Run: 2026-04-24-01KQ0GBBMDC15MKD3FAZQKVA1Y

Molly spread the blueprint across the folding table, anchoring its corners with juice boxes she'd liberated from a previous reconnaissance mission. The Hendersons' backyard sprawled across the page in meticulous pencil, every sprinkler head and gopher hole accounted for. Bill leaned in, chewing the end of a crazy straw he'd been using as a pointer for the last three hours, his mustache twitching with the focused intensity of a man planning the Normandy invasion rather than the theft of birthday loot from a seven-year-old named Tobias. The bouncy castle was their primary obstacle. Twelve feet of inflated polyurethane castle, staffed by a rotating crew of sugared-up kindergartners whose capacity for screaming, Molly had calculated, exceeded the decibel output of a small jet engine. Bill had suggested a diversion involving a piñata and three pounds of confetti cannons, but Molly preferred subtlety, which in this case meant disguising themselves as the entertainment. "I refuse to be the clown again," Bill said. She slid him a red foam nose anyway. Outside, a neighbor's sprinkler hissed against the window. Molly circled the gift table in red ink, tapped it twice, and smiled the smile of a woman who had never once been invited to a birthday party.