Molly adjusted her night vision goggles, which made the bounce house across the street glow an eerie shade of radioactive green. She checked her watch, then lowered the binoculars. "You're telling me the primary target is inside a Spider-Man piñata?" "Affirmative," Bill whispered, even though they were parked three blocks away with the windows rolled up tight. He consulted a crumpled CVS receipt covered in Sharpie scribbles and mysterious stains. "Intel suggests the grandmother deposited approximately four hundred dollars in GameStop gift cards inside the cardboard shell. Codename: Operation Sugar Rush." "Bill, there's a clown making balloon animals two feet from the front door." "Collateral damage." Bill pulled a grappling hook from his duffel bag with excessive ceremony. "We rappel down from the oak tree, neutralize the entertainment, secure the payload, and exfiltrate through the side gate before they sing the birthday song. Standard smash-and-grab." Molly stared at him through her goggles. "It's a My Little Pony theme. The security is a man dressed like a glitter princess." "Exactly. They'll never expect professionals." Bill smeared camouflage paint on his cheeks in diagonal stripes. "I've got the distraction device ready." "That's a whoopee cushion from the dollar store." "Correct. While the clown investigates the acoustic anomaly near the punch bowl, we—" "We're not using a whoopee cushion during a five-year-old's birthday party, Bill. I have standards." Bill paused, his grappling hook dangling pathetically from his fingers. "Fine. Plan B. We go undercover and mingle." Molly watched as he produced two crumpled party hats from his cargo jacket. "You want us to blend in? I'm thirty-two and you're wearing tactical cargo pants with seventeen pockets." "Costumes." Bill tossed her a polyester cape that smelled like basement mildew. "You're Darth Vader. I'm Optimus Prime." "We're stealing from children, Bill." "Correction: we're liberating assets from a capitalist ritual that promotes unhealthy materialism." Bill secured his cardboard robot helmet with masking tape. "Plus, that piñata is ours for the taking. I can see it from here. It's taunting me with its cardboard smugness." Molly sighed, pulling the mask over her face. "If we get arrested, I'm telling the cops this was entirely your idea." "Fair enough." Bill checked his digital watch, which beeped obnoxiously. "Okay, the target is entering the backyard for the ceremonial beating. We move on my mark." "Your mark is when they blindfold the birthday girl?" "Negative. My mark is when the DJ drops 'Baby Shark.'" Bill opened the car door, his Optimus Prime helmet catching the afternoon sun. "Remember: professional, silent, invisible. We're ghosts with goodie bags." Molly followed, her black cape snagging on the seatbelt retractor. "I can't believe I got a master's degree in art history for this." "Cheer up," Bill whispered, creeping toward the hedge with surprising agility for a man in cardboard armor. "Think of it as a performance installation. 'The Ephemeral Nature of Youth and Consumer Electronics.'" "You're ridiculous." "And you're wearing a breathing apparatus to steal a piñata. Three o'clock. The shark has dropped." They vaulted the fence together, capes fluttering behind them like broken wings, landing directly inside an inflatable princess castle with a squeak.