Run: 2026-02-20-01KHY9Y0YG8G4FVPPGTB4VSG0S

The dented white van idled across from the bustling community center, its windows smudged with fingerprints from Molly’s repeated checks of the bright balloon-festooned entrance. Bill spread a crumpled venue map across the cluttered dashboard, his calloused fingers tracing the hidden storage closet where unwrapped presents heaped behind a tall stack of paper plates and plastic utensils. Molly twisted a floppy fake clown nose between her thumb and forefinger, her gaze locking on a sparkly invitation tucked in the map’s frayed fold. “These glittery party invitations are so blinding I can barely read the drop time” she mumbled. Bill’s jaw tightened as he glanced at bouncing kids through the center’s fogged glass doors, their high-pitched laughs jangling his frayed nerves. “Focus grab presents then bolt fast” he snapped. Molly stuffed the nose in her jacket pocket, adjusting the elastic of a neon party hat she’d stolen from a local convenience store the night before. She reached for a tattered canvas duffel slung on the van’s floor, its bottom stiff with crumpled candy wrappers Bill had left there after their last botched heist. The dashboard clock ticked down slowly, each second stretching thin as they waited for the party’s cake-cutting distraction—when the harried chaperones would be too busy herding excited kids to notice a pair of clown-hatted figures slipping quietly into the storage closet. Molly tested the van’s creaky door handle, her palms sweating through cheap cotton gloves, while Bill double-checked the map’s mark for the presents’ exact stack, muttering about avoiding a kid’s sticky handshake that had derailed their last small heist.