Shadow of Vengeance by Kristine Mason

masculine scent made her hands sweaty. “They might be cute,” he said, “but I have no interest in dating a college girl. I prefer a strong, intelligent woman who knows what she wants.”  
    She almost dropped the key, but managed to slide it into the lock and open the door. She hadn’t expected him to use strong and intelligent as a way to describe the women he preferred to date. Based on the women she’d seen him with, beautiful and easy seemed more on target. “Thank you for that interesting insight into the depths of your dating preferences.”
    “You’re the one who brought it up,” he said, and stepped into the room.  
    As she glanced around, Owen handed her a pair of Latex gloves. Damn, she hadn’t thought about gloves, but would be sure to remember them in the future. Because Ian had sent Owen with her, she suspected their boss would want a full account as to how she’d handled herself in the field. If she wanted to escape life behind the desk, she’d have to be more on top of things.
    After slipping on the gloves, they began searching the small room. As far as Rachel could tell, nothing was out of the ordinary. Actually, everything was neat and tidy. A little too neat.  
    “Sean’s bedroom at home never looks like this. He always has clothes lying around and junk on his dresser.” That was putting it mildly. Since he was a little kid, her brother liked to hoard and rat hole stuff. Either sharing a room with Josh had forced him to change his ways, or someone had cleaned up the place.
    Owen opened the mini refrigerator she’d bought Sean before he’d started his first semester. “Empty.” He closed the door, then looked through the trashcan next to the fridge. “Jake said he didn’t remove anything from the room, correct?”
    “That’s right,” she said, and closed the closet door. “Why?”
    “There’s not one piece of garbage in this room except for an empty pizza box.”
    “We knew about the soda bottles, but no garbage at all? That doesn’t make any sense,” She moved toward Owen. “Sean has a thing about napkins and baby wipes.” When he glanced at her, she waved a hand. “I’d rather he be a little OCD than walking around with food on his face.”
    Owen stood and began peeling off his gloves. “Maybe they took the garbage out before they left for the study session.”
    “What about the pizza box? And why isn’t there anything in the fridge?”
    “Did Sean ever go into town and do any grocery shopping?”
    “No, he doesn’t have a car, and neither does Josh. They both eat at the school cafeteria. Wexman does have a small convenience store on campus. I give Sean a monthly allowance so he can buy sodas and snacks, or whatever toiletries he might need. He loves his junk food and uses every cent I give him.”
    “Which means we should have found something in this room.” Owen shoved the gloves in his pocket. “We need to ask Sean if they emptied the trash and got rid of the empty Mountain Dew bottle.”
    “And what their room looked like when they left.”
    “Could be they cleaned up because they were planning on bringing a couple of those cute girls back to their place.”
    She winced. “I can’t picture my brother bringing a girl to his room.”
    “Just because you can’t picture it, or don’t want to, doesn’t mean it’s not a possibility.”
    Needing to erase the mental image of Sean fooling around with a girl, Rachel focused on what they did know. “Okay, here’s what we have so far. The building’s lock was broken. Sean and Josh ordered pizza and Mountain Dew.”
    “Thanks to Bill, we know for a fact it was delivered.”
    “Then taken to their room by the RA.”
    “Right, we’ll need to talk to Abby Zucker.”
    “Definitely. We suspect the boys, and maybe Bill, were drugged.” She shook her head. “Sean and Josh disappeared after they left the building. Does drugging Bill make any sense to you? Maybe he did just have the flu.”
    “Too