This Crazy Thing Called Life-Chapter 22

"Easy, JJ!" Dave exclaimed as he sat nervously in his boss's office. "It feels like I'm being shorn back there!"

"Good God Dave, quit being such a freaking baby! My son behaves better than you when getting his haircut," JJ said as she cut off a lock of his hair.

"But you're cutting too much off," he whined as he saw more hair fall on the ground.

"When you finally see your daughter, do you want her to think you've turned into some kind of wild mountain man? Because right now, that's what you look like," JJ told him as she continued to cut his hair.

Dave opened his mouth to rebut her description, but the office door opened and a feminine voice said, "She's right David, you look much better with shorter hair. Besides, JJ is doing a great job."

"Thank you ma'am," JJ said as she studied Dave's head to make sure the sides were even. "You're good," she told him as she removed the towel she'd wrapped around him.

He grabbed the hand mirror and studied his reflection. "Hmmm, not bad JJ, not bad at all," he said, impressed by her skill.

"Thanks; I cut both Henry's and Will's hair, so it wasn't that hard."

"Now all I need is a shave and I'll be back to my old self," Dave said, still looking in the mirror.

"Well, you have just enough time for that," Hotch said as he entered his office and looked distastefully at the hair on the floor of his nice, clean office. "Everything is organized and we leave to raid Lazlov's place in twenty minutes."

"Okay, I'll make it quick," he promised. "Got a razor I can borrow?"

Hotch opened a desk drawer, pulled out an electric razor and tossed it to his friend. "Use the bathroom down the hall please." Dave nodded and Hotch continued. "Do you have a Kevlar vest, ma'am?"

Strauss nodded, "I had one of the agents grab it from my outer office so as not to worry Katie."

"Vest?" Dave asked confused. "Why do you need a vest?"

"Because I'm coming with you," Erin told him as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Like hell you are!" He yelled. "This is going to be a dangerous raid and I'm not going to risk your safety!"

"I'm sorry you feel that way David, but I assure you that I am going on the raid, whether you like it or not," Strauss said calmly, even though she was boiling mad on the inside. Who the hell was he to tell her what she was and was not going to do?

"Think again Erin; you're staying here and that's final!" With that, Dave strode out of the office, down the hall and into the men's room. Erin stayed in Hotch's office for a few seconds before the anger and frustration she was feeling took over her brain. She followed her lover's path and, without a second thought, barreled into the men's room. Two agents were in there using the urinals, but once they saw the furious section chief, they zipped up and quickly left the room.

"I don't know where you get off thinking you can issue me orders David, but I assure you that I am going on the raid," Strauss said in a steely voice.

Dave narrowed his eyes at her in the mirror. "Erin-"

She didn't let him get any further in his protests. "If anyone shouldn't be going on the raid, it's you. Technically you are not an agent, so you really have no place on the team right now," she reminded him.

Dave turned to face her. "If you think I'm going to wait on the sidelines while the team takes down Lazlov, you're out of your fucking mind! He's threatening my family, for Christ's sake!"

"I know that, because it's my family too!" Erin shouted. "Did your many months of solitude lower your IQ? I'm going on this raid for the same reasons as you; Lazlov is threatening my family and if there is one thing you should know about me, it's that I don't back down from a fight!" She took a calming breath. "Finish shaving, we leave in fifteen minutes." And with that, she left the restroom and went to get her bulletproof vest.

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An hour later, Dave faced one of his worst nightmares. The BAU team, assisted by other various tactical teams, had raided the building where Lazlov and his men were selling the bodies of underage girls. Most of the men closest to Lazlov were dead, and the ones who were still alive were new cohorts of his and they had given themselves up as soon as the SWAT team had kicked in the doors.

They had also recovered the girls that had been spread out among various apartments and, while they still had a build-up of drugs in their systems and were malnourished, for the most part, they were uninjured. The young girls would, however, have to worry about STD's, pregnancy, and their emotional healing would take awhile, but they had not been physically injured or deformed. The number of high-level politicians and international officials that had been arrested in the raid was staggering and it turned everyone's stomach's to know how many lawmakers found young girls to be sexually attractive.

The only person they hadn't gotten was Lazlov himself. They had the perimeter around the building sealed, so he had to still be in it, but they didn't want to waste valuable time looking for him. Dave, who wanted the ordeal to end that night, was in no mood for a room-to-room search of the large building, so he took a more direct route to get the information he needed. Hotch and Derek were questioning one of the men in an apartment when Dave strode in, walked up to the guy and backhanded him across the face.

"Dave man, what the fuck?" Derek shouted as he watched his mentor assault the guy they had in custody.

"Where is he?" Rossi said forcefully.

"Fuck you man, I don't have to tell you shit!" The thug yelled as he spat blood on the floor.

"Wrong answer, asshole," Dave said as he backhanded him again. To everyone's surprise, both Hotch and Strauss just stood by the door and watched as Dave beat the shit out of the low-level gangster.

"Now, where the fuck is he?" Rossi repeated, his voice a bit deadlier sounding this time.

"I don't know who you're talking about," the guy said, with a bit less conviction.

Dave just shook his head and backhanded the other side of the guy's face. "Rossi, stop!" Derek shouted as he tried pulling the older man away. "You know this is wrong; you're an FBI agent for Christ's sake!"

"No, you're wrong Derek," Dave said as he tore out of the younger man's grip. "I'm not an FBI agent, not right now. Now I'm a man whose family is being threatened and I'll do anything to prevent those threats from becoming reality."

Emily, who had been standing near the back of the room, looked at her two bosses. "Hotch, you're okay with this?"

The stoic man thought for a minute and then nodded. "Lazlov's threat is against all of us, including our kids; he has to be stopped."

"None of you need to be a part of this," Strauss said. "All of you can join the various teams that are searching the building; we can handle this from here."

"I'm staying," JJ said, knowing her child and husband had likely been included in those threats.

"I'm staying too, that's what families do," Reid said.

Emily nodded her agreement, "I'm sure as hell not leaving."

"Derek, what about you?" Hotch asked.

Morgan just shook his head. "Do what you gotta do, Rossi."

Dave, who was tired of the whole ordeal, simply walked up to the man in custody and put his gun to the middle of his forehead. "You have exactly five seconds to tell me where Dmitri Lazlov is hiding before I splatter the few brains that you have all over this wall. Do you understand?"

"Whatever man, you're not going to shoot me."

"Five, four, three, two," when the countdown reached two, Dave cocked his gun and that broke the thug's resolve to stay silent.

"Okay, okay!" He yelled. "Lazlov's got a panic room in one of the apartments on the sixth floor. It's not like a real panic room, though; it's just loaded with weapons and drugs. That's all I know, man!"

"Reid, Emily, get this piece of shit out of here; the rest of you are with me," Dave ordered.

The team, along with three of the other tactical groups that were searching the building for Lazlov, split up when they reached the sixth floor so they could search the three apartments simultaneously. As he moved stealthily through one of the apartments, Dave felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise and he knew something was about to happen. He wasn't wrong.

"So we meet again, Agent Rossi," a voice with a heavy Russian accent said. Dave whipped around and saw Dmitri Lazlov standing behind him. The only thing keeping Dave from shooting the bastard was that he had an arm wrapped around his lover's neck and a gun resting against her temple.

"Let her go, Dmitri; this is between you and me." Dave had his gun trained on the mobster's forehead, but he knew that if he took the shot, Lazlov would fire his weapon and it Erin would die.

The rest of the teams heard the ruckus and entered the room. When they saw Strauss in Lazlov's clutches, they trained their weapons on the man as well.

"This isn't just about you and me," Lazlov said, as though the other people weren't in the room. "It's because of you that my wife and son were killed!"

"That was not my fault!" Dave said vehemently. "You are an international criminal and I helped put you in jail; the deaths of your wife and son are not on my hands. The death of my wife, however, IS on your hands."

"Do you think I feel bad about that, Agent Rossi?" Lazlov said with an evil smile. "She was collateral damage; you were getting too close and I needed to distract you. As I told you before, you're lucky your daughter wasn't in the car with her, since my goal had been for both of them to die."

"That's it," Erin said from her position within Lazlov's clutches. "Somebody needs to shoot this son of a bitch now!" Unfortunately, no one in the room had a clear enough shot and they were not going to risk accidentally hitting her.

"Your daughter really is lucky, Agent Rossi," the Russian Mobster continued. "Once my people alerted me to the fact that you were still alive and investigating us, I had planned to take her from your house and bring her here. A pretty girl like her would have fetched a high price. Plus, I'm betting that, for her first night at least, I could have sold her as a virgin. The money I could have made off of her…pity."

Dave had to fight to keep control once he'd heard Lazlov's plans for his daughter. The only sign that he'd been affected by Dmitri's words were the throbbing of the vein in his forehead and the tightening of his hand on his gun.

"In fact, my men were just about to move in on her when Agent Hotchner arrived," Lazlov continued, knowing he was getting to his nemesis. "Even then, I ordered my men to follow his car and ambush them on a country highway. Unfortunately, Agent Hotchner got the children to the FBI complex too quickly; I'm sure the young boy would have fetched a high price on the open market."

If any of his team members had taken their eyes away from Lazlov and Strauss, they would have seen murderous rage in Hotch's eyes. He wanted Dmitri to die slowly and painfully for even thinking about selling his son to the highest bidder.

"Here's how it's going to go," Dmitri said, as he moved with Erin toward the door. "You're going to let me walk out of here with her and then, if you're really lucky, I'll let her go unharmed and you'll be able to-" his words were cut off when Strauss suddenly went limp in his arms. Lazlov wasn't expecting the heavy weight and, as a result, Erin slipped down so her head was level with his chest. That was all the teams needed; they all opened fire and, by the time Lazlov's body hit the ground, there was not much of a head left on it.

"ERIN!" Dave yelled as she fell to the ground with Lazlov's body. "Are you hit?" He knelt down and began running his hands all over her body.

"I'm fine David, I just had the wind knocked out of me from the fall."

"That was a fucking stupid thing you did!" He snarled as he pulled her into a sitting position and then yanked her into a fierce embrace. "You could've been killed!"

"He was going to kill me anyway, so I took the one chance that I could; you would have done the same thing," she argued.

"Shut up," he told her, knowing she was right. He held her for a few more moments and then released her. "Come on, I want to see our daughter."

**Dave and Katie's reunion is up next!**