As far as Kate was concerned Dinozzo was nothing if not a big kid at heart. Tony loved attention in any way, shape, or form and everyone knew it. So the small, brightly wrapped box sitting ignored on the corner of his desk next to the plain brown package it had come in was slowly driving her insane.

“Tony?”

“Yeah?” came the reticent reply from somewhere on the other side of his monitor.

“What are you doing?”

A faint sigh sounded before Tony finally looked up and logged off the network. “Just checkin’ something.”

“Care to share?” Kate prodded, ready to get to the bottom of the mysterious and apparently unwanted present.

“Not really. It’s personal.”

“Personal?” Gibbs asked with his usual impeccable timing, seemingly appearing out of nowhere as he made his way to his desk and sat down. “Surely not on my time.”

“Dammit,” Tony muttered sotto voce as he gave Kate the evil eye. “Not really personal-personal, boss. Sort of work-related personal,” he explained sheepishly.

“Well that’s clear as mud,” Kate taunted, enjoying watching her frequent tormentor squirm for a change.

“Elaborate,” Gibbs ordered, folding his hands in front of him and turning his cool blue eyes to Dinozzo in rapt attention.

Tony released another deeper sigh and reached for the parcel, holding up the shiny gift for inspection. Gibbs narrowed his gaze and stared at it intensely for a moment then wordlessly nodded his understanding, apparently satisfied by the non-explanation as he pulled out a file and turned his attention to it.

Still in the dark, Kate bit back her annoyed and somewhat perplexed envy of their silent man-communication. “I see you haven’t opened it yet,” she pressed for more information, looking from Tony to Gibbs. “Is it ticking or something?”

“No,” Tony huffed with a mirthless laugh, placing it back in the bigger box and tossing the whole thing into the trashcan next to his desk.

“Tony!” Kate objected, crossing over to retrieve the smaller package. “You’re not even going to see what it is?”

“I know what it is. It’s a Christmas ornament.”

“Oh.” Kate stood holding the present, going so far as to raise it to her ear and shake it gently. “It’s not broken,” she offered tentatively. “Why would someone send you an ornament in June?”

“Leave it alone, Kate,” Gibbs warned. He spared her an irritated glance when she didn’t promptly return the gift to the garbage.

“Do you want to open it?” Tony finally asked in mild exasperation.

“Not if you don’t want me to,” Kate lied as she plucked at the red ribbon hopefully.

“I don’t care,” Tony mumbled, making of show of pulling out a case file of his own. “You can have it.”

Kate gleefully took the box back to her desk where she untied the ribbon then cut the tape with a letter opener, unfolding the elegant gold paper carefully.

“Dinozzo?” Gibbs queried, sounding a little worried.

“It’s okay,” Tony assured without looking up. “It’s safe. My mother has four of them.”

Kate froze. “Safe? Why wouldn’t it be safe?”

“It’s a yearly offering from the follower of a serial killer who Tony put away way back when he was still a green-behind-the-ears rookie cop,” Gibbs supplied with the teensiest touch of pride in his voice.

“Something my mother does not know and I’d like to keep it that way,” Tony advised seriously. “I told her I was in an ornament club.”

“You were a uniformed officer?” Kate questioned, hesitant to open the box now that she knew its significance.

“No, Kate,” Tony deadpanned, “They handed me a gold shield the minute I graduated from the police academy. What do you think?”

“I never really thought about it at all, I guess,” Kate admitted, trying to picture a younger, less cocky Dinozzo in blues. She smiled at the image.

“You gonna play with it all day or open it?” Gibbs asked impatiently checking his watch in his patented ‘get back to work’ manner.

“No,” Kate responded in an apologetic tone aimed at Tony. “I didn’t realize. I’ll throw it away.”

“Go ahead and open it. It only means something if I let it, right?” Tony soothed himself as much as Kate. “Just, ah… do me a favor and don’t keep it on your desk, okay?”

“Sure.” Staring down at the now completely exposed white box, Kate hesitated once again.

“Open the damn thing,” Gibbs growled at her.

When she jumped Tony was quick to grin at her and she knew it would be okay. She untucked the top flap and pulled back the thick layer of bubble wrap to find a delicate, hand-spun glass angel.

“Oh, Tony, it’s beautiful.” She held up the angel by its tiny golden chain, watching the light dance over its intricate surface. “So the perp is sitting on death row, I take it.”

“Actually, no,” Tony responded uneasily. “He never even made it to trial, he offed himself in the county lockup the night we busted him.”

“So who sends the ornaments?” Kate questioned carefully as she set the angel out of Tony’s line of sight, paying more attention to his guarded body language.

“I’ve never been able to find out. They’ve all had phony return addresses and postmarks from all over. But this one and the one last year were both mailed in DC.”

“This makes ten, right?” Gibbs asked.

“Actually, this is number eleven. I get one once a year on the next victim’s birthday in the order they were killed. I hate to admit it but it took me five years to figure it out. Which is why I gave the first four to my mother, it took that long to piece together the pattern,” Tony confessed a little awkwardly. “I thought last year would have been the last one because there were only ten victims.”

“That might be significant,” Gibbs warned, leaning forward attentively. “I’d like to go over the original case file.”

Tony hesitated, actually looking like he might object for a few seconds before nodding his compliance and typing something on his keyboard. “There,” he said, having already stored a copy of the file on his own hard drive. He still had friends in the most unexpected places.

“Why an ornament?” Kate persisted, trying to understand.

“Tony busted the guy on Christmas Eve,” Gibbs clarified as he brought up the file Tony had sent him. “Single-handedly, I might add.”

“I never said that.” Tony frowned as Gibbs smirked back at him.

“It’s a big gold star on your record, Dinozzo. Or don’t you think I checked you out before I hired you?”

“That is pretty impressive,” Kate exclaimed, “A rookie taking down a serial killer alone.”

“I didn’t do it alone; there were dozens of people on the task force. And I wasn’t exactly a rookie,” Tony grumbled petulantly. “I’d already been on the force for a couple of years.”

Gibbs harrumphed. “Rookie.”

“So why haven’t I ever heard about this? It’s not like you to gloss over your accomplishments.”

“It’s no big deal,” Tony muttered, uncharacteristically humble. “I got lucky.”

“Oh come on, Tony,” Kate wheedled. “Don’t be so modest, it doesn’t suit you. I want to hear how you brought down the big bad murderer all by yourself.”

“Drop it, Kate,” Gibbs said evenly, as he read the information on his screen.

Tony swallowed once then spoke so softly Kate almost missed it. “I was his type.”

“His type,” Kate repeated, suddenly getting the picture.

“Yeah… tall, slender, dark hair… young. ”

“Male prostitutes,” Kate guessed as she crossed the aisle and settled on the edge of Tony’s desk.

“Most were runaways just trying to survive, but a few were pros,” Tony agreed grimly. “The department pulled in practically every young cop on the beat for the undercover detail after the press got wind of it. Before that it hadn’t really been a high priority case.”

Kate felt a shiver run down her spine. “And out of all the decoys the killer picked you.”

“We’d been running the undercover operation for a little over three weeks with no luck even though most of the local talent was in short supply. Those kids were scared for good reason. The smart ones relocated,” Tony explained bleakly, running a hand over his face, obviously disturbed by the memories. “We were gonna shut down the next day for Christmas.”

“Tony, you don’t have to…”

“It was cold that day. Really cold,” Tony continued, keeping his voice low. “As soon as I saw him on the street, I thought he might be the guy even though he never approached me. Finally he showed up at the fast food place where I went to get coffee and warm up every few hours. He didn’t really do anything except watch me, but somehow… I just knew.”

“You’ve got good instincts,” Kate encouraged quietly.

“After a while he walked over and very discretely showed me a pair of fur-lined handcuffs and a hundred dollar bill,” Tony managed a small laugh. “Then he showed me the number on a key to a room in a fleabag hotel down the road. Two of the bodies had been discovered in cheap motel rooms so it sort of fit the killer’s erratic MO. I finished my coffee and followed him out. My team was on the ball so I don’t think I was ever in any real danger.”

“Then what happened?”

Dinozzo let out a long slow breath. “It’s kind of anti-climatic actually. When he let me into the room he locked the door and asked me when my birthday was. I made something up and he marked it in his date book. I asked if he was planning to kill me and he admitted that he was. When he pulled a knife, I pulled my gun. By the time my backup kicked in the door a minute later I already had him in cuffs and was reading him his rights.”

“God, Tony,” Kate whispered. “Weren’t you afraid?”

“Not at the time,” Tony shrugged unassumingly. “It happened too fast. I got the shakes later, but I played if off as adrenaline.”

“Let me guess, he vowed revenge.”

“Nope. Just the opposite,” Tony replied nonchalantly, getting to his feet. “He called me his angel, his… hero. He said I’d freed him from his demons. I’m gonna hit the head,” he added as he wandered away from his desk.

“Sorry, Gibbs,” Kate offered guiltily. “I didn’t mean to open any old wounds.”

“You didn’t know. Hell, I didn’t know the specifics,” Gibbs allowed as he snapped on a latex glove and rounded his desk. He plucked the empty box out of the trash and held it out to Kate. “See if Abby can pull any prints off this. In fact, take all of it.”

“Why?”

“There were only ten victims. I don’t know if Tony remembers or not,” Gibbs replied pointing to his own computer, “But the birthday he gave the killer was June 15th.”

“That’s day after tomorrow,” Kate responded worriedly as she put on her own gloves and gathered the wrapping paper. “So you think whoever is sending the angels might try to finish what the killer started.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Gibbs retorted.