Run: 2026-09-02-01M1GSZC8EH0F4XMM1ZFRK0NKV

Molly had cased a Swiss bank, a Monaco casino, and the Vatican archives, but nothing had prepared her for the surveillance photos of Tyler's Seventh Birthday Extravaganza. Bill laid the photos across the hood of the car like evidence at a crime scene. The Hendersons' backyard had been transformed: a bounce house cathedral, a balloon arch gateway, forty-three wrapped presents gleaming on a folding table. "That's the gift table," Bill said. "Forty-three presents, minimum. Prime fence material." Molly studied the balloon arch through binoculars. She'd identified it as the real security system. Children, she knew from years of field research, treated balloons the way banks treated alarm sensors. "Pop one balloon and the whole yard knows. Balloons are the tripwires of the under-twelve set." Beyond the balloons waited the bounce house, where a dozen children ricocheted like pinballs, screaming with the frenetic energy of a stock exchange floor. Bill had insisted he could cross it. Molly had watched him practice on Tuesday. It had not gone well; he'd emerged upside down, and a six-year-old had offered him a fruit snack out of pity. "You come out of that thing with a broken hip and a juice stain you can't explain," she said. "Then I go around." "Around takes you past the clown." They looked at the surveillance photo again. The clown's name was Mr. Gigglez, according to intel, and he had the thousand-yard stare of a man who'd made eleven balloon animals that morning and hated every single one. "I've faced armed guards," Bill said quietly. "I've never faced a man twisting balloon dachshunds at close range." Molly checked her watch and traced the escape route across Bill's blueprint, which was labeled in red ink: EXTRACTION ROUTE, SECONDARY EXTRACTION ROUTE, DO NOT GO NEAR CLOWN. "The piñata breaks at three," she said. "That's our window. Every child converges on the candy at once. We take the table and walk out clean." One wildcard remained. A small woman in a floral visor stood beside the gift table like a sentry at Buckingham Palace. Intel suggested she had once dispatched a porch pirate with a garden hose and returned to her lawn chair before the screaming stopped. "What about the grandmother?" Bill asked. "We don't engage the grandmother. She's a force of nature. We route around her the way sailors route around hurricanes." Bill practiced his cover story one last time. If caught, he was Uncle Steve, a distant relative who brought his own folding chair to parties. Molly hated how convincing it was. "And if a kid catches you mid-heist?" "That's not in the plan." "It's always in the plan. Contingencies, Bill." "Fine. I tell them the presents need wrapping repairs. Kids respect wrapping repairs." Molly closed her eyes. Somewhere behind her, a man with two federal convictions was preparing to infiltrate a seven-year-old's birthday party, and she had worked with worse. She slid her ski mask into her jacket pocket—pink, so it wouldn't get mixed up with one of Bill's. "Gear up," she said. "Party starts at two."