Little Secrets by Megan Hart Page B

instead made her flash on a vision of herself in librarian glasses and a pencil skirt, with her hair in a bun and a ruler in her hand.
    She pointed the way toward the basement, but didn’t follow him down. She was in the middle of not only a cutthroat game of online Scrabble, but also finishing up some final files she needed to send in to the company she no longer worked for. The word game was winning her attention, because while the files were important, they were also the last link she had to her job. As soon as she turned them in, she’d have no more reasons to think of herself as a working woman.
    She got so engrossed in trying to figure out where to use her Q , U and Z tiles for the best results that she didn’t hear Danny until he appeared in the kitchen suddenly enough to make her scream. “You scared me,” Ginny said unnecessarily, one hand on her heart. “God.”
    â€œSorry.” Danny looked serious. “I need to talk to you about your basement.”
    That sounded bad. Ginny hadn’t actually been in the basement since they’d moved in. She remembered it as being unfinished and dry, the only thing she’d really cared about. Sean had talked about making it into a rumpus room, a place for a home theater. Sean talked about a lot of things.
    â€œMy husband has big plans for it,” she said. “Aside from that, what’s the problem?”
    â€œIt’s your ductwork. Oh hey, puss.” Danny crouched to offer a hand to Noodles, who sniffed it with disdain but let him pet her. He stroked the cat’s fur, then looked up at Ginny. “It’s all over the place down there.”
    â€œUmm…?” Ginny had no idea what ductwork was supposed to look like.
    â€œPlenty of places for rodents and pests to hide. Basically, like a little superhighway for mice. But it’s okay. I put some glue traps in there, and I’ll add some bait traps in the attic. That’s where you heard them, right? But you’ll have to be sure your cat doesn’t go up there.”
    Ginny looked at Noodles, busy licking her paw, and then at him. “She doesn’t go in the attic. Hell, right now she doesn’t even go into the basement. The door’s always closed.”
    Danny frowned. “You’ll have to check the glue traps, which, honestly, I don’t love. Bait traps are more effective, for sure. But you do risk the chance then that they might not go all the way outside to…”
    â€œDie?”
    He nodded. For an exterminator, Danny seemed awfully delicate.
    Ginny sighed. “So what, then? They’d get stuck inside the wall someplace and…rot?”
    Danny nodded again. “But, you know, mice. They’re small. It would only stink for a little while. If you had a squirrel or something bigger, a raccoon, say…”
    â€œJesus,” Ginny muttered. “Do you think we might?”
    â€œI won’t know until I go up and check. This close to the creek, you might get rats.” Danny made a pow-pow gesture with his fingers. “But it’s probably just mice. You heard noises in the walls?”
    â€œAnd ceiling. Yeah.” For a moment she thought about mentioning the shape she thought she’d seen that first night here. The eyes. “Rats…they can get pretty big?”
    Danny smiled. “Sure. Huge, some of them. When I was working in the city, I’m not even kidding you, I once saw a rat that was bigger than a Chihuahua.”
    â€œJesus.”
    â€œYeah.” Danny nodded, eyes wide and serious for a moment before the grin was back. “But around here? Nah. You’ll get field mice and squirrels, sure. Sometimes a raccoon. Sometimes bats. But even if you do get rats, they’re probably not that big.”
    Not Great Dane size anyway. That was only in the movies. Ginny frowned. “But you’ll put out enough poison to take care of whatever it might be?”
    â€œYep. If