The elevator doors on the top floor of the Graham Agency slid open, and the Delivery Man, with a bouquet of red roses in his hand, made his way to the secretary’s desk.  Teegan Salley, Roz’s secretary, smiled.  “For me, I hope,” she said.

But the delivery man wasn’t even looking at her.  He was looking at the two men that stood guard outside of Roz’s office door.  He hadn’t expected that.  He took care of her security detail outside.  Both of those men were dead.  Where the hell did these two come from?  He’d heard that Sinatra loved the bitch, but two security details on one female?  There wasn’t that much love in this world!

But apparently so, he realized, because that second detail he hadn’t counted on was right there, in his way.  And he had to improvise.

He looked at Teegan with a grand smile.  “If your name is Rosalind Sinatra,” he said, “they’re for you.”

The two guards glanced at each other.  When one of them began to make his way toward the secretary’s desk, the delivery man knew he was about to be exposed.  He took the bouquet of roses and threw them toward the guards, and then ran with all he had toward the door that led to the stairwell.

The two guards, realizing they had a hot one on their hands, began drawing their guns and running after the man.  They flung open the stairwell door the delivery man had escaped through, and ran through it, too, and down the stairwell.

But as soon as they began running down the stairs, they realized their error.  Both of them stopped in their tracks.  There was no way that guy would have disappeared that fast.  They were just behind him.  So they turned around, and looked behind themselves.  When they saw the delivery man standing there, with his gun pointed directly at them, they had no time to react.  He shot and killed them both.

But he shot them just as the stairwell door downstairs opened, and Mick the Tick, along with two of his men who had been secretly stationed in the downstairs lobby: security detail number three, hurried in.  Mick already knew that two of his guys, security detail number two in a car that had been positioned in front of the Graham agency, had been killed.  That was why he took the stairs.

When Mick looked upstairs, and saw that his men on security detail number one had been shot too, he began running up those stairs.  The Delivery man, seeing him, knew he didn’t have a second to lose.

He ran back up to the stairwell entrance, back onto the top floor, and made a fast run for Roz’s office. 

When the shots first rang out in the stairwell, Roz was sitting behind her desk eating a sandwich and strolling through emails.  Mick had already phoned and ordered her to stay in lockdown, although he didn’t tell her why, and security around her was already beefed up.  Two of his men were stationed outside of her office, and two were stationed in the lobby downstairs, and two were stationed outside.  As far as she knew, everything was fine.

Until those shots rang out.

When she heard those shots, she knew everything wasn’t fine, and she had to find out why.

She jumped up, grabbed the loaded gun she kept in her side drawer, and hurried toward her closed office door just as the delivery man was running past Teegan’s desk and hurrying toward that same closed door.  Teegan, who was calling Security because of those gunshots, backed up so fast when she saw the delivery man again that she fell over her chair.

But Roz didn’t panic like that.  Mick had once told her that he would kick her ass if she panicked in the face of a crisis.  “Fight,” he told her.  “Use your instincts and fight for your motherfucking life!”  And it was her instincts that told her to get away from that door as soon as she began running toward it.

But just as her instincts were telling her to change direction, the delivery man’s instincts were telling him to kick her door open.  And he did.  He kicked it open with just one kick. 

Mick ran out of the stairwell and onto the top floor just as the delivery man kicked open Roz’s office door.  His heart sank.  And he knew he had no time to waste.  He stooped into a defensive pose, to make sure his aim was certain, and got ready to fire.

But Roz was already ready.  As soon as the delivery man entered her office shooting wildly at the chair that was now turned backwards toward the window, as if he just knew she was still in that chair lounging behind her desk, Roz stepped out of the adjacent bathroom with her gun locked and loaded and firing too.  She shot the delivery man once from the side, which surprised and then staggered him, and she kept on firing.  She wasn’t one of those females who would shoot once and drop the gun in nervous fright, as if the gun was her enemy.  She kept walking toward that man firing repeatedly.  He was her enemy, and she’d be damned if he was getting out of this alive to torment her or her family again.  She shot him until he was so down, and so dead, that even his bullet-riddled body stopped jerking from the impact of the wounds.  She didn’t empty her gun; Mick taught her better than that.  But she came close.

Mick, stunned and relieved that the shooter had been taken out, ran into the office.  When he saw that Roz was okay and the delivery man was dead, he had to lean against the doorjamb just to stabilize his pounding heart.

And when Roz saw Mick, she did as she often did and relied on his strength rather than just her own.  The main reason was because her nerves were now catching up to her bold actions, and she needed his reassuring presence.  All she could think to do was make her way to Mick.  She had to get to Mick!

When she got to him, they stood there and stared at each other momentarily, as if they both understood the gravity of the situation and the boldness it took for somebody to even think about assassinating Mick’s wife.

They also understood just how close a call it really was.  So close that Roz could see something remarkable.  She saw terror in Mick’s big, green eyes: terror that he almost lost her; terror that he almost failed her.  And that look broke her heart.  Because she knew her husband.  She knew he would blame himself for all of it, and hate himself because of it.

But when he opened his big, muscular arms, she couldn’t help it.  She still relied on his towering strength.  Because she knew, even at his weakest moment, he was the strongest man alive.

She fell into his arms, and held him tight.