Run: 2026-09-02-01M1GQSMAXN7ZKJNDXRSPA8EVF

The blueprint spread across the kitchen table had been annotated with military precision. Red circles marked the bouncy castle. A dotted line traced the optimal route through the garden, and in one corner, a stern warning about the grandmother had been underlined twice. Molly leaned over the map wearing reading glasses she didn't need, because heists demanded gravitas. Three evenings of surveillance from a parked car, two packets of custard creams, and one deeply suspicious conversation with a postman had gone into this. Little Katy Henderson's seventh birthday would be the score of the decade. "Cake's at three, sugar crash at four, presents at half past," she said, tapping the folding table drawn in the garden's far corner. "Sixteen gifts, including what I believe to be a robot dog that genuinely poops." Bill, her partner of eleven years, was chewing a pen cap down to its molecular components. He had learned long ago to treat her briefings with the reverence of a man casing a casino vault rather than a paddling pool. "Security?" he asked. "A golden retriever named Biscuit and a nan who naps during films." "Armed?" "The nan has a slipper." Bill nodded gravely and made a note. He underlined it twice, which was his personal system for serious threats. Somewhere in his jacket was a laminated card reading REMAIN CALM that he consulted during weddings and trips to the tip. "The real danger is the children," Molly continued. "They're like tiny detectives. One of them once clocked that a magician's dove was just a pigeon with glitter on it. He made a sign." "Saying what?" "Pigeon Fraud." Molly let the words hang in the air the way veterans discuss old wars. "So we go in as entertainers. I'm face painting. You're on balloons." Bill went pale. He had attempted a balloon animal once, alone in his kitchen with the curtains drawn, and the balloon had won. There had been a noise like a gunshot and a red streak across the ceiling that his landlord still asked about. "I can make a snake," he said finally. "Wonderful. You'll make thirty." "Kids notice patterns, Molly. They'll rumble me, and then it's Pigeon Fraud all over again, except this time it's Snake Fraud, and I couldn't survive that." Molly considered this, then reached into her bag and produced a photograph of an ice cream van, sliding it onto the table with the calm confidence of a woman laying down a royal flush. "Ninety-nine flakes for everyone," she said. "While they're hunting sprinkles, we empty the present table and slip out the side gate." "In the ice cream van?" Molly paused. Details were technically Bill's department, and Bill's department was, historically speaking, a catastrophe with a lanyard. Somewhere out there was her brother, who owned a van and still owed her for the incident at the casino, but that was another blueprint, on another kitchen table, for another day. Bill picked up a balloon and began, cautiously, to inflate it. "Snake," he muttered. "Snake. Snake. Snake."