Run: 2026-09-02-01M1GT0QARBYXHYF45HDZ0WFTA

The getaway van sat across from Maplewood Park with its engine ticking and its windows fogged to a milky white. Molly wiped a porthole in the glass and studied the target: balloons, a bounce house shaped like a dragon, two dads in party hats orbiting a cupcake table, and a clown working the crowd like he was casing it, which, in her professional opinion, he probably was. "The clown worries me," Bill said. "Nobody's that cheerful for free." Molly, who had once dated a man exactly like that, said nothing. Bill opened a notebook dense with cramped handwriting. "Operation Sugar Rush proceeds as planned. Phase one, you pose as a parent. Phase two, I create a distraction. Phase three, we walk out rich." "Rich," Molly said, "off a table of presents for a six-year-old." "Forty-three presents. I counted." "From two hundred yards?" "I have a gift." "You have a problem." Bill tapped the notebook, wounded. "Guard rotations. The dads swap shifts every twenty minutes, but the grandmother never leaves the gift table. She sits on a folding chair like it's a throne." "Grandmothers don't get tired," Molly said grimly. "That's the whole problem with grandmothers." They ran the exit strategy, which was the bounce house, over Molly's objection that it had exactly one exit and it was a dragon's mouth. "And if the clown spots us?" "Then we're finished. One clown looks at you sideways, every kid screams, every parent looks, and suddenly you're a grown man sprinting through a bounce house holding a My Little Pony cash register." Below the pavilion, the gift table glittered beneath a banner that read HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY LUCAS in bubble letters of doom. "What's the actual merchandise?" Molly asked. "There's a Power Wheels in that pile," Bill said, going soft with reverence. "I saw the box." "The crown jewel is a plastic car. For a child." "A plastic car that drives, Molly." "You ever think we're the storybook villains here? We're what kids get warned about." "Henchmen," Bill said. "We'd be henchmen. Villains have style." Music struck up across the park. Somebody blindfolded the birthday boy and handed him a bat. "Piñata's going up," Molly said. "That's our window. Every kid in a fifty-foot radius is about to lose it over a dinosaur full of candy." Bill watched the boy get spun in three tight circles, bat wobbling. "Our distraction is a child with a weapon?" "Children are chaos agents," Molly said. "Nobody disrupts a party like the guest of honor." Bill slid the van door open and produced a party hat from his jacket, the elastic trembling under his chin. "You brought a disguise?" "It's camouflage. When in Rome." Molly put one on too. Through the porthole, the grandmother at her folding throne adjusted her glasses and did not blink. "For the record, if we're arrested, this was your idea." "Fine. But the Power Wheels is mine." They stepped out into the sunshine, two hardened criminals in pointy hats, advancing on the least defended target in the city: a birthday party.