Chapter 3

For a whole day, the resident group chat never went quiet.

[Greg, how are there even more rats than before?]

[What is management doing?]

Aside from crying poor, all Greg could do was make empty promises.

[This came out of nowhere. We really didn't have time to prepare. Please bear with us.]

[I'm already working on a fix. Everyone please stay calm.]

Brenda, meanwhile, went invisible right along with me.

Not a single word from her.

That evening, I got home from work.

I took the stairs for my usual bit of exercise.

But in nearly every stairwell corner, I found cracker crumbs and bits of bread.

Heart thumping, I climbed to the floor just below mine.

That was when a figure slipped past me.

I fell in behind them at once.

I got a good look.

It was Brenda, scattering food crumbs outside a neighbor's door.

I held my breath, tailing her and filming.

I didn't stop until I had her face and what she was holding clear on camera.

Then I backed into the stairwell and bolted home.

I'd finished dinner and was sorting through the footage.

That was when the chat exploded again.

This time everyone was tagging Brenda.

[Brenda, did you get things sorted with management yet?]

[The hallways are full of food the rats dragged back.]

[The rats chewed right through my front door.]

[A buyer came to see my unit today and almost got bitten.]

A full half hour passed.

Only then did Brenda surface.

[Given how bad the infestation has gotten, it's even dragging down our property values now.]

[After talks between the HOA board and management, we feel it's necessary to bring in a professional team.]

I perked right up.

She'd finally tipped her hand.

Someone in the chat jumped in right away.

[A professional team is great and all. The real question is how much?]

Her end went quiet for about ten minutes.

Then she dropped a quote.

[Complete extermination plus full sanitizing: two point eight million dollars, all in.]

I froze when I saw the number.

Our complex had around fourteen hundred units.

A normal pest company would charge two hundred grand, tops.

And Brenda had the nerve to quote more than ten times that.

But I kept quiet and watched.

[Doesn't that come to about two thousand a household?]

[Brenda, why is it so expensive?]

The doubts erupted all at once.

Brenda hurried to explain.

[This is already the discount price. Greg and I compared several companies and fought hard for it.]

[You all know how bad the infestation is. It has to be handled top to bottom, in the shortest time possible.]

[Naturally the labor and chemicals don't come cheap.]

People still weren't buying it.

So Brenda switched into her patient, motherly mode.

[I know it's not cheap.]

[But think about it. How much have we already lost on our property values because of these rats?]

[And if this turns into some kind of outbreak, the fallout would be far worse.]

[Anyway, it's all voluntary. I won't force anyone who can't accept it.]

Just then, an owner who was strapped for cash tagged me.

[Ms. Mercer, maybe we could just use your special poison to trap them.]

[This time we're willing to split the humane disposal cost.]

The chat turned into a chain, one message after another.

Everyone started praising my bang for the buck.

I made them wait a good while on purpose.

Then, nice and slow, I posted a voice message in the chat.

"I'm so sorry. I actually think Brenda's right."

"The professional stuff really should be left to the professionals."

And with that, I sent Brenda two thousand dollars right there in the chat.

Maybe she hadn't expected me to play along.

Because when Brenda replied by voice, she actually stammered.

"Dr. Mercer's right... professional treatment is the only way to root out the problem."

With me leading the way, the doubts in the chat gradually faded.

Brenda and Greg got busy tallying and collecting money.

An hour passed.

Then Brenda personally brought the receipt to my door.

Her whole attitude had done a one-eighty.

"Nora, it means so much that you'd support the complex like this."

"You know what they say, a good neighbor's worth more than a distant cousin. Let's put that little misunderstanding behind us. No hard feelings on anyone's part, all right?"

Brenda was beaming.

She had no idea I was just giving her a nice send-off.