Free [B.S. #1] Tied Up in Knotts by Dale Cadeau

place right now? Let me speak to him. I’ll set him straight. I’ll make sure you have no problems with him.”
    Keeping her head down, Avery passed the phone to a now angry James.
    “Clay…”
    “James.” Clay growled the return greeting.
    “Can you tell me what you’re doing up in Avery’s apartment at this time of night. Can’t you keep your motor cooled and at least let her settle in?”
    “I heard a noise and came up to investigate, nothing more.” James said in a deadpan voice. He was pissed. He knew his friend was just protecting Avery, but God he just wanted to hit something.
    “Are you sure that’s all you were doing, James?” Clay now had a smile in his voice. He loved having James on the other end of the string hanging and having to explain his actions. Usually it was the other way around. James had been the commander of their unit and was usually the one asking the question and demanding answers.
    “OK, OK, don’t rub it in. I’m just leaving.” Handing back the phone to Avery, James made his way to the door. He didn’t see anything funny in the situation. Clay had a funny sense of humor.
    “You just wait a minute.” Avery clutched the phone in one hand and put her other hand out, palm up, in James’s direction. “I want the keys.” James took one look at the outstretched hand and said, “No,” and closed the door behind him.
    “Clay,” Avery whined into the phone. “He wouldn’t give me his keys back.” She sounded like a brat, but damn she wanted her keys. This was her place.
    “We all have keys to the apartment. It’s for your protection. Now look at it this way. If there had been an intruder in the apartment and James had to take time to knock down the door, you could be dead. It only takes a second and I for one don’t want to take that chance,” Clay tried to reason with her.
    Avery though for a minute. “But there wasn’t any intruder. James should have left as soon as he saw the way was clear.” Avery knew she was arguing for the sake of arguing now, but couldn’t seem to stop. She was still pissed at James
    “I’ll talk to him in the morning and clear this all up.”
    At Clay’s words, Avery stopped. She didn’t want to create bad feelings between the friends.
    “I don’t want him to get fired. He probably doesn’t know all the rules. We are all new to the situation.”
    Clay agreed, scratching his head. Maybe that’s the problem. James didn’t know the rules. Clay laughed at the thought. “I’ll make sure that this doesn’t happen again, unless it’s an emergency. Now go back to bed and get some sleep. Oh by the way, did you hear the same noise that James did?” Clay asked.
    “No, I didn’t, sorry to bother you.” Avery bit her lip. James had helped her out of her pity fest and hadn’t harmed her in any way. He had been trying to be nice and now he was mad at her. Calling the boss on him was just a bit of an overreaction. What if it had been an intruder? It was nice knowing she wasn’t all alone in the building that she was supposed to protect.
    Clay had better teach her how to shoot or at least some self-defense moves if she was going to do this job properly. Oh God, she would have to apologize to James in the morning and talk to Clay, telling him she had overreacted.
    Avery closed the phone after saying bye to Clay and made her way back to her solitary bed. The way she was going, it would remain that way. Everyone was going to think she was crazy or too much work to handle. She crawled into her bed and pulled the covers over her head. How had a great day turned out so bad? With a big sigh, Avery plumped her pillow and tried to get some sleep.

Chapter Nine
     
    The next morning found Avery showered, dressed, and walking down the hall and into the small office kitchen before 8:00 a.m. She knew she was early, but after last night, she might have to do some groveling and wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. Curving her head, she peeked