the reassurance of more security.

We’d take the sonofabitch down at any cost.

I stayed with Kyle, even though he tried to urge me inside. Fuck that. I wanted to be at the front.

Thank holy fuck for the guy that it was Scott and Trevor who found him before I did. I heard the yell from the other side of the house as they collared him. Kyle and I went charging over there at lightning speed. I was still in my tuxedo with my heart in my fucking throat.

I was expecting a brute, but the guy they’d taken hold of looked like a skinny bastard. Hardly the monster from some underground operation. They were dragging him by the elbows between them, his eyes huge and his expression nothing but terror.

Scott held up a camera. “He had this. No gun. No knife.”

“Right,” I said, and tried to calm my racing pulse.

“I’m a journalist!” he said, sounding shaky. “I’m sorry. I was trying to get pictures.”

I had no doubt I had evil written right across my face. “Pictures of who?” I snarled. “My baby boy?”

He shook his head. “No! Not really. Pictures of anything. Pictures of you, or Elaine, or the Morelli home. I needed it. For my goddamn gossip blog. They pay well. I needed the money. I got laid off eighteen months ago. My wife’s expecting. And no one’s hiring a mediocre journalist.”

There was a desperation in him, and it was more than a desperation for his life. It was a strange thing, how I recognized it. Empathized with it in what limited way empathy ever hit me.

The guy was trying to provide for his family.

“Drop him,” I said to Scott and Trevor, and they did as they were told. “Leave us,” I said after, and they looked surprised, but stepped away.

“I’ll stay out front,” Kyle said, but I shot him a glare.

“You’ll get the fuck out of here,” I told him. “And you’ll take Zach with you. You’re fired.”

“What?” he asked, surprised.

“I said, get the fuck out of here, you incompetent pieces of shit.” I gestured to the dropped figure of the guy on the grass. “You let a journalist onto our grounds, close enough to get a photograph of my son?”

“But we were… we did what we could…”

I shoved him by his shoulder. “You didn’t do enough then, did you? You’re lucky it’s Christmas, or I’d fuck you over for risking my boy.”

I was telling the truth, too. He really was lucky it was Christmas. And so was the journalist on the floor.