Run: 2026-06-01-01KT1GWMNPZMXAPM0EAS414TVY

Molly spread the blueprint across the kitchen table, smoothing out the wrinkles with the reverence of a surgeon prepping for a delicate operation. Bill leaned over her shoulder, squinting at the crayon-drawn map. "Why's the bounce house circled in red?" he asked. "That's our extraction point," Molly said, tapping the soggy paper. "Nobody suspects the bounce house." The blueprint was, technically, a child's drawing they'd liberated from the recycling bin behind the Hendersons' house. Stick figures dotted the lawn. A lopsided sun smiled down on what appeared to be a clown of nightmarish proportions. Bill straightened up, cracking his knuckles. "I don't like clowns, Molly." "Nobody likes clowns. That's their whole thing." He paced the length of the kitchen, his oversized cargo pants—chosen specifically for present-smuggling capacity—swishing with each step. Molly had laid out their equipment on the counter: two ski masks, a sack labeled SWAG in permanent marker, and an alarming quantity of party hats. "The hats are camouflage," she explained before he could ask. "We blend in with the parents." "We're forty-three years old and I have a mustache you could lose a badger in." "Exactly. Disgruntled uncle. Nobody questions a disgruntled uncle at a children's party." Bill picked up a party hat and stretched the elastic strap experimentally. It snapped against his chin with a wet thwack. He didn't flinch, which Molly admired about him. "Walk me through the timeline again," he said. She pointed to the drawing. "Twelve hundred hours, the cake comes out. Maximum distraction. Every kid in a fifteen-foot radius goes feral. That's when we hit the present pile." "And the parents?" "Filming the cake on their phones. Documenting. Posting. They wouldn't notice a freight train if it had a birthday candle on it." Bill nodded slowly, the gears in his head visibly turning, which was less a metaphor and more an unfortunate consequence of how loudly he thought. He set down the hat. "What about the goodie bags?" Molly looked up sharply. "We're not animals, Bill. The goodie bags stay. Those kids worked hard for those goodie bags." "They didn't work for anything, they just showed up—" "The goodie bags stay." A silence settled between them, thick with moral consideration. Somewhere outside, an ice cream truck played a warped, melancholy tune that neither of them acknowledged. Bill finally sighed and grabbed the SWAG sack. "Fine. Just the presents. But if there's a piñata, it's mine." "You can have the piñata." "And the candy inside it." "Don't push it." Molly rolled up the blueprint and tucked it into her jacket, then handed Bill a party hat with the solemnity of a knighting. He placed it on his head at an angle he believed conveyed authority but actually conveyed only that he was a man wearing a tiny cone. She studied him, this absurd partner of hers, this badger-mustachioed accomplice in petty crime, and felt something dangerously close to affection. "Ready?" she asked. Bill adjusted his hat. "Let's go ruin a child's birthday."