Run: 2026-09-02-01M1GQ93GSB67HGHA2EYA6AZ2A

Three hours into the stakeout, Molly unrolled the blueprint across the card table of the van, pinning its corners with warm energy drinks and a bag of gummy worms. The blueprint was a crayon drawing on butcher paper, complete with a sun wearing sunglasses in the corner. Molly tapped the paper. "The target is Timmy Henderson's seventh birthday. Saturday, two p.m. Security is tight." Bill squinted at the largest shape on the map, a many-colored blob hovering over the yard like a storm system. "That's a bouncy castle." "Air-filled perimeter obstacle. Inflates at eight a.m. You go in, it swallows you, and some six-year-old named Tegan bounces on your spine until her mother pulls her off for cake. A man in Omaha tried it. He does yardwork now." Bill rubbed his eyes. The job had sounded simple at two in the morning: kids' party, unattended presents, nine minutes. Now there were diagrams, codenames, and a laminated card labeled WHO IS COACH MELISSA. "Fine. The balloon arch, then. Over the fence, through the balloons, clean extraction." Molly shook her head with the weariness of a woman who had explained this before and been disappointed. "Helium. One wrong brush and you're talking like a chipmunk in front of witnesses. Ruins the voice. Ruins the crew." She jabbed a gummy worm at a rectangle labeled PRESENTS, drawn beneath a stick figure with unsettlingly broad shoulders. "The loot's on the folding table, right under Coach Melissa. She hasn't blinked since 2019. We don't beat her. We distract her." "With what? Please don't say Gerald." Molly smiled, and Bill's stomach dropped. That smile had preceded every catastrophe of his adult life. "Gerald has a clown suit and a dream." "Gerald has a warrant and a squeaky horn. He can't be trusted around adults, let alone forty sugared-up children." "Gerald does one job. He does the pratfall, falls into the cake, and every eye in that yard goes to the frosting." "And the cake?" "The cake is a casualty, Bill. Every heist has casualties." Bill pinched the bridge of his nose, then pictured it anyway: Gerald tumbling into a sheet cake, buttercream to the ceiling, the two of them waddling out the side gate with a hundred pounds of boxed merchandise. "Even if that works, how do we carry it? Our exit is a Slip 'N Slide." Molly reached into her jacket and produced, with a flourish, a sparkly gift bag. "We're not stealing presents. We're leaving with gift bags. Nobody questions a gift bag at a kid's party. We are ghosts." Bill stared at it. It was, infuriatingly, genius. "Okay. But what about the piñata?" Molly's smile faded for the first time all afternoon. "What about it?" "We pull out during the piñata, we pull out during a candy explosion. Children move at candy speed, Mol. Candy speed. We can't outrun them." Through the windshield, in the Henderson backyard, a papier-mâché dinosaur piñata swayed gently in the breeze, patient as a landmine. Molly rolled up the blueprint. "Then we're gone before the piñata. Two p.m. sharp." Bill buckled his seatbelt, the way men do before a thing they'll deny later. "For the loot." "For the loot," said Molly, and started the engine.