Chapter 21

Hello readers! I apologize for the length of time between updates...I started a new job recently and between that and various family members health issues, I haven't had the time or inspiration to write. I am NOT abandoning my stories, and I hope to update more frequently. Thanks for sticking with me and remember, reviews feed my muse!

"You ready to do this?" Dave asked his wife two weeks later as he stood in the entrance to her office and watched her read through binders of information.

JJ sighed and set the large book down. "I don't know Dave; we just started the process this week and it's a lot to take in. Besides, we have some time to decide on the right one."

"I meant the meeting with Strauss, honey," Dave told her as he moved into the office and sat down in one of the chairs across from her desk. "But are you having second thoughts about doing this?" He asked pointing to the binders, the binders that were full of information about possible surrogate mothers for them. He felt his heart speed up and his stomach clench in dread as he waited for her answer; he wanted another kid so badly he could practically taste it, but if his wife was having second thoughts, well, then that was the ballgame; he would never force her to do something she didn't want to.

"No, not second thoughts exactly," she said hesitantly.

"Then what is it, exactly?" He asked, trying to clarify the situation.

"I just…I really want to be the one to carry our child," she said as tears sprung to her eyes. "Even though I was only twenty-one when I had her, I loved being pregnant with Abby."

"I know that, Jen, but it put your life at risk and I'm not willing to do that again, especially when we have the means to do it safely."

"I know," she said, drawing in a shuddery breath; they had a meeting in a few minutes and she didn't want to cry right before it, so she concentrated on getting her emotions under control. Unfortunately for her, her husband was a world-class profiler, which meant he was pretty much a human lie-detector.

Knowing she wouldn't be that upset about simply not being pregnant because she liked it the first time around, Dave narrowed his eyes and studied her for a moment. "What is this really about, JJ?"

JJ just shook her head. "I…I feel like I'm letting you down by not carrying our child.

He stared at her for a minute before he said dryly, "Well, congratulations."

"For what?" She asked in confusion.

"For saying the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"

"It's not stupid," she snapped back irritably. "Why shouldn't you feel let down? I am."

"You need to stop with the crazy talk before I begin to wonder if you really are pregnant and these are your hormones talking."

"Screw you, Rossi! You don't have to be an ass about it!" She said loudly, not wanting to shout in the office.

The use of his last name made Dave realize he was only succeeding in pissing his wife off, so he decided to change his tactic. "Jen, I'm the one who doesn't want you carrying our baby and, honestly? I would have these same concerns right now even if you hadn't had problems with your heart when you were pregnant with Abby."

"What? Why would-"JJ started to ask but her husband interrupted her.

"You sustained a nearly fatal gunshot wound less than a year ago; do you really think you're strong enough grow another human being inside of you for the next nine months?" He asked. "You really don't think a pregnancy right now would cause a setback in your recovery?"

That made JJ pause and she tilted her head as she pondered what he'd just said. "You know, I never thought about it like that," she told him. "I never thought that my gunshot wound could cause problems with a pregnancy."

"So you see? We would be going this route even if hadn't had problems during your first pregnancy," he said.

"I guess you're right," JJ admitted. "You're sure you're not the tiniest bit disappointed that some other woman will be carrying our child?"

"Not in the slightest," he responded. "I'm just disappointed that you thought I would be disappointed."

"I'm sorry, I really am," she said as she stood up and came around to the front of her desk. "Maybe I can make it up to you?" She asked with a suggestive look.

"Weren't you the one who said we had to keep it professional at the office?" As excitement crept into his voice.

"Yes, but some rules were meant to be broken."

Just then, there was a knock on the open door. "You two ready for the meeting?" Hotch asked.

"Great timing, as usual Aaron," Dave groaned as JJ flushed a bright red.

Hotch looked at them and shook his head. "I don't even want to know what I interrupted."

"It's nothing, Hotch," his media liaison told him.

"Nothing that can't wait until tonight," Dave clarified to his wife. "You owe me!"

"Okay, well if you two can put aside your libidos for a little while, that would be great," their boss told them. "Especially since we called this meeting with Strauss."

"You think she's gonna be pissed?" Dave asked as the three of them left the office and made their way to the round table room, where the rest of the team was assembling.

Hotch shrugged his shoulders, "I honestly have no idea, but we won't have to wait long to find out." As they stepped into the meeting room, they could see their chief cutting across the bullpen on her way to the room.

Erin Strauss quickly made her way to the conference room and stood in front of the large roundtable. She tapped a few buttons on her iPad, set it aside and looked at the team assembled in front of her. "Well? What is this meeting about?" She asked distractedly. "I have a very busy day, so I do not have much time for-"

"Sit down, Erin," Dave ordered as he, Hotch, and JJ took their normal seats. "Trust me, you're going to want to devote some of your precious time to this meeting."

"Oh God, what did you people do now?" She hissed as she sat down in the empty seat in front of her.

"We didn't do anything…at least anything that will reflect poorly on you, so would you calm the hell down?" Dave was only person who could talk to their boss like that and she knew it. The man had enough dirt on her to make working anywhere on the eastern seaboard an uncomfortable undertaking, so she simply glared at him and waited for him to go on.

"Do you remember telling me about your daughter's attack?" He asked.

Strauss frowned, that was not the question she had been expecting, nor did she really want to discuss the topic in front of the entire team, but apparently they all knew about it because none of them looked surprised. "Yes, I referred your daughter to the therapist my daughter used. Why?"

"Well," Dave said, squirming a bit in his seat, "We did something."

"Then I repeat my first question," Strauss responded icily. "What. Did. You. Do?"

"We re-opened the investigation."

"You did WHAT?" The section chief yelled as she jumped to her feet. "How dare you! How dare you people open all of this up again! My daughter has struggled enough to put this behind her and now you want to make her re-live it? I won't allow it! I simply will not-"

"Erin, you need to shut the hell up and let one of us get a word in edgewise before you have a stroke!" Dave said, interrupting her tirade.

Strauss, whose face had turned an unnatural shade of red, slowly sat back down in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. "Fine," she bit out. "Say what you have to say."

As she listened to what the team had to say, her anger slowly turned to shock and then to amazement. This team, a group of people whom she thought outright hated her, had given up many hours of their precious free time in order to find her daughter's rapist. She heard how Garcia had unearthed a finger print that hadn't been run through the system correctly during the original investigation, and how JJ had used up many favors by having some of her contacts dig for hidden files. She learned that Reid had contacted every professor he knew at Georgetown and got the inside scoop about the identity of the potential unsub and that Emily had befriended a group of graduate students in order to do the same thing. She heard how Dave, Hotch, and Derek had provided muscle and creative threats in order to get a normally tight-lipped group of jocks to spill their guts about what they knew. And then she learned the truth about the monster that had attacked and violated her daughter.

"The unsub's name was Zander Stevens and he-" Dave started before Erin interrupted him.

"Wait. 'Was?' You said his name was Zander Stevens. Did something happen to him?"

Dave nodded. "He was killed in Paraguay two months ago; the little asshole decided to base jump off a cliff and miscalculated the time needed between the parachute opening and the ground coming up to meet him. Sounds like Darwin at it's finest to me." Rossi wasn't going to mourn the loss of a rapist and he doubted that anyone else in the room would either.

"So it's over?" Erin said, almost in a whisper. While her daughter did not talk about the attack as much anymore, she knew she constantly looked over her shoulder waiting for her attacker to return. It would be a relief beyond words to be able to let her baby know she didn't have to sleep with one eye open anymore.

"It is, Erin; you can let your daughter know that, while her attacker won't face justice in the criminal justice system, he can't ever hurt her again," Hotch said firmly, happy to be able to give the young woman some closure.

Strauss's eyes teared up and she quickly closed them so her subordinates wouldn't see her moment of weakness. She couldn't, however, keep the emotion out of her voice. "Why wasn't he caught earlier?" She asked in a shaky voice.

"It was a college rape and colleges are more worried about keeping them hidden. You know as well as we do that they don't want anything to tarnish their precious reputations," Emily said angrily.

"Add in the fact that the unsub came from a wealthy family and he was a jock and you have the perfect recipe for a cover-up," JJ spat, also angry at the miscarriage of justice suffered by her Section Chief's daughter.

Erin's eyes popped open and the entire team could see the rage blazing in them. "And you're sure about this? One hundred percent, absolutely positive that this was the man who attacked my Melissa?"

Everyone in the room nodded. "We were able to match the DNA from your daughter's rape kit to the DNA on file for Zander. It was a perfect match," Reid told her.

"I'm more than tempted to blow the whistle on what the school did; to file a lawsuit against them, but I just want this to be over for my daughter." She looked down at the table for a minute, as if to collect her thoughts, and then looked back up at the team. "Thank you for this," she said, with gratitude dripping from every word. "You have no idea how you have helped my family by doing this. I can't believe all of you did so much on your own time to help my daughter."

The team all smiled, but it was Derek who spoke up. "Ma'am, whether you want to be or not, you are a part of our team and we look out for our own. An attack against you or your family is an attack against all of us."

"Besides, you were there for us when we were facing a threat," JJ reminded her. "From what I heard, you didn't even have to think about letting the team run a black ops mission in order to protect my family. What makes you think we wouldn't do the same for you?"

The Section Chief was speechless at the outpouring of support and camaraderie she was getting from her team. It proved they had all come a long way in the past few years and she was grateful for it. "Well, again, thank you; it will be wonderful for my daughter to receive good news about this."

"Well then, it's going to be a good day for all of us," Dave said as he stood up. "Abby's plane gets into Regan National in a few hours and she'll be here for over a month!"

JJ laughed, "Dave's so excited about it that I'm surprised he's not at the airport waiting for her already."

"Oh dear," Erin said as she looked down at her iPad. "After all you've done for me, I really don't want to have to tell you this."

"Tell us what?" Dave asked in confusion. His expression changed as he understood what she was about to say. "No. No way. You're kidding right?" He asked as he sat back down in his chair heavily.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry David, but one of the reasons I needed this meeting to be quick is because the team has an urgent case. I got a call from the FBI office in Mobile Alabama this afternoon; it seems that someone is killing patients in their local hospitals. At first it seemed like mercy killings since the victims had terminal illnesses, but he's moved to people who are there for routine illnesses and surgeries. Wheels up is in ten minutes; I will have Technical Analyst Garcia brief you in the air."

"Damn," Dave said softly. He understood their expertise was needed down south but he was disappointed beyond belief that he wouldn't be able to meet his daughter's plane.

"I'll have Agent Anderson pick her up at the airport and take her home," Strauss said.

"I guess that will have to do," JJ said, also disappointed. "Hopefully she'll understand."

The conversation about Strauss's daughter takes place in chapter 66 of 'Happily Ever After.'