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second super genius tech that the Council had on-hand.
    “Oh,” Servitto added before Zed could start, “explain it so an old man like me would
     understand it.”
    Zed laughed and then stopped to think, a bit puzzled. “Okay, well, the program is
     called SleeperX. What happened is, for some crazy reason, one of Laurent’s men used
     a computer in Laurent’s old warehouse—the one we raided a few years ago—without a
     router or firewall.”
    Even if Laurent’s men were mindless idiots, none of them were foolish enough to do
     something so careless. I didn’t interrupt Zed’s explanation, but I could see the concern
     in Servitto’s and Tamsin’s expressions, also.
    “How can I put this in simple terms?” Zed thought aloud, tapping his chin. He had
     evidently misjudged our apprehension for confusion. “Well, essentially, all I did
     was use a key logger to simply watch everything he did on the computer. I installed
     the program on the PC by hacking his particular network, and then, violà !” Zed still smiled, even as Tamsin, Servitto, and I frowned.
    It was a setup. Whoever had logged on with so little care knew that the Council was
     waiting and watching and that we would monitor their movements online.
    “It’s a decoy,” Tamsin said quietly to Servitto.
    Zed’s expression fell, and she did pat him on the head. Although it didn’t have the
     same effect it had earlier, he still brightened a little. “It doesn’t make sense,
     I know, but mistakes do happen. What if we just checked out a few and sent the others
     to whatever was left over on the list? We could easily narrow it down to the ones
     that we know he would use. You know, secluded and cold,” Zed asked hopefully.
    I felt for the kid. All he had done was waste his time, hunting down leads that wouldn’t
     lead us anywhere but back to square one.
    “Who would we send to these islands?” Servitto asked. “Tamsin and I are the only ones
     available for such a task.” Servitto didn’t even spare me an apologetic glance, assuming
     that I would be taking a flight to Rome and leaving Ella in their hands.
    He was wrong. I wasn’t concerned that I’d look like a failure to the Council members;
     nor was I worried about the demotion from High Guardian to Hunter that was sure to
     happen if I disobeyed Aleixandre’s direct orders. After meeting Ella and promising
     to protect her, there was no way I was leaving for Greece. I may have been the reason
     that Ella was gone, but I sure as hell was going to be there when she was found and
     brought to the Council, and no one was going to stand in my way.
    Zed shook his head. “There has to be a way! We can’t just assume that this isn’t a
     lead to follow.”
    “Have you told Aleixandre yet?” I figured that if he had, Aleix would have told him
     the same things we were telling him now.
    “No, I hadn’t had a chance to. I added it to the database so that the info would be
     there if we ever needed it, but now I think it’s something that he would want to know.”
    “True, Zed.” Tamsin added, “But I think you should know that he will probably agree
     with us on the subject.”
    Zed shook his head and frowned. “Fine, but I think I will see what kind of hacking
     I can do to get us some satellite footage of some of the islands.” He quickly went
     to typing on his wireless keyboard.
    Though I thought that it was a trap, it was still the only lead that we had, and if
     the Council wasn’t going to investigate it, I would.
    ***
    After arriving in Alaska, I headed straight from the hangar to my quarters, turned
     on my personal laptop, and typed in the info that I had received from Zed. After an
     hour of eliminating certain islands from the list Zed had given me, I narrowed the
     seven islands down to three islands I knew that Laurent would have use for, a knock
     at my open door interrupted me.
    It was Marieth, one of the Chorý Blood Hunt leaders, and the pissed look on her