Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPV2KXT0C8D5Y7GHXMQ7QG

The blueprint spread across the kitchen table was, technically, a birthday party invitation, but Bill had annotated it heavily in red pen. Arrows. Circles. A skull and crossbones drawn over the bouncy castle for reasons he had not yet explained. Molly leaned over the paper, squinting at his handwriting, which resembled a seismograph reading during a modest earthquake. The gift table, he had determined, sat beneath the gazebo in the Hendersons' back garden, sandwiched between a piñata and a folding chair full of grandmothers. Fourteen presents. Possibly fifteen, if the cousins came through. "Grandmothers," she said, "are the problem." Bill nodded gravely and tapped the piñata. The plan, as he had constructed it over three days and an alarming quantity of instant coffee, involved a diversionary sugar crash, one clown costume acquired under false pretenses from a party supply shop in Fenwick, and a wheelbarrow disguised as a novelty gift. The wheelbarrow was parked in the alley already, wrapped in paper printed with dinosaurs, a bow the size of a hubcap taped to its handle. Molly considered the skull and crossbones for a long moment. She thought about the grandmothers again, their sensible shoes, their terrible patience, their willingness to hold a child's hand for hours. "We're going to jail," she said. Bill smiled and reached for the clown wig.