The release of Trouble to the Last Drop is only three weeks away! How about an excerpt from Chapter One to whet your appetite?
🚨SPOILER WARNING!!!🚨
The following excerpt contains MASSIVE SPOILERS for the previous four books. Don’t read this excerpt until you’ve read those books!
A Movie Script Ending
RJ Valentine’s final manuscript, bequeathed to the one who solved his murder, opened with a surprising wrinkle: Trouble, the pint-sized Girl Detective with a penchant for mischief, had finally grown up.
I Dream of TroubleChapter 1
The Poison Pen is dead. I just spent an hour rearranging the Staff Favorites shelf by color, without a single customer asking for help. Finally, Mrs. Carnegie relents and says we can close early, which is how I find myself unexpectedly free on a Friday evening. The weather is unseasonably warm for Blackbird Springs in April, warm enough to ditch my purple hoodie and let the humid air from the hot springs tickle my bare arms. I head across the park lawn in Town Square to see if the girlies at the Basque want to hang. Gusts of wind keep blowing out my matches before I can light a cigarette. “Ya know, those things will kill you, Trouble,” says Jack. My half-brother appears at my side with a Zippo lighter. “So I hear,” I say, letting him light me up. I’ve only known Jack a year—since Dad remarried an old flame. Kinda weird to learn at sixteen that you’ve got a sibling you never knew about, but Jack is all right. Bit of a fancy boy. Annoyingly tall. His mother has money. His mother hates me. “Off early?” he asks. “Was thinking about going to the movies.” “What movie?” I shrug and take a drag. He nods and turns his face into the wind, letting it ripple his chestnut hair. We share a smoke. We share the same cheekbones, too, but his eyes are a deep, melancholy blue. “Something dumb,” I say. “Something with kissing and explosions and dinosaurs. And no murder.” “It’s been six years, Jenny.” Six years since the Stranger, my arch-nemesis, threatened to end my sleuthing career for good—and then disappeared without a trace. Sometimes, it feels like a dream. Did it really happen? Was it all in my head? I used to be a human lie detector. Now I can’t even tell if a girl likes me. I let him kill the last of the dart, and he flings the stub into the bushes. “I’ll handle the girls. Why don’t you find Mason and the boys and meet us at the Ryalto,” I say. Somehow, I get stuck in the worst seat, even though this movie was my idea. I’m at the end of the row, one seat from the aisle. Penny’s on my left, sharing her Mike and Ikes and laughing at jokes a half-second before the others. She’s sharp like that. I already can’t concentrate on the plot, and then, fifteen minutes into the movie, some weird guy takes the last seat on my right. I try not to turn and gawk. He’s got his hood up, I think. He smells like gin and turpentine. Every breath he takes comes with a wheeze that only I can hear. At some point, out of the corner of my vision, I sense his head rotating my way. I refuse to look, my eyes locked on the screen. Forty-five minutes later, the man gets up and leaves. My intuition says he won’t return. Penny offers me the last Mike and Ike. The oafish protagonist shares a kiss with the ingenue. She can do better. The climactic third-act chase is kicking into gear when the man surprises me by returning. Except it’s not the same guy. I never saw the first man’s face. I didn’t mark what he was wearing. But I know—I’d know even blindfolded—that this isn’t him. He doesn’t smell the same, he doesn’t breathe the same. He doesn’t feel the same. I steal a glance. Nothing but a black silhouette—his hood is up, too. There’s something familiar, though… My whole body shivers, and I’m not sure why. Is my Girl Detective intuition coming back? I sit in rapt silence through the rest of the movie. Anyone watching might think I was captivated by the story. I’m actually easing the box cutter from my back pocket a centimeter at a time. A satisfying explosion annihilates the bad guy, and the hero throws his arm around the girl. They’ve saved the world and have a pet dinosaur now. One last sight gag with the comic relief sidekick, then a hopeful shot of the horizon. Her head on his shoulder, a movie script ending. The patrons are leaving, but the man on my right sits silent and still. I don’t want to get up. I want to wait the man out. “Wait, I heard there’s a post-credits scene,” I say. Penny passes it down the line as my classmates rise and pick out their wedgies. We all wait for the bonus scene. The credits end. There is no final stinger. The production company logo comes up, and the lights turn on. “Bad intel, sis,” says Jack. The man stays seated. One by one, everyone files out of the theater until it’s my turn to leave. I steal a glance as I pass, and this time, I get a glimpse of his chin—her chin. It’s a girl! I’m sure of it. But then I’m past her, at the auditorium doors, exiting to the lobby. My classmates have gathered by the arcade. Mason and Meghan want to hit the taqueria. I stall, keeping the conversation on the movie, one eye on the auditorium doors. The girl will have to leave sooner or later, and then I can get a better look at her. Dinah Black says something, and my ears are burning. I look back, realizing I’ve been asked a question. “I said, quit deflecting and tell us what you think,” Dinah says. That’s a loaded question, Miss Black! Sometimes, it feels like she hates me. But she’s always talking to me. It’s been five minutes. Surely, the cleaning staff would have kicked the girl out by now—wait! She might have left through the back exit! Damnit! I need to know. “In a second, I have to check on something,” I say. My gait is casual but determined. Dinah follows me, her longer strides outpacing mine as I return to the auditorium. “What’s up?” she asks. “I don’t know.” A lone member of the cleaning staff is sweeping the back row. Closer to the front, the hooded figure remains seated where I left her—no, him! It’s not the girl anymore, it’s the man from before! I can tell from the smell. He waits, motionless, his eyes hidden under his protruding hood. He’s too patient. Too still. I walk over and push the hood back. Dinah shrieks. The man’s eyes have been carved out, leaving bloody sockets behind. Two red maws, peering into my soul. I check his pulse. He’s dead. The blood, like tears streaking his cheeks, is already dry. There’s a commotion around me. My classmates rush in. The theater employee is panicking. I tune them out. There’s something in the dead man’s mouth. A paper card clenched between his teeth. I’m not prepared. Trouble would have a latex glove in her pocket for a situation like this. I have to settle for covering my fingers in a shirttail and worrying the card free of the dead man’s bite. But it’s a formality at this point. I almost don’t even need to look.
I MISSED YOU TOO
And then a little drawing of a man in a hat, peeking over a fence. I could almost cry. I knew I didn’t dream it. He was real. It did happen. Welcome back, Stranger.
The story stopped there, with nothing more to read—except a postscript in blocky handwriting:
WANT TO READ MORE? START TAKING THE GAME A LITTLE MORE SERIOUSLY. YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.
Jenny Valentine was short on more than just time. She didn’t have a dollar to her name, and the police would arrest her if she went home. The Pixeldrome VIP room, in the basement of the arcade, had seemed like a safe place to hide—until Jenny found the owner, Rob Haines, dead on the couch. Choked on his own golden game tokens, courtesy of her arch-nemesis: the Stranger.
An endless stream of ’80s pop music played on the sound system of Pixeldrome’s VIP room. Jenny slumped into the leather recliner opposite Rob’s corpse, too exhausted to contemplate how she could be taking her father RJ Valentine’s dangerous game any more seriously. Solve the famous author’s murder using one of the seven heirloom clues he left in his will and win his fortune. Sure, how hard could it be? Dad neglected to mention that his killer—performing the villain role from his Trouble books—would be playing a game of their own. One which frequently involved attacking the people in Jenny’s orbit, friends and enemies alike.
With a distant pop, the air conditioner switched back on. She shivered. There’d never been time to zip up the back of the cocktail dress she’d thrown on. Her shoes were who knew where. Probably discarded in the carnage at Valentine Manor. The sedative she’d taken still had her woozy and lethargic. Her face was smeared with dried blood—Alicia Aaron’s blood—to obscure her identity.
Today was her 18th birthday.
She wasn’t supposed to be Jenny Valentine at the moment. She was posing as Kazumi Onishi, Jenny’s mercurial, distant cousin from Okinawa. The one who the police handcuffed to a stretcher after finding her unconscious at the scene of a triple murder. It was a role her secret twin Eliza Valentine normally filled, but a role Jenny had insisted on taking over, sending Eliza fleeing to safety in her place.
Why did I? For all Jenny knew, Eliza was the Stranger. If they hadn’t already, the police would soon link the little kunai dagger Kazumi/Eliza was known to carry to the one plunged into poor Mason Lockhart’s chest, after it slit Meghan May’s throat.
Eliza, whom Jenny had found in Dad’s study, surrounded by the bodies of their friends. Eliza, who’d somehow secretly met with Dad before his death—and never mentioned it to Jenny in a year and a half…
Or could the Stranger be Jenny’s ex, Dinah Black? An ex who’d been so eager to rekindle their spark earlier tonight but was conveniently absent when the murders occurred. Dinah’s initials DEB had been entered as the new top score on the nearby Mystery Girl video game after Rob was killed: as clear a calling card from the Stranger as the manuscript pages of I Dream of Trouble in Rob’s lifeless lap. But was the high score Dinah’s way of telling on herself? Or was it a setup from someone who wanted to frame her?
Eliza never much liked Dinah; she would have gladly set up the girl whom she derisively referred to as “Blondie.”
Jenny’s half-brother Jack used to date Dinah. He was debatably a sociopath. Could he still bear Dinah ill will?
Dinah had always been rivals with Penny Griffin for Valedictorian. Were the DEB initials a final “fuck you” from the brilliant Penny, having orchestrated a double identity as the Stranger so expertly that she never even came up on any suspects lists?
Was Jenny’s trusty sidekick Drew jealous of losing Jenny’s attention to her old flame?
Could Dinah have been working with a partner, throwing off everyone’s alibi—even more than Tori Valentine’s revelation about Dad’s secret plan to fake his death had already done?
These angles and more were what Jenny should have been contemplating in that hellish arcade basement. Instead, the thing that stuck in her craw, the detail she couldn’t get out of her head, had nothing to do with tonight’s grisly killings. It was Dad’s manuscript for the final, unpublished Trouble book.
How did he know I was gay?
North of the city, on a bumpy gravel road running into the forest, Eliza Valentine had more important things on her mind. Like trying to guide Sheriff Blake Lockhart to the granddaughter he never knew he had without getting her head blown off.
“You can put that away, you know,” she said, leaning away from the pistol he kept aimed at her. “Driving’s easier with both hands, and it’s not like you’re gonna shoot me.”
“Jury’s still out on that if you’re lying, Jenny,” said Blake.
He didn’t know she was Eliza. He didn’t know there was an Eliza. She and Jenny were identical twins, able to seamlessly switch places with each other whenever the situation called for it. With Jenny—disguised as Eliza’s alter ego, Kazumi—in custody for murder, who knew when they might be able to switch back?
“I’m not lying, Mr. Lockhart,” said Eliza. “I promise.”
Blake grimaced, wiping his eyes. An hour ago, he’d burst into the study of Valentine Manor to find Mason, his only child, slain at the hands of the Stranger, whom they now assumed to be Kazumi Onishi. Blake lost his wife to cancer a few years back. If Eliza hadn’t found him and told him that Mason and Meghan had a child they’d been hiding away, he might not have lived through the night.
The police SUV pulled up to the cabin in the woods and parked.
“They just leave the baby here alone?” Blake asked.
“There’s a nanny,” said Eliza.
Blake hopped out of the cab, keeping his pistol trained on Eliza as he came around to her side and let her out.
“How could they afford that?” he asked.
“I paid for it,” said Eliza.
Out of my stash—fuck! Eliza’s Kazumi identity had a good chunk of cash in her bank account. That was probably going to be frozen any minute now. They walked to the cabin door in near pitch black, the waning crescent moon providing scant illumination amidst the passing storm clouds above.
“You’ll scare the nanny if you keep that thing out,” she said.
Blake tucked the gun behind him. With Eliza’s hands manacled behind her back, it fell to him to rap his knuckles on the door. It took the nanny a couple of minutes to answer; she’d been sleeping and didn’t immediately react to Blake’s presence in her drowsy state.
“Hi Gabi, something’s happened to Meghan and Mason,” Eliza told her. “Something bad. This is Mason’s father.”
A shadow fell over the nanny’s face.
“Are they…” the nanny asked.
One look at Blake was all the confirmation she needed.
“He needs to see the baby,” said Eliza.
The nanny nodded grimly and signaled for them to wait. Beside her, Blake tensed.
I suppose if I were lying, this is where I’d spring the trap.
But it wasn’t a lie or a trick. The nanny returned with Lilah Lockhart, not yet two years old, her little head crowned with her late grandmother’s red tresses. Blake inhaled sharply, swallowing half a sob, and reached out, pleading to hold her. Eliza nodded, and Gabi cautiously handed Lilah over.
It was the look on Blake’s face that finally broke her. Hope and grief and love all mixed up in those hooded eyes. Eliza wept. The nanny retreated inside, giving them some privacy.
“Why didn’t Mason…?” Blake asked when he’d pulled himself together enough to speak again.
“It wasn’t you, I don’t think,” said Eliza. “It was Meghan’s parents. She never said, but there was some kind of abuse there, I got the feeling. They were waiting until Meghan graduated and could move out.”
The radio in Blake’s pocket crackled to life.
“Boss, we got a problem,” came Deputy Calderon’s voice.
The spell between grandfather and granddaughter was broken. Blake shifted Lilah into the crook of his arm and pulled out his radio with his spare hand.
“Go ahead?”
“The Kazumi girl never made it to the hospital,” said Calderon. “The paramedic claims she got free and overpowered him. Made him drop her off on the south side. She’s in the wind.”
Eliza inhaled sharply. By Kazumi, they could only mean Jenny. She must have faked an injury, then somehow escaped. And if she was on the south side…
The cabin door reopened, and the nanny stepped out with a suitcase in tow. She reached out and dropped a key into Blake’s hand.
“What are you…?” Eliza asked.
“I read the Blackbird Times,” said the nanny. “I know all about the Stranger. If he came for Mason and Meghan, I want nothing to do with this. I’m sorry.”
She hurried off, dragging her suitcase over the rough gravel. Blake’s radio crackled again.
“Boss?”
Blake blinked and pressed TALK on the radio.
“Right. South side?” he asked. “No, I know where she’s going. Get the squad to the Pixeldrome arcade. That’s where she’ll be hiding.”
“Got it,” said Calderon. “What’s your ETA? Should we wait for you to get there?”
Jenny, you’d better not be there! Don’t be foolish!
Damn! There was no way to warn her sister. Jenny’s phone was in Eliza’s pocket, but she’d destroyed “Kazumi’s” when they swapped, in case the cops searched it. Could the nanny deliver a message? Not with Blake watching her like a hawk. Eliza could only watch in frustration as the nanny’s little hatchback pulled out of the small concrete driveway and drove away down the wet gravel road. She had to stall.
“You know what Mason would want,” Eliza said. She nodded to Lilah. “You can’t let George and Sandra May have her. You don’t have a car seat, and you won’t leave me here with her.”
Seconds ticked away.
“Come again, boss? Do we wait?”
“Her name is Lilah, by the way,” Eliza said, nodding to the baby. Mason and Meghan had named her after Mason’s late mother, the love of Blake’s life.
The name cut him to the bone, as Eliza knew it would. Blake wiped his nose on his sleeve and pressed TALK.
“Don’t wait,” he said. “Try to take her alive. But if you can’t, well… I’ll understand.”
Blake opened the cabin door and shoved Eliza inside.
Jenny, if you’re at the arcade, you’d better get out now!
A pang of urgency broke through Jenny’s reverie, bringing with it an epiphany: the mystery would have to wait. RJ’s bizarrely prescient I Dream of Trouble, Eliza’s deceit, Dinah’s high score initials, and the many Stranger suspects: they would all have to chill for a sec. Jenny’s hierarchy of needs had narrowed to a single objective: don’t get arrested. At a minimum, she needed to stay free until she could find Eliza, resume her identity, and question her sister about what else she’d been hiding. And to do that, Trouble needed resources.
Rob didn’t carry any cash in his wallet, but he had a hypebeast credit card made out of chromium. She took that and his phone, too, though the battery was dead. Unfortunately, Rob’s feet were too big for her to steal the dead man’s boat shoes.
Leaving him to the maggots, Jenny returned upstairs and ransacked Rob’s office. First, she plugged his phone into a charger. Next, she found a stash of Pixeldrome T-shirts, throwing on a Men’s Extra Small over her cocktail dress. (Of course, Rob didn’t stock any in girls’ sizes. Dickhead.) There was a set of keys in his desk drawer. Jenny used the little circular one to open up the token machine in the main arcade and score a few hundred bucks, mostly in small bills.
Returning to the office, she stuffed the cash into a Pixeldrome-branded fanny pack, cinched it tight around her waist, and checked on the phone—still not enough juice to boot up. Jenny’s eyes danced around the office, searching for anything she could use. Her gaze passed over the police scanner, Rob’s computer, the little server for the security cameras…
The cameras! Maybe the Stranger finally screwed up, and she’d have him on tape!
Jenny tapped the trackpad to wake the computer up. Asha used an app called Alfred… Once launched, the video monitoring app displayed a grid of black screens—all the cameras had been switched off. In the server archive folder for March 10th, there wasn’t a single file. She went back one day: again, empty. Back another day: March 8th had a folder full of video files.
“Must have killed Rob sometime yesterday,” Jenny muttered to herself. “Turned off the cameras and deleted the whole day’s footage so I couldn’t pin down a precise time for the attack. Damn.”
Her attention turned to the police scanner.
“What are you saying about me?”
She flipped it on and listened.
“—to secure Pixeldrome. Ready to breach on your signal,” came an all-business voice over the scanner.
“Oh fuck!” said Jenny.
She lunged for the trackpad, frantically clicking on each camera. The monitor grid flickered to life, one rectangle after another filling in as the cameras came online. It was even worse than she feared. There had to be a dozen cops gathered at the front and back exits. Jenny was trapped like a rat in a cage. She grabbed Rob’s phone and fled from the office.
“Go! Go! Go!” she heard over the scanner, followed swiftly by tremendous pounding at the front and back of the building.
The cops battered the doors down and rushed into the arcade.
Trouble to the Last Drop will be available in Hardcover, Paperback, and eBook on July 1, 2025. You can pre-order the eBook for Kindle now. Print editions will be available on the day of release.
