Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8TZTH8BSEKVB3PZY6ANWBB

Molly spread the blueprints across the hood of their battered Ford Fiesta, using a juice box and a half-eaten granola bar to hold down the corners. The blueprints were technically a crayon drawing lifted from a birthday party invitation, but she had augmented it with arrows and the word INGRESS in red marker, which gave the whole operation a professional dignity it sorely needed. Bill stared at the drawing. "That's just a bouncy castle," he said. "That's the target. The gift table sits immediately to the left of the bouncy castle, which puts our extraction point right here." She tapped the paper with two fingers. "Simple." "Nothing about this is simple, Molly." "Small children. Distracted parents. Cake. It is extremely simple." Bill tugged at his black turtleneck, already soaked through because it was eleven in the morning and seventy-eight degrees outside. He had worn the turtleneck because Molly had insisted on full tactical dress, and he had not paused to ask what a children's birthday party required in terms of tactical dress. He was beginning to understand that the answer was not this. The party was underway three houses down. They could hear the aggressive synthetic joy of a pop song built entirely for children who had not yet developed taste, and beneath that, the relentless percussion of small humans running on hardwood floors. A drooping banner between two oak trees read HAPPY 7TH BIRTHDAY COOPER. "We move in during the candles," Molly said. "Every adult in that yard will be looking at Cooper." "Who even is Cooper?" "Irrelevant to the mission." Bill picked up the juice box from the corner of the blueprints. It was grape. He took a long pull from the straw and set it back down with the careful deliberateness of a man who needed something to do with his hands. "What if someone asks what we're doing?" he said. "We say we are the cleanup crew." "People believe that?" "Parents at children's parties will believe anything that implies another adult is handling something. They are running entirely on caffeine and quiet desperation." Bill realized, with some discomfort, that this was completely accurate. "I still feel like this crosses a line," he said. "Every heist crosses a line, Bill. That is what makes it a heist." He gazed down the street at the yard full of balloons and streamers and small people who had done absolutely nothing to deserve what was about to happen to their gift pile. He straightened his turtleneck. He finished the juice box. "Cooper is going to be devastated," he said. "Cooper will recover. Children are resilient. Also, someone in there almost certainly bought a gift card, and gift cards are non-transferable, so Cooper is keeping something." She folded the blueprints and tucked them under her arm. "Ready?" Bill looked at her for a long moment. "Absolutely not," he said. Molly was already walking.