I leaned forward a little and nodded at her to go on.

“I don’t know as much about the supernatural aspects of this situation,” she said. “I don’t know much of anything about these Denarians. But I do know some things about Marcone. For example, I know that even if he has some underlings who want to take over the franchise, he’s got more who are personally loyal or who will figure that bailing him out will reap them some major profits.”

“Yeah,” I said, tilting my head at her. “So?”

“So wherever they took him, it has to be somewhere Marcone’s network can’t reach. We can be virtually certain that they aren’t hiding in plain sight.”

I grunted. “Hell’s bells, yeah. Not only that, but Marcone plans ahead. He had that panic room ready to go. In fact…” My eyes widened. “The location of your secret hidey-hole ought to be awfully secret, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” Molly said. “What good is a hiding place if everyone knows where it is?”

“The Denarians knew exactly where he was going,” I said. “The spell they set up to tear down that building’s defenses was no spur-of-the-moment magic—it was too complex. It had been planned out ahead of time.”

“Son of a bitch,” Thomas swore. “Someone inside Marcone’s organization ratted him out.”

“So if we find the rat…” Murphy said, catching on.

“We might find a trail that leads back to the Nickelheads,” I finished with a fierce grin. “Was this war council concept a brilliant idea or what?”

Molly tittered. “Nickelheads.”

“I have a gift,” I said modestly. Then I added in a low voice, “And stop giggling. Wizards don’t giggle. Bad for the image.”

Molly buried her giggle in another mouthful of fries.

I slurped on my Coke and turned to Murphy. “So, what we need to do is figure out who’s going to backstab Marcone. Someone highly placed enough to know the location of the safe house, and who will profit by Marcone’s absence.”

“You’re assuming the informant was complicit,” Murphy said. “That wouldn’t necessarily be true. Someone could have inadvertently given information away, or been compelled to cooperate.”

I paused to think about that. “True. So we’ll have to start by looking at who could have given away the safe house.”

Murphy raked her fingers through her dark-golden hair, frowning in thought. “To be honest, SI doesn’t cross trails with the outfit all that often. I’d have to make some calls to find out.”

Thomas drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “The FBI would have more, wouldn’t they?”

“And you know that guy Rick, right?” Molly said. “The one who was helping that jerk interrogate me?”

Murphy’s eyes narrowed. She made a noise that wasn’t quite an agreement, but wasn’t quite a denial, either. Murphy has issues with her ex-husband.

It took Molly about half a second to figure out the expression on Murphy’s face. She looked around the room somewhat desperately for a moment. “Uh, so, Harry, what’s with Mister? He’s been sleeping like a log the whole time we’ve been here.”