Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCR0JTRYJ0SV3E4QEG5F0GS

Molly spread the blueprints across the hood of the van, smoothing them with the reverence of a surgeon laying out instruments. They were not, strictly speaking, blueprints. They were a placemat from the Fun Zone Pizza Palace, illustrated with a maze, a word search, and a cartoon mouse holding a slice, but she had annotated it in red pen and that lent it authority. Bill studied the maze. He had been studying it for eleven minutes. The party began at two. Forty children, one bounce castle, and a folding table groaning under a ziggurat of wrapped boxes—remote-control helicopters, dolls that wept convincingly, a bicycle with tassels. Molly had scouted it twice, once as a balloon vendor and once, more successfully, as a woman looking for her lost dog. "The clown," she said, tapping the mouse. "The clown is our way in." Bill nodded slowly, which was his method of pretending to already know things. Molly outlined the plan. He would enter as Bobo the Magnificent, absorb the parents' attention with a routine involving three scarves and a wilted balloon giraffe, while she reversed the van to the patio doors and loaded the haul during the piñata frenzy, when no adult present would be looking at anything but the swinging donkey. "Any questions?" "Do I get cake?"