Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPN3Q27YJ7ZKMJQ1TRPQH8

The van smelled of stale nachos and ambition. Molly had spread the blueprints across the dashboard, though calling them blueprints was generous — it was a hand-drawn map on the back of a pizza menu, and she'd labeled the bouncy castle "FORTRESS." "Right," she said, tapping the menu with a chewed biro. "Party starts at two. Cake at three. Presents get opened at half three." "So we go in at quarter past," said Bill. "We go in at ten past." "Why ten past?" "Because at quarter past, Auntie Deborah arrives with the good wine and everyone crowds the kitchen. That's chaos. Chaos is our friend." Bill peered through the windscreen at the house — a nice semi-detached with balloons tied to the gatepost and a hand-painted banner reading HAPPY 7TH BIRTHDAY TOBIAS. He felt something stir in him that he did not like, and identified it, eventually, as conscience. "Molly." "Don't." "He's seven." "He's seven and he's got a trampoline. My childhood had a bucket." She folded the menu with a snap. "Sentiment is a tax, Bill, and I don't pay tax." "What if he cries?" "Then he learns something valuable about the world at no charge, and frankly he should thank us." Bill scratched his jaw. He was wearing a clown costume that fit him like a duvet cover on a lamppost, and the red nose kept slipping down onto his lip. "I don't think I make a convincing clown." "You don't have to be convincing. You have to be so unsettling that nobody makes eye contact with you. That's easier." "That's the plan? I unsettle them?" "That's your part of the plan. My part is the presents." She hauled a laundry sack out from between the seats and shook it out with a flourish, like a magician who'd given up on subtlety. "Present table's in the conservatory, by the patio doors. Doors are always unlocked because Deborah smokes and lies about it. I load, I walk, I'm gone in ninety seconds." "And me?" "You do balloon animals until the emotional damage sets in, then you leave through the front like a man who's finished a job." Bill turned the nose over in his fingers. "What if there's a bulldog? Number 14's got a bulldog." "Number 14 is not the target, Bill. That's the beauty of a well-researched operation." "You said the target was number 14 yesterday." There was a pause of a quality Molly did not enjoy. She examined the pizza menu with sudden interest. "I said number 40," she said. "You said 14. I wrote it on my hand." He showed her his hand, where the ink had smeared into something that looked like either 14 or 1A or a small angry bird. "That could be anything. That could be a chicken." "That is a fourteen." Molly looked at the house. Then at the house four doors down, where a considerably larger banner read HAPPY 7TH BIRTHDAY TOBIAS, and where at least nine children were currently attacking a piñata with the ferocity of a small union. "Two Tobiases," she said quietly. "So which one's got the presents?" "Both, Bill." She started the engine, eyes shining. "Both of them have presents. Do you understand what I'm telling you?" Bill put on the nose.