Yea Though I Walk Through Death’s Valley

Ian woke with a start. His chest tight, heart pounding. He blinked hard around the dark space and made out the silhouette of shelves and old books. Danny’s living room came into focus. He didn’t know what woke him, but he was afraid—no, not afraid—he was terrified.

The last time he’d felt his sixth sense this keenly was the first anniversary after his mam left. The night his father stumbled into his room and beat him nearly to death.

Ian threw back the covers and rushed to Danny’s guestroom. The door lay wide open, and the light was on, but he wasn’t there. He called Danny’s name and grated a palm over his face, trying to force his mind to think. To see if the dread in the pit of his stomach would fade.

Claire’s door stood ajar, and he ran inside to an empty room. He checked the clock. Two a.m. Where the hell were they?

Under normal circumstances, he’d assume they were making out somewhere and mind his own business. But something hovered in the silence. A quiet so loud it screamed at him.

He took three deep breaths. The last thing he remembered was Claire saying she had to call her attorney, and Danny saying he’d catch up on paperwork while she did it.

Ian scratched through his thick, dark waves and heard the creak of the front gate. A loud cry followed, and he rushed to the window and tore back the curtains. Claire tripped and ran up the road toward Sven’s lane.

He cranked open the casement window and yelled for her, but she didn’t stop. Her fading sobs dampened inside the heavy snow.

“Danny?” He tore out of the room and down the stairs to Flygande. Dim lights illuminated the spotless pub, but—

He went still. A sound coming from Danny’s office punched the wind out of him. A woman laughed, followed by a recognizable, deep, male voice. Ian’s vision tunneled, and against his own will, his body drove him toward it. He had to be wrong. Those sounds weren’t what he thought they were.

He threw open the door.

Behind Danny’s desk in his chair was a wig-wearing Jessica, dressed in Claire’s clothes. She straddled Danny’s lap, topless, and he gripped her ass with his face buried deep into her chest.

“Oh, look.” Jessica smiled over her shoulder. “We have another visitor.”

“Claire?” Danny mumbled, without looking up.

“Not this time,” she sang out.

“Claire,” he said again.

Ian rushed forward and slammed a fist onto his desk. “Danny, look at me.”

Jessica squeaked, but Danny didn’t move.

“Face me right now and tell me what the hellyou’re doing.”

Danny’s head rolled back, and his eyes lolled open. “Wh-wha ... ” His face flopped back into her chest, and she laughed.

Realization slowly dawned and Ian gripped his hair. That wasn’t his best friend. “What did you do to him?”

“Only what I had to.” She ran her hands through Danny’s hair. “He was very specific.”

“Who was specific?”

Danny groaned, gripping her tighter. His lips smacked against her skin, and she threw her head back in hysterical laughter.

Ian twisted away to avoid seeing the front of her and spotted Danny’s tea mug nearly empty on the desk. He snatched it and sniffed. A strange smell mixed with the milk. “Did you drug this?”

Jessica pinched her lips closed and slowly smiled.

“Tell me.” His heart thundered in his ears. “Was it one of your mushrooms? Or something stronger?”

She giggled, shaking her head, and his hands automatically sprang toward her throat. He stopped short, curling them into fists.

“Just tell me what you gave him. How much did you give him?”

She lifted Danny’s head and his eyes rolled side to side, drool dribbling down his beard. “What he needed. Isn’t that right, Danny?” His eyes rolled back into his skull.

The lights flickered, but it wasn’t the lights. Ian’s vision blurred and sparked around the edges. He became acutely aware of every thump of his heart, every muscle curling his fingers tight into his palms. Telling him what he couldn’t accept. Wouldn’t accept.

Danny had overdosed.

Danny was going to die.

“Get off him.” He tore Jessica away, and she fell with cackling laughter.

Taking Danny by the shoulders, he quickly looked him over. Eyes were bloodshot. T-shirt torn, showing nail marks running down his skin.

“Shit.” Ian darted a quick glance to Danny’s zipper and sighed. It thankfully was closed.

Danny blubbered something incoherent, and Ian took him by the face. “Hey, hey. Look at me, bràthair.” He tapped his cheek. “Come on, open your eyes, Danny.”

“He was so smug throwing me out.” Jessica laughed from the floor. “Not so tough now, are ya, baby?”

Ian closed his eyes, inhaling through his nose. Think. He had to ignore her and think.

“Auntie.” He tripped on his way to the phone and looked down at the shirt tangled in his feet. Jessica laughed again, and he threw it at her. “Get dressed, witch.”

Under the phone, a notepad in Danny’s writing caught his eye.

My Claire,

I love you. That’s what I wanted to say before Ian interrupted us outside. I LOVE YOU. There’s so much more I want to say, which is why I’m writing this out like an ass, because I lose words when I’m around you. And I don’t want to miss telling you everything.

I was drowning before I met you, and now I can’t imagine breathing without you. I want to taste tea lips every morning for the rest of my life, if you’ll have me ... The last word had a long line squiggling from it. Ian swallowed. That must’ve been when the drugs kicked in.

“Oh God, Claire.” Ian pressed a fist against his mouth, remembering how she’d left. She must’ve seen them but didn’t understand what was happening. How the hell was he going to fix this?

“The look on her face.” Jessica cackled.

Ian bit hard on his tongue. “Ignore her, help Danny, then find Claire. Ignore her, help Danny, then find Claire.”

Danny’s head lolled forward with a moan, and his eyes drifted open with a slow blink. “F-Fin?”

“No, it’s Ian.”

He squinted. “Are you sure?”

Ian spun toward Jessica. “Did you use a hallucinogenic?”

She grinned and pretended to zip her lips.

“Danny, listen to me, you’ve been drugged.” He took him by the face again. “I gotta get you up to Doc Clark.”

He slowly smiled. “Doc? I’m not s-sick. I just feel a little f-fu-uny.” His head dropped forward.

Ian gripped it. “No, stay with me.” He picked up the handset and quickly dialed the number. A groggy voice answered. “Auntie?” His voice cracked. “I need to bring Danny in.”

“Ian? Clark’s asleep. He stayed up drinking with Gene last night. What’s wrong?”

“Danny accidentally drank some sort of drug.” He glanced at Jessica, hoping for an answer, but she was slumped against the wall, eyes closed but smiling. “I-I’m not sure what it was, but—” Danny’s head slammed down on the desk. “Danny. Auntie, oh my God, I think he’s overdosed.”

“Jesus and Mary. Of all the nights for Clark to ... never you mind, bring him in. I know what to do.”

“Thank—”

The line went dead, and he looked down. Jessica held up a torn phone cord. “Oops.”

“You little—”

Danny groaned, snapping Ian out of that violent thought. Body shaking, he secured Danny’s arm over his shoulder and heaved him up with a grunt.

“Come on, bràthair.”

Danny’s eyes fluttered open, and his brow furrowed. “Where’s Claire?”

Ian strained to walk him forward, tuning out a hysterically laughing Jessica. “She’s not here.”

“Of course she is.” He smiled and his head flopped to Ian’s shoulder. “She was just kissing me.”

“That wasn’t Claire, Danny.” He refused to think about that future conversation. The one that might permanently break his best friend if Claire decided to leave him without getting an explanation.

Only one hope kept him focused. Snow. If this storm was as big as they predicted, it would close the bridge and keep her here, for now. That’s what he would focus on. Not the ball of razor wire cutting up his insides.

He hefted his barely conscious friend out the office door. Danny was going to be okay. He just needed to keep him talking, and he’d be okay. “It’s going to be cold out, but you won’t mind, will you, bràthair?”

“Nah, I’m the Viking.” Danny’s smile avalanched off his face, and his feet followed.

“No, Danny, wake up.” Ian groaned under his weight and squeezed his side. “Stay with me.”

Danny fully lost consciousness, and the weight of him took them both down hard.

Ian scrambled to his feet, pulling on both his arms. Danny’s limp, heavy body wouldn’t budge. He tried again. “Wake. Up.”

Danny slipped through his hands, landing with a thud.

“No.” Ian dropped and checked Danny’s racing pulse before ripping out his phone and dialing Fin. “Pick up, pick up.” It went directly to voicemail. He dialed again and the call dropped. The dreaded “no signal” popped up in the upper corner of his phone. “No, no, no, come on.” He dropped the phone and gripped Danny’s arm, hefting him over his shoulder.

Groaning, Ian put all Danny’s weight into his aching thighs and started to stand. His knees buckled, and he yelled out. Two nights of no sleep and that damn dive.

He grabbed Danny’s shoulders and shook him. “Wake up. Come on, wake up”

It rose in the pit of his stomach, and he clutched over it. Dread, oily and thick, swelled and seeped into every muscle and nerve, shutting down his mind.

He’d told Danny about his graces—those people and things that came into his life at the right moment—but he never told Danny he was the biggest grace of all. His constant. The rock under his feet in the upheaval of his life. His bràthair. The one he could count on when he lost his way.

He never told him, all those nights as a kid, how much it meant to him that he would look for his sign in the window. The one only Danny knew that told him Ian’s old man wasn’t sober.

All those nights when Danny climbed up to his room to check on him. And on the bad days, carried him all the way to his aunt and Clark for help.

Ian never told him because he was ashamed of all the trouble he’d caused without wanting to. Ashamed that he always seemed to drag Danny down with him.

Danny didn’t know. “My God, he’ll never know.”

Danny gurgled, and Ian looked at his face. It wasn’t the right color. “No!” Ian slapped him hard. “Wake up. Don’t do this to me.” His eyes shot toward the ceiling. “Don’t you dare take him. You hear me? This should be me, not him. Me.” Spit flew from his mouth, and he smacked his chest. “I’m the one you should’ve let overdose all those years ago.”

He violently shook Danny. “Wake up. You have a whole life to live. Claire to love. Babies to make.” Tears streamed down his face, and he choked on them. “Please.” He yanked on his arms, yelling all his strength into pulling him up and his legs gave out, slamming him down onto his best friend’s chest.

“Don’t leave me.” A sob tore free, and the broken boy inside him escaped. He grabbed Danny’s face. “You promised me. Remember? We were twelve, in my room, and you promised you’d never leave me without a goodbye like Mam did.” He had no more voice. “Danny, please. You promised me. You—”

Danny convulsed, and Ian swiped an arm across his eyes, looking him over. Another convulsion and Ian quickly rolled him to his side, so he didn’t choke on his vomit.

The front door swung open and two snow-covered bodies stumbled in, laughing. “I’ll be fine walking home by myself. I just want to grab my purse from Danny’s kitchen—” Emelie spotted Ian.

“Help,” he croaked.

“Danny?” She ran to him and dropped down, pulling his head from the mess onto her lap. “What happened? What’s wrong with him?”

Ian had no strength to tell her, but his eyes fell on a tall, young man with a familiar face. “Finlay, h-he needs Auntie.”

“Shit, Ian. Of course.” He dropped down and took one of Danny’s arms, easing him up to sit. “Get his other side.” Ian’s foggy mind latched onto Fin’s instructions and together they started lifting him.

“Please tell me what happened.” Emelie lifted from the back.

“Drugged ... Jessica,” was all Ian managed to get out.

“She did what?” she yelled. “But how? I watched her leave in a black town car.”

“Well, she’s in there and won’t tell me anything.” He nodded toward Danny’s office. “And, Em? She may have successfully and permanently destroyed his relationship with Claire.”

“Get him to Annie.” Emelie faced the office, and Ian had never heard her voice go so low. “Leave her to me.”

Emelie stood in the doorway to Danny’s office, arms crossed, inhaling deep breaths. For the first time since it had happened, she understood how Danny had almost killed Seth.

She had always believed that even if she disliked a woman, there was a fundamental level of camaraderie that all women bonded over.

Complete and utter bullshit.

Time ceased as she remained in the doorway, talking herself down from everything she wanted to do to the wretch crawling across the floor of the office. She watched as Jessica pulled herself up by Danny’s desk and read something below the phone before cursing and flopping back into Danny’s chair.

For him. Emelie told herself. For Danny’s sake, she’d keep her feet planted in the doorway and not kill Jessica.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she ripped it out, gusting a relieved breath. Service had momentarily come back, and a text came through from Fin. WHO’D HAVE THOUGHT THAT THROWING UP COULD BE A GOOD THING? HE’S WEAK, BUT AUNTIE SAYS DANNY’S GOING TO BE OKAY. THOUGHT YOU’D WANT TO KNOW.

“What are you doing here?” Jessica’s voice snapped her back.

Emelie shoved the phone into her pocket. “I was debating whether I should kill you or beat you first.”

“You can’t—” Jessica’s butt slid from the chair and hit the floor. “Unless you want to end up in jail with Danny.”

Emelie flexed her hands and stepped in slowly. “The only one going to jail is you.”

“Rape.” Jessica smiled before her face contorted into fake trauma. “He tried to rape me, officer.” She finished in a fit of hysterical giggles. “Who will they believe, Emelie?”

“That’ll never work, you piece of shit.”

“Wanna bet?”

Emelie took a heavy step forward and stopped, eyes darting up to the corner of the room. She eased back and rolled her shoulders. “He was drugged. It’ll take one simple test to prove that.”

Jessica pulled herself up by Danny’s desk again, wobbled, then steadied herself. “Yes, but those same drugs can be found in my system. Who’s to say he didn’t force them on me before he took them himself and attacked me.” She smirked.

“You have this all planned out, huh?”

She giggled and swayed. “It wasn’t all my idea. But yeah, it’s a good plan.”

“You mean the plan where you drug Danny and dress up like Claire to destroy their relationship?”

“Yes, and it worked just like he said it would.”

“Who’s he?”

“Shh.” Jessica lifted a forefinger, missed her lips, and bumped her nose. “I’m talking.”

Emelie rolled her eyes.

“He contacted me a few weeks ago and told me he’d give me the good stuff if I seduced Danny away from that stuck-up, entitled bitch. Drugging Danny was my idea, though.”

“Yeah, because you couldn’t seduce shit.”

Jessica sniffed and rubbed her nose, and Emelie didn’t have to guess what the good stuff was. “Well, he said my idea was genius.”

“Always in need of attention, aren’t you?”

Jessica waved her off. “Why don’t you go call your handsome cop friend so I can tell him what Danny did to me?” She fake pouted.

Emelie slowly lifted a finger and pointed to the corner above her head. Then she traced an invisible line to the next corner and the next, circling around back to Jessica. “It’s hard to see them. But Jake Matthews is thorough, if nothing else.”

“Did you snort something?”

“Cameras, Jessie-pooh. They’ve been there recording everything you confessed and everything you,” she slowly smiled, “did.”

Jessica’s eyes darted to every corner. “You’re lying.”

“Am I?”

She collided with the desk, straining until she saw them camouflaged with the wood. Her mouth dropped open. “That’s why he suggested I be in Danny’s office. That bastard knew they were here.”

“Who’s the genius now?” Emelie grinned and leaned a hip against the desk. “Just think, soon you’ll be in prison with no men to manipulate or seduce. All without your happy pills.”

Jessica snapped toward her and slipped a shaking hand inside her bag. “I won’t go to jail.”

“Yeah, you will.”

Jessica ripped out an unmarked bottle and emptied the contents down her throat.

Emelie collided with her, toppling her to the ground. Straddling her writhing body, Emelie pried opened Jessica’s mouth and shoved two fingers down her throat. “You won’t do this to him. You don’t get to kill yourself and make Danny live with the guilt.”

Jessica gagged and Emelie thrust her face to the side as she emptied the contents of her stomach onto the floor. Emelie wiped her fingers on her leg, took her by the arms, and dragged her to her feet.

“Where are you taking me?” Jessica coughed and wiped her mouth.

Emelie pulled her without answering into the storage room, glared at the wide-open back door with Jessica’s keys still in the lock, and snatched a container of zip ties on her way back to the office. She plopped Jessica into Danny’s chair.

“What are you doing?”

“Keeping you still until the cops pick you up.” Emelie tightened a tie around each wrist and secured her ankles.

“Wait. You don’t understand, it was his idea. He planned all of this.”

“For the love of God.” Emelie stood and rubbed out a kink in her lower back. “Who the hell is ‘he?’”

“If I tell you everything, you have to promise me leniency.”

“I don’t have to promise you shit.” Emelie pointed to the cameras.

Jessica sat back with a huff. “I’m not going to jail for him.”

“Jess, I swear to God, if you don’t say—”

“Donald Henderson.”

Emelie went still. When Danny wasn’t able to fully calm after Greyson left, he’d confided in her and Ian about a man named Henderson. “I thought he was out of the country.”

Jessica snorted. “No, honey. Jake Matthews may be thorough, but I think he’ll be out of business once it comes out that he failed to protect his biggest client.” She laughed. “He couldn’t even keep her son from helping him, scouting Flygande ... ” She paused glaring at the cameras. “Probably how Henderson knew about those.” She sniffed again. “He even pulled a bump-swipe with Danny. Stole his phone right out of his pocket for some security code.”

Emily cursed. “That’s why the alarm didn’t go off when you snuck in. Why the hell would Greyson help that man?”

Jessica leaned forward again. “Between you and me, I think ol’ Henderson became a daddy replacement.”

“The dinner was a setup.”

“All part of the plan.” Jessica awkwardly winked. “Henderson thinks he’s some super smarty, but he can’t play me. I’m letting it all spill out.” She spread her fingers in dramatic emphasis. “Like how he convinced his own brother to go to jail for stalking.”

“Wait. Kenneth Greene? He’s Henderson’s brother?”

“Half brother, but he looked up to his big bro enough to help out. Starting with a taxicab at the airport, and a text with Madelynn’s location when she arrived.”

“That’s how he knew where to stalk her.” Emelie plopped in a different chair with a heavy sigh. “But why would Kenneth go to jail for him?”

Jessica rubbed two fingers together. “Money. A lot, actually. The same amount he’d offered me, but I knew better than to take cash. I told him upfront that he had to provide half the goods before I did anything, but Kenny ... ” She stopped talking and stared at her hand like she forgot it was tied.

“Kenneth?” Emelie urged.

“He wasn’t smart enough to realize he’d never see a dime.”

“But if he’s in jail, that means Henderson could still be here on Solsken.”

“Look who’s catching on.” Jessica slowly smiled, stage whispering, “And with you all preoccupied with me, who’s left to keep him from dear, precious Madelynn Claire Cooke?”

A blaring alarm went off, and Emelie threw her hands over her ears.

“I didn’t do it,” Jessica shrieked.

Emelie ran to the front door of Flygande, using her shoulder and one hand to block her ears. Her free hand froze on the alarm. It was no longer camouflaged but lit up in flashing colors. “I didn’t know it could do that.”

The words: Enter Code, flashed along the screen.

“Why are you asking me for a code? The door is unlocked. No one set you.”

Enter Code ... Enter Code ... Enter Code ...

She quickly entered the security code, but it beeped. Invalid ... Enter Code.

A chill streaked down her spine when she remembered something Danny had once told her. Some of Jake Matthews’ systems had a built-in fail-safe. A way he could communicate with the customer when all other communication systems failed. Danny had paid for the extra service because of the spotty cell service during winter.

She ran up the stairs to Danny’s apartment for her purse. Praying she kept the scrap of paper he’d written the code on. Snatching her purse, she dug deep. “Oh, crap.” She pulled out a crumpled piece of paper that she’d stupidly wrapped around gum. Carefully peeling it back, she rushed down to the still blaring alarm and squinted, putting in a series of complicated numbers, letters, and symbols.

The silence was deafening, though the box still flashed in colors. It beeped again, followed by a scrolling message:

EMERGENCY ... THIS IS JAKE MATTHEWS ... MADELYNN COOKE-JOHNSON’S LOCATION NOT FOUND ... REPORT IF KNOWN ... EMERGENCY ...

The haunting gong of Old Governor reverberated in the air outside. “Oh, my God.” Emelie sprinted out the front door, not hearing Jessica’s fading demands for an ear doctor.