Run: 2026-09-24-01M39WGGDTPRXX5WXEE4QFGCG3

The getaway van idled across the street from the Hendersons' backyard, engine off, windows fogged with tension and the steam of Bill's onion rings. Molly unrolled the blueprint — technically a Denny's napkin with a crayon drawing of a house on it — and smoothed it flat against the dashboard like it was the schematic for the Vatican vault. Twelve years in the business. Banks. Museums. One regrettable incident involving a cruise ship buffet. All of it, every scar and every indictment she'd beaten, had led here: the fifth birthday party of a boy named Tyler, and the mountain of wrapped presents currently sitting unattended on a folding table. "Walk me through security again," she said. "A grandma with a camera, and a clown who made me a giraffe. It felt like a threat." She informed him it was a balloon. He maintained, with the serenity of a man who had thought deeply about giraffes, that it was a message. She moved on, because the real obstacle was worse. The bounce house — an enormous inflatable windmill that spun lazily at the mouth of the yard — swallowed and spat children at random intervals, and between it and the presents sat forty feet of open lawn, zero cover, and one golden retriever named Biscuit who had already barked at a mailman, a squirrel, and, presumably, the concept of mail itself. Through the binoculars the haul looked obscene: a bicycle with a bow on the handlebars, a box the size of a dishwasher, and a dozen mid-sized parcels in dinosaur paper. "So I go through the windmill," Bill said. "You're the windmill guy." "I'm two hundred and forty pounds. Children will point. There will be a scene." "The distraction. I kill the snow cone machine, chaos ensues, every kid migrates toward frozen sugar, and you take the table." Bill stared through the windshield. Across the street, a pack of five-year-olds stampeded past the presents, and something behind his eyes visibly wilted. One kid with a cast waved at the clown like a returning war hero. "Is this ethical? One of them has a cast, Molly. A cast." "It's a birthday party, not a hospital. Half those gifts are from relatives he's never met. We're redistributing unclaimed wealth." "Robin Hood logic." "Robin Hood never had a boat payment." "Robin Hood didn't steal from kindergartners." Bill ate an onion ring with the grim dignity of a man ordering his last meal. Somewhere across the street the clown twisted a balloon dachshund, a child screamed with pure joy, and Molly felt the old familiar itch, the click of a plan assembling itself, the same feeling she used to get crouched outside the Federal Reserve at three a.m. Heist nerves. She'd missed heist nerves. "Fine," Bill said. "But I want the big one. The one with the bow bigger than the box." "That's the LEGO fire station." "Then what am I here for? You hired me to be windmilled?" Molly started the engine and pulled her ski mask down over her eyes. "Get in the windmill, Bill."