Out Of The Blue Read online

  Out Of The Blue

  P. Dangelico

  Copyright © 2021 by P. Dangelico

  Out of the Blue

  978-0-578-89690-8

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Also by P. Dangelico

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Nobody prepares for catastrophe. I mean, let’s be real. It’s not like anyone wakes up one day and says, “Today is the day I get ready for my life to hit a brick wall going a hundred miles per hour,” and acts accordingly. Because––my two cents here––whether we’d like to admit it or not, most of us hope for the best even though we often get the worst.

  Fundamentally, the human species is a tragically optimistic lot. It’s what keeps us moving, evolving, thriving. Myself included, even though personal experience has taught me that life doesn’t give notice. Good and bad happen, for lack of a better description, out of the blue.

  In the corner of my left eye, Jess’ white BMW 3 Series comes into view. It’s traveling toward me at a high rate of speed, blowing with nary a pause past the Harris Ranch sign, which has been hanging at the end of the driveway since this place was built close to a hundred years ago.

  In fact, I’m absolutely certain she just hit the gas. The car fishtails and kicks up a cloud of red dust. It’s a scene straight out of a Mad Max movie.

  “Uh oh…”

  My feelers immediately perk up because the immutable facts are as follows:

  Fact number one: Jess works in Beverly Hills as a junior agent at one of the big three talent agencies, a good hour and half away from the furthest reaches of Ojai where the Harris Ranch is located.

  Fact number two: Jess hates anything remotely rural. You’d have to drag her by her perfectly flat-ironed hair to any place that isn’t covered in concrete.

  Fact number three: It’s Jess, so this is going to be bad no matter what it is.

  I’ve never been great at math, but in this moment, I am Isaac freaking Newton calculating every variable from wind speed to the ground distance I need to cover to get to the farmhouse. Unfortunately, I determine that even my personal best isn’t good enough to save me. In other words, I don’t have the time to run and hide. Which I could argue is a good general description of my life thus far.

  “Brace for impact, Billy.”

  Billy, the one-eyed dwarf goat we rescued from a neglectful petting zoo, squints at me with his one good yellow eye but otherwise remains by my side next to the feeder. Little man loves to eat. The problem is, with the heat index hovering somewhere between convection oven and hot-as-the-deepest-corners-of-hell, the grain mixed with flax seeds sours quickly and this batch needs to be dumped. All in a day’s work when you run a rescue which includes multiple regular-sized horses and two elderly Percherons, three mini horses, two sheep, four goats, two mini donkeys, one lamb, one llama, and a couple of chickens. No partridge in a pear tree yet.

  Dropping the shovel on the rain-thirsty summer ground, I tip up my baseball cap and wipe my sweaty face with the collar of my faded Raiders t-shirt, because hunched over a pile of rancid, leftover grain isn’t how I want to have this conversation.

  The BMW comes to a hard stop in front of the fence I’m standing behind and dirt billows up around me. It lands and sticks to every exposed, sweaty surface of my body. Excellent.

  The car door swings open and the red sole of my best friend’s black Louboutin high heel hits the ground hard.

  “Mierda,” she growls. Pushing her black Tom Ford sunglasses to the top of her head, she inspects the dirt covering her pumps with an expression of pure disgust.

  “Hey…” My voice comes out strangely high and thin, shooting up on the last vowel like it does when shit’s about to get real. “What are you doing here…” I ask, sliding out between the slats of the paddock fence to face whatever reckoning’s coming, “in your work clothes… in the middle of the day?”

  To understand the question, you’d have to understand my BFF. Jess is the person who rings your doorbell unannounced at 1:00 in the morning holding an overnight bag because she decided a trip to Vegas is suddenly absolutely essential. I once went seventy-four hours without sleep because she insisted on driving to Texas to see a Beyoncé concert. We were sixteen at the time. Her parents were not amused that we “borrowed” their car without permission.

  Jess is the most spontaneous person I’ve ever met. And that’s saying a lot because I used to be pretty spontaneous myself. But there’s good reason to be on guard whenever she shows up for an unscheduled visit. Because there’s a very good chance that an arrest warrant awaits you at the end of that journey.

  Her brown eyes drag from her expensive kicks to me, and for a split second, there’s a heavy dose of guilt in them that only a rare few who know her well would detect.

  “If you answered your dang phone, I wouldn’t need to be here ruining my new shoes, would I?” She’s obviously still salty about her shoes so I tamp down the urge to chuckle at her expense.

  “Who answers calls anymore? Learn to text like the rest of civilized society.”

  “I did text, you savage. Maybe check your phone more than once a week.”

  She has me there. I’ve been enjoying my comfortably numb bubble for the last few years, and any intrusion from the outside world feels like a chore now.

  Jess’ gaze runs up and down my body, her expression pained. “You’re wearing overalls.”

  The woman is positively militant about fashion.

  “They’re practical.”

  She shakes her head. “I thought you were going through a phase when you took this job.” She glances around. “Who lives like this?”

  “You mean who lives in the country, enjoying fresh air and physical safety? I do. I live like this. And it’s a phase I plan on continuing forever.”

  I love Ojai. I love everything about it. More importantly, however, it’s been the safe place I desperately needed. Nothing would ever compel me to move back to L.A. Not even the food trucks.

  A donkey’s very loud bray cuts the awkward pause in conversation.

  “Your life is officially an episode of Naked and Afraid.”

  “With a five-star spa resort in town?” I counter, compelled to defend my little slice
of heaven. “More like Naked and Pampered.”

  “It’s just so,” she rubs her manicured fingers together, testing the grit in the air, “grimy.”

  That fact alone makes her visit all the more suspicious. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here or are we going to play Truth or Dare?”

  Chewing on her bottom lip, her gaze slides over to meet mine. “Yeah, yeah… we need to talk.”

  “Jessica…”

  Nodding. Some more nodding. Her perfectly-airbrushed mask falls, and she suddenly looks nervous. “Okay, so I did a thing.”

  My smile dips. All the way down. To my feet.

  “You did a thing?” It goes without saying that nobody here assumes it’s a good thing. “What kind of a thing did you do?”

  “You know who Aidan Hughes is, right?”

  I can’t even pretend to be offended by her question because celebrities in general and current news about them are not at the top of the list of things I give a flip about these days. “The actor? Yeah, the guy’s a train wreck––”

  “Exactly!” The devious spark in her eyes tells my well-developed survival instincts that it’s legitimately time to be scared. “Anyway, Cruella reps him––”

  “No,” comes out hard and fast because Cruella is her codename for her evil boss, and I know a trap when I hear one.

  “I haven’t asked you anything yet.”

  “Whatever it is––the answer is no.”

  “Twisted sisters,” she says forcefully if not a little desperately.

  And shit.

  Jess and I have been friends since the day her family moved to the San Fernando Valley and into the apartment next door to the one I shared with my dad. I was an only child hungry for someone to bond with, and Jess was one in practice since her older brother Robert had enlisted in the Marines.

  We quickly bonded over our general grievances of our parents––my singular one parent being largely absent and her still-married parents being overbearing. That and our mutual love of adventure.

  We made a pact all those years ago to look out for one another. This pact included a safe word: twisted sisters. Were it ever invoked, the other person would have to agree to the request, no questions asked. The one stipulation was that it had to be something important––a life-changing event.

  “You’re calling it?” I ask, forced to double check my disbelieving ears.

  “I’m calling it.” She glances up into the scorching sun, face pinched, and pulls her shades back down over her eyes. “Can we do this inside? My recently-lasered skin is hating me right now.”

  Granting mercy, I head for the farmhouse. “Follow me in the car,” I tell her.

  The black pencil skirt she’s wearing won’t allow for more than an inchworm step. It would take her twenty minutes to cover the hundred feet from the paddock to the farmhouse, and I’m anxious to get this over with.

  The main house is everything you’d expect a hundred-year-old California farmhouse to look like. The ivory-painted concrete exterior is marred with chips and cracks. The red, clay-tiled roof has a number of busted and missing tiles, and the oak, wraparound porch has seen better days. There’s a lot of wear and tear, but there’s also plenty of charm. When I moved in three years ago, it was falling apart. Some elbow grease and a lot of help from a talented local handyman has transformed it into something special. A place I’m lucky to call home.

  On the porch, I kick off my muck boots and push the screen door open. Headed straight to the kitchen, I motion for Jess to follow. One of the largest rooms in the house, it was built big enough to feed all the men working the ranch over the years. Close to fifty at one point. Now it only feeds two.

  I hand Jess a can of Diet Coke from the refrigerator and pull out the pitcher of lemonade for myself.

  “How’s Irma?” I ask.

  For years, her parents served as my de facto adopted ones, acting more parental than my own at times. With my dad working long hours and late nights as an LAPD detective, I spent many a nights eating and sleeping over at the Martinez house. I could go weeks without seeing my dad for more than an hour or two a day.

  “Good,” she says nonchalantly while an elephant runs rampant in the room.

  “Your dad?”

  Shrugging, she looks away and back. A year and a half ago, Juan had a massive heart attack, and although she’d never admit it, not even to me, I know she’s been worried about him ever since.

  Jess has always had a tough shell, an innate ability to let everything roll off her back without allowing it to leave a lasting impression, so this comes as no surprise. But after working in Hollywood for years, that shell had transformed into an impenetrable armor, and I’m fairly certain it’s not a good thing.

  “She’s got him on a low carb, low fat, no salt, no sugar diet and it’s making him bitchy as fuck.”

  “That’s tough,” I say, wincing in solidarity.

  “Hold the sympathy.” She takes a long drag of her soda. “She found a burrito in a brown paper bag taped to the back of the toilet bowl tank the other day.” Pausing, she looks me over, scrutinizing my face. “My mother keeps asking when your bony white ass is coming over for dinner.”

  We’ve officially hit the third rail of the conversation. There’s no easy answer to that. The incident, as I like to call it, changed everything.

  While on my way home from working a late shift four years ago, I was assaulted in the parking lot of our old building. Thankfully, my dad has now moved into a new place down the street. But the Martinezes still live there, just off Victory Blvd in Van Nuys.

  Sympathy fills Jess’ brown eyes. “Never mind. I know what you’re going to say.”

  That I can’t. That I’m too busy when it’s only partly true. Rationally, I know the man who attacked me can’t ever hurt me again, but the experience changed me forever. Fear can’t be reasoned with. It’s got its own set of rules, and rule number one is you either conquer it or submit to its crippling power. It’s taken me four years to accept that I’ll never be the same again.

  “Are you seeing a therapist?”

  I was seeing a therapist when I was living in L.A. But after a while, rehashing the past didn’t feel productive anymore. It was time to move on and move forward. Starting over somewhere new, without all those memories, felt good instead of constantly talking about what had been.

  “Too busy right now.”

  The concern on her face makes me uncomfortable. Like I’m failing somehow.

  “You’re gonna have to face those demons sooner or later.”

  I’m not entirely sure that’s true. First, they’ve gotten way smaller and more manageable. And second, I’m very comfortable with where they are right now––out of the way, nicely tucked in the back of my mind where I tend to them as assiduously as I do the animals in my care but otherwise don’t have to deal with them.

  “Thanks, Dr. Drew. I’ll work on it.”

  Besides, what’s wrong with ignoring your issues? Is there a rule that says issues need to be dealt with at all? Do they have rights? Is the ACLU calling for issues’ representation? Until then, like the saying goes, keep your friends close and your issues closer, or something like that.

  “Hi, y’all,” comes from down the hall. Mona waltzes into the kitchen, followed closely by a man who could be Sam Elliot’s ugly cousin.

  How to describe Mona Harris…

  Mona’s a plus-sized, fifties pin-up girl with black hair and bright blue eyes, fond of tight-fitting shirts and jeans and dirty jokes. She’s somewhere around her late sixties. I’m guesstimating because who the heck knows. There’s no way Mona would ever admit her true age. She’s even blacked out the year on all her IDs with a Sharpie marker.

  “This is Darby,” she says, motioning to the silver-ponytailed man making rude eyes at her body.

  None of us miss the fact that Mona looks worked over, her hair sticking up in all the wrong places. She’d either run through a car wash or spent the morning riding Darby. My m
oney’s on Darby. He’s got the glassy look in his eyes to prove it.

  Mona’s bright blue gaze shifts between me and Jess. “What are y’all up to today?”

  A point of clarification: Mona was born and raised in Southern California. There’s absolutely no reason for her to speak with a southern accent yet that obvious fact does not seem to stop her. She falls somewhere between Blanche Devereaux and Rose Nyland on The Golden Girls scale. Weird fake accent and shenanigans aside, she’s one of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever met. The minute I sat down on her beat-up leather couch for my interview, I knew immediately that I wanted to work for her.

  I shoot her a look that says why the hell is there a strange man in the house? This isn’t even the first time I’ve had to use it.

  “Didn’t we discuss not having strange men over without alerting the other person?” I whisper hiss, pointing to myself in case there was any question who the other person is.

  “Darby ain’t strange.” She throws a sassy look at a smiling Darby. “Are you, Darb? I mean you do like to do that thing with your toes, but that’s more kinky than strange.”

  Jess snorts. Diet Coke shoots down the wrong pipe and she coughs until I’m forced to lean over and pat her back.

  A phone rings with an incoming text message and Darby fishes a cell phone out of the back pocket of his jeans. “My Uber ride is here. Bye, Sugar.”

  Then I have to suffer through watching him place a chaste kiss on Mona’s lips, which she turns into a tonsil hockey session.

  “You have Uber out here?” Jess mutters, genuinely surprised.

  “No,” Darby clarifies. “It’s my son. He does his own thing, driving people around. But it’s like an Uber.”

  “Uh, okay,” Jess replies, obviously confused.