Run: 2026-09-02-01M1GVEZND5CT8A9X8S5S0ZP9F

Molly spread the blueprints across the diner table at midnight, pinning the corners with a ketchup bottle, a coffee mug, and Bill's half-eaten pancake. This was tradition. Real heists, she maintained, began with greasy formica and ended in glory. "The Henderson kid's birthday," she said, tapping the big rectangle. "Saturday, two to five. That's the backyard." Bill leaned in, squinting. "Why is half of it colored red?" "That's the bouncy castle. Guarded perimeter." "It's a bouncy castle, Molly." "It's a bouncy castle, Bill. One foot and you'll bounce like a raisin in a blender. Kids sense intruders through the rubber. It's documented." Bill wisely moved on and stabbed what was left of his pancake. "Loot?" "Sixteen presents, minimum. Wrapped. Stacked on a folding table under a canopy tent." "You're calling a folding table the Vault, aren't you." "I'm calling it whatever gets us respect at the Thieves' Guild potluck." He chewed on that, literally and figuratively. The guard situation, Molly explained, was beautifully simple: one golden retriever named Biscuit, friendly but loud, to be neutralized with a tennis ball and forty minutes of throwing. Biscuit, she added, had no discipline and no shame, and she respected that in a professional rival. "The humans?" Bill asked. "Here's the ugly part." Molly's voice dropped to the register she saved for museum lasers. "Twenty-two children hopped up on cake and juice. Violent mood swings. One cries, the whole operation goes sideways." Bill went pale. He had history with children. Lagos had been bad enough, and those, he liked to point out, had been adults dressed as clowns. She slid a photograph across the table: a gap-toothed seven-year-old grinning in a pirate costume. "This is Declan. The birthday boy. Our inside man." Bill choked on his coffee. "You've turned a child?" "I've befriended a child. There's a difference. His grandmother pays me twenty bucks a week to water her plants, and Declan tells me everything. Guest list, cake flavor, location of the good presents." "Which are?" "The ones shaped like rectangles. Rich people give rectangles." Bill rubbed his temples, a habit Molly had come to read as applause. "Say we get in. Say we grab the rectangles. Then what? We're two adults sprinting out of a child's party with armfuls of presents. Some mom tackles us. Moms are terrifying." Molly smiled the slow, terrible smile that had once cleared a casino floor and produced a laminated banner from her jacket. "A 'Happy Birthday' banner?" "A get-out-of-jail-free card, Billy. Whoever holds this looks official. Kids respect the banner. Parents respect the banner. It's social engineering." "Where did you even—" "Party City. Ninety-nine cents." He stared at her for a long moment, then sighed the sigh of a man who had agreed an hour ago and was only now admitting it. "Extraction plan?" "Punch bowls at two-thirty. Sugar crash at three-fifteen. Our window is thirty seconds of pure, drooling silence." "Thirty seconds to empty a whole table?" "Thirty seconds to empty the Vault." Bill raised his mug. She raised hers. Somewhere across town, in a bed shaped like a fire truck, Biscuit slept the sleep of the unbribed, unaware his loyalty would cost exactly one tennis ball by Saturday. "To Declan," Bill said. "To Declan," Molly echoed. "And to Party City, the greatest fence in the civilized world."