Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPXZV5JYBYG6NCJABNC3TQ

Molly spread the blueprints across the sticky diner table, smoothing out a coffee ring with her sleeve. "Behold," she said. "The Pemberton residence. Two stories, four bedrooms, and one detached garage that will be, as of Saturday afternoon, the single richest concentration of unopened gifts in this county." Bill squinted at the paper. "Molly, this is a placemat." "It's a placemat I have annotated extensively." "You've drawn a maze on it. And a picture of a lobster." "The maze was already there. The lobster is the dog." Bill set down his fork. "They have a dog?" "They have a beagle named Duchess who is fourteen years old and, according to three separate neighborhood social media posts, primarily concerned with sleeping in patches of sunlight. I have accounted for Duchess." "How?" "Bacon." "That's not accounting. That's bribery." "Bribery is a form of accounting." Molly stabbed the placemat with her pen. "Now. The party begins at two. Twenty-two children, aged six to eight, plus parents, plus a magician named the Astonishing Reginald who I am told is neither astonishing nor named Reginald. The gifts get piled in the garage because the mother, Denise, doesn't want, quote, 'clutter in the sightlines.'" "You know her name is Denise?" "I know her name is Denise, her wine preferences, and that she is still furious about the Halloween decorations of 2019. People post everything, Bill. It's a golden age." Bill rubbed his face with both hands. "We're stealing from children." "We're stealing from a garage." "A garage full of children's presents." "A garage full of *duplicates*," Molly said. "Statistically, eleven of those twenty-two boxes contain the same plastic castle. We are performing a service. We are reducing redundancy." "That is the worst thing you've ever said, and you once described arson as 'aggressive redecorating.'" "That held up in court." "It absolutely did not hold up in court." Molly leaned back and let the silence sit for a moment, the way she always did when she wanted him to feel the weight of his own conscience shifting under him like a bad mattress. "Two hundred," she said finally. "Two hundred what?" "Dollars. Per box. That's the resale, Bill. Sealed, boxed, current-season toys, three weeks before the holiday rush. There is no product on earth with a better margin and a worse security posture than a birthday present." Bill looked out the window at the parking lot, where a minivan was executing a nine-point turn. "I'd need a shirt," he said. "You have shirts." "A shirt that says something. Like a company. So if somebody sees me in the driveway they think I'm delivering the bouncy castle." Molly's smile arrived slowly, like sunrise over a landfill. "There's a bouncy castle?" "There's always a bouncy castle." "Bill." She pulled the placemat back toward her and began writing furiously in the margins. "Bill, forget the garage." "Molly." "How much do you think a bouncy castle goes for?" "Molly, we are not stealing the inflatable." "We're stealing the *deflatable*," she said. "It's much easier to carry."