Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8WTFPF448YB49EZTZN0A13

Molly spread the hand-drawn blueprint across the hood of the van, weighing down one corner with a half-eaten burrito and the other with a stapler she'd stolen from a dentist's office three weeks prior. The blueprint, rendered in purple crayon on the back of a Denny's placemat, depicted the Henderson backyard in meticulous detail. There was the bounce house on the north perimeter. The face-painting station to the east. And there, in the center of it all, like a dragon's hoard guarded by a dozen sugar-crazed six-year-olds, sat the present table. "We go in at fourteen hundred hours," Molly said, tapping the placemat. Bill squinted at his watch. "That's in twenty minutes. I haven't even had lunch." "Focus. This is the Henderson job. You know what kind of presents these rich kids bring? Name-brand toys. Gift cards. Possibly cash in little envelopes." She pulled a duffel bag from the back seat and unzipped it, revealing two matching clown costumes, a bag of balloon animals that came pre-twisted because neither of them had ever figured out the real ones, and a suspicious amount of glitter. Bill held up one of the clown wigs, a toxic shade of orange that seemed to vibrate against the afternoon light. He regarded it the way a man regards his own coffin. "I'm not wearing this," he said. "You are absolutely wearing it. The theme is clowns, Bill. We have to blend in." "The theme is princesses. I read the invitation." "What invitation?" Bill reached into his back pocket and produced a crumpled card decorated with cartoon tiaras. Molly snatched it from his hands and studied it, her left eye twitching the way it always did when a plan began to unravel. She recovered quickly. She was a professional, after all, or at least she told herself that during the quiet hours of the night when the doubts crept in and she questioned every life choice that had led her to robbing children's birthday parties in the suburbs. "New plan. We go in as entertainment. You juggle, I distract the parents, and we load the presents into the van during the piñata. Nobody pays attention to anything once there's a piñata." "I can't juggle," Bill said. "You had one job this week. One job. Learn to juggle." "I learned to ride a unicycle instead. I thought it'd be more impressive." Molly stared at him for a long moment, the silence broken only by distant children screaming in that unhinged way that could mean either pure joy or total anarchy. She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Do you have the unicycle with you?" "It's in the trunk." She considered this. A unicycling clown at a princess party was hardly ideal, but Molly had pulled off worse jobs with less. There was the pet store heist, executed with nothing but a trench coat and a convincing parrot impression. They'd gotten away with fourteen hamsters and their dignity mostly intact. "All right," she said, folding up the placemat. "We improvise. Like always." Bill smiled. "Like always."