possibilities. Nolan Rand’s unexplained visit to Earth, a powerful healing with only the scent of his own people and a female who read as normal but filtered hunter pheromones as easy as breathing. One who risked herself to save a child from harm.
“I see two possibilities,” Quinn finally answered. “It could be as easy an explanation as the woman has no sense of smell. A strange possibility but less unlikely than the other possibility.”
“Which is?” Mal asked.
“She is equal to, if not more powerful, than you. Something that I have never seen in all my many travels and studies. And a healer with that level of power? Inconceivable. The strongest on record is midlevel in power and right here on your ship.”
Mal thought of Healer Morse and the few healings he had witnessed personally. Wounds that closed in seconds. Poisons pulled from the body through the pores of the skin. He grimaced, he had no liking for Morse and his elitist ways. In his experience healers came in two flavors, the elite like Morse who saw themselves as above healing the common soldiers, and the med aids that worked tirelessly but had little power.
“What would a healer of that power level be capable of?”
“The question to ask would be what would a healer of that power not be capable of?” his spy master said grimly. Then shook off whatever dark thought were going through his mind. “And you are going to feel very foolish when you find out the woman has a nasal blockage that explains this whole thing.”
“It would explain why Nolan Rand was on Earth,” Mal said.
“And to me that right there proves this theory is ridiculous. If Noland Rand had knowledge of a healer of that caliber, there is no way he would have left her here where she could fall into our hands so easily. Not to mention if he had heard rumors of some supposed healer in hiding, I would have heard them as well, and I can tell you no one is talking about such a phenomenon.”
Mal had no argument for that. Because Quinn was right, there was no way Nolan Rand would leave a healer like that behind on Earth.
He dismissed Quinn straight to bed, and opened the com on his desk, pulling up the file his people had started on the female. One look at the few scraps of information available, and he felt his temper spike. Her name they reported was unknown, something that had not occurred to him to ask when he had her with him. The other was that she met with an old Earth male named Stolin Dreath. Beyond that and the address where the feeds had ended was all the information provided on the female.
The third hidden sensor had been destroyed before they bothered to try and turn it on. They had nothing but a description and a vacant address. Even the old earther had managed to elude them. Though it was noted in the file that his neighbors said he lived alone with his dogs and he hated everyone, was paranoid and an isolationist. So it was no wonder he had disappeared if the order had come around. The consensus was that no one was sad to see him gone and everyone expected him to unfortunately return at some point in the future.
The girl was a complete blank. If anyone knew who she was they weren’t talking.
No name and no proof that she had ever done more than visit the address where her sensors had stopped working. The last thing he saw, the thing that really fired his temper was the stamp of code yellow. They had given his quarry a low priority rating.
Mal’s infamous temper spiked. He threw the com across the room and was only slightly mollified when it shattered against the far wall. He hit his wrist com with too much pressure.
“Sir?” The voice answered quickly and without the usual greetings. But then his Phoenix guard always seemed to know when to tread warily with him. Shame the same could not be said for whoever had sent him that sham of a report.
“I want the analyst in charge of the file I just received in my ready room within the next ten minutes or I will be paying all of them a visit they will not like.” It went without saying that they wouldn’t be the only ones who suffered if that happened.
“Yes, sir.”
“And get me Jas. It seems I have a hunt