Run: 2026-09-02-01M1GSYN4TFSCKEDK1QAHAJ3KK

The surveillance van sat across the street from Hendricks Park, both occupants pretending to eat sandwiches. On the far side of the fence, the target was in full swing: a children's birthday party, balloons on every post, a bouncy castle the size of a small nation, and a folding table stacked with wrapped presents like a dragon's hoard of very small, very cheerful gold. Molly unfolded her blueprint across the dashboard — hand-drawn, colored in, labeled CASTLE BOUNCINGTON, with a little flag on top. Bill studied it for a long, troubled moment. "This is a bounce house," he said. "It's a castle, Bill. Get your head in the game." Bill accepted this and took out his notebook, the same one from the museum job. Molly walked him through the layout: gift table at the east end, exits, the clown. "Guard rotation?" Bill asked. "One clown. Mr. Wiggles. He keeps the whole take in a red bag until the piñata ceremony at three." "What's a piñata ceremony?" "It's when the children beat a paper donkey with sticks until candy falls out. Recon is recon." Bill wrote DONKEY RITUAL and underlined it twice, which meant it would appear in the final plan whether anyone wanted it there or not. Molly had learned to manage him early. The window was the conga line at half past two, when every child on the lawn would be holding the ankles of the child ahead of them. Molly would slip through the moonbounce's emergency flap, where the presents sat within arm's reach of the bag. For the clown, she had something special. She reached into the back of the van and produced the pony costume: four legs of crushed velvet, a mane like a haunted wig, and an expression of permanent apology stitched into its enormous face. "I thought we agreed the pony costume was a work injury, not an assignment," said Bill. Molly reminded him that they had agreed it was a tragedy, and tragedies were opportunities. "The petting zoo is down a member," she said, "and that member is you." "The mascot. You're asking me to be the mascot." "I'm asking you to be a distraction with hooves. Mr. Wiggles can't resist new livestock." Bill chewed his pencil. His eyebrows did the thing they did when his conscience woke up from its nap. "The plan is stealing presents from children," he said, "at a birthday party." "The plan is redistributing joy from people who own a bounce castle to two professionals whose rent is due." Bill looked at the costume. The costume, somehow, looked back. Out on the lawn, Mr. Wiggles honked his horn at nothing, vigorously, like a professional. "Ninety seconds," said Molly. "Ninety seconds." "If Mr. Wiggles hugs me, I'm out." "Nobody hugs a stranger pony, Bill." Bill sighed the sigh of a man who had already lost, and began putting on the front half of the pony. Somewhere across the fence, thirty children screamed with joy at nothing at all.