Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCRKPNMBJS4E19GDG0V8JMG

Molly spread the blueprints across the hood of the van, which was actually a laminated placemat from the Pizza Barn. "That's the bounce castle," she said, tapping it. "That's the piñata. And that, Bill, is our extraction point." "The slip-and-slide?" "The slip-and-slide." Bill chewed his thumbnail. "There'll be forty children in there. Forty. Sugared up and feral." "Which is why you're wearing the clown suit." "I'm allergic to clown suits." "You're allergic to shellfish." "Emotionally allergic." She handed him a duffel bag stenciled BALLOONS, NOTHING SUSPICIOUS. He took it the way a man takes a subpoena. "Timeline," Molly continued. "Two-fifteen, cake. Everyone faces the cake. Nobody has ever, in recorded history, looked away from a cake. That's ninety seconds of total blindness, and in ninety seconds I can clear a present table of eleven gift bags and one suspiciously large bicycle." "And the mothers?" "Distracted. You'll be juggling." "I can't juggle." "Then they'll be riveted, Bill. Nothing holds a crowd like failure." He looked at the house, at the streamers sagging in the heat, at a small boy already crying about something structural. "This feels wrong," he said quietly. "It's a birthday, not a bank." "That's what makes it wrong." Molly checked her watch. "Two-fourteen. Honk if anybody sings."