Run: 2026-02-18-01KHQ92V59VKMG56N5S1JPCK38

The rain came down in sheets across the parking lot of the Chuck E. Cheese on Maple Avenue, which suited Molly just fine. Rain meant people kept their heads down. Rain meant nobody looked twice at a van with blacked-out windows parked slightly too close to the handicapped space. She spread the hand-drawn floor plan across the steering wheel and clicked on her penlight. Bill sat in the passenger seat eating a juice box through a tiny straw, which he had somehow managed to stab through the foil on the first attempt, a fact he was clearly very proud of. "You know those are for children," Molly said. "Everything in there is for children. That's the whole problem we're solving tonight." She returned to the floor plan. The party was scheduled from four to six, which meant the presents would be stacked in the alcove near the skee-ball machines for approximately two hours before little Zachary Pemberton tore through them like a tiny, sugar-fueled hurricane. The window was tight. The job was delicate. The stakes, she had to keep reminding herself, were enormously low. "The side entrance is our best option," Molly said, tapping the map with her pinky. "The teenage employees use it to take smoke breaks. We go in during the musical chairs round, which based on my surveillance takes about four minutes." Bill finished the juice box with a long, hollow slurping sound that seemed to go on several seconds longer than should have been physically possible. "My cousin had his party there in 1994. They gave him a certificate for most tickets redeemed. He still has it framed." "Bill." "He redeemed nine hundred and forty tickets." "Bill, please." "Sorry, yeah. The side entrance." He nodded solemnly, apparently filing his cousin's achievement away for a more appropriate occasion. Molly had been planning this operation for eleven days. Not because the job required eleven days of planning, but because she had found herself unable to stop once she had started. She had a notebook. She had contingency plans. She had researched the average weight of a six-year-old's birthday gift haul, which came out to roughly forty-two pounds, which meant they would need the rolling dolly from the back of the van. The presents, for the record, were not theirs to keep. They were going to be redistributed to the pediatric ward at Saint Catherine's Hospital three blocks east, where a nurse named Patricia had mentioned offhandedly at a bar four Thursdays ago that the donation bin had been embarrassingly empty. Molly had felt something activate inside her chest that she was not entirely comfortable examining. "We're the good guys," Bill said, apparently reading her expression. "We're thieves stealing birthday presents from a child named Zachary." "A rich child. You saw the guest list. His father owns a boat dealership." Molly clicked off the penlight. Outside, the rain continued doing its job. She appreciated the professionalism. "Let's go," she said.