Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCRAQYZ84WNPZ5BJK61EMHN

The van smelled of old fries and older regret. Molly had spread the blueprints across the dashboard — not blueprints, technically, but a napkin sketch of the Pemberton back garden, complete with a bouncy castle rendered as a lopsided cloud and an arrow labeled LOOT ZONE. Bill studied it the way a man studies a tax form. "So the presents," he said, "are on a trestle table. Beside the piñata." "Beside and slightly behind. There's a tablecloth with cartoon dinosaurs on it, which works in our favor because dinosaurs are visually loud. Nobody looks at what's under a loud tablecloth." "That is not a real principle of anything." "It's a real principle of me." Molly had been casing the house since Tuesday, which mostly meant standing at the bus stop opposite it eating a scotch egg and taking notes. The birthday child was turning seven. His name was Rufus. Rufus had thirty-one invited guests, a hired magician, and — according to the laminated schedule taped inside the front window, because these people laminated things — a "PRESENT OPENING CEREMONY" at 3:45 sharp. Which meant the window was 2:00 to 3:44. Ninety-four minutes of unguarded plunder, guarded only by sugar-drunk children and a magician named The Astonishing Gary. "I want it on the record," Bill said, "that stealing from a seven-year-old is the lowest thing we've done." "Lower than the nunnery?" "The nuns had insurance." "Rufus has a barrister for a father and a mother who owns four wine fridges. Rufus has *contents cover*, Bill. Rufus will be re-gifted everything by Thursday and won't remember any of it by August. Meanwhile I am eating soup that comes in a sachet." Bill couldn't argue with the soup. He'd seen the soup. The plan, such as it was, had three moving parts. Molly would enter through the side gate at 2:10 disguised as a face painter, which required only a smock and the confidence of a woman carrying glitter. Bill would arrive at 2:25 as an entertainer's assistant, a role he had prepared for by buying a bow tie and practicing an expression of tolerant sorrow. At 2:40, Molly would announce a "special surprise for Rufus" in the front room, drawing the children away like a tide going out. That left the trestle table alone with Bill and four collapsible laundry bags. "And if the mother stays behind?" Bill asked. "She won't. She'll want photos." "And if The Astonishing Gary objects to an assistant he never hired?" "Then you say the word *union*, and you say it slowly, and you watch what happens to a man's face." Bill folded the napkin into his pocket with the care of an archivist. Outside, a bunch of helium balloons was being tied to a lamppost by someone in a linen shirt, and the sound of a distant bouncy castle inflating rose over the hedges like a great pneumatic sigh. "Ninety-four minutes," he said. "Ninety-four minutes." Molly checked her watch, then her glitter. "Try to look like you enjoy children." Bill attempted it. "Never mind," she said. "Look grieving. It's more convincing."