Run: 2026-10-06-01M48VZSRYWEEB66AB7K4MHFE9

The party was three hours away. Molly sat cross-legged on the motel bed, spreading a hand-drawn map across the floral comforter while Bill ate cold pizza from the box on the nightstand. "So we go in through the bounce house," Molly said, tapping the diagram with a greasy finger. "The birthday boy's uncle is the only adult inside, and he's legally blind." "Legally blind," Bill repeated, chewing. "That's not blind, Molly. That's just bad eyesight with paperwork." "It's close enough. He can't see us coming." "He can see the presents, though. That's the problem. He's guarding them." Molly leaned back on her elbows. "Bill, think about it. We're not stealing from the kids. We're stealing from the parents. The kids don't care. They're eating cake and screaming. The parents are the ones who spent forty dollars on LEGO sets." "Forty dollars is nothing." "Times thirty kids. That's twelve hundred dollars in LEGO. Minimum." Bill set down his pizza. "You want to rob a children's party." "I want to rob a children's party, yes. There's a difference between wanting and doing." "There's not. That's literally what wanting means." Molly stood up and paced to the window, looking out at the parking lot. "My car needs new brakes, Bill. My brakes. The thing that stops me from dying." "Your brakes work fine." "They work fine until they don't, and then I die. Or worse, I kill someone. A child, maybe. I could kill a child with my car, Bill. Do you want that on your conscience?" "I don't want anything on my conscience. That's why I don't do crimes." "You're doing this crime. We talked about this." "We talked about a lot of things. We talked about the museum. We talked about the pharmaceutical warehouse. You talked about the pharmaceutical warehouse for six hours." "That was a bad idea. The security was too good." "Everything's too good. That's why we're here, discussing a children's party." Molly turned around. "It's not a bad idea. It's a great idea. No cameras, no alarms, no—" "There's a clown, Molly. There's a professional clown. He's part of the entertainment." "So?" "So he's watching everything. Clowns watch children. That's their whole thing. They have eyes on stalks, basically." "He's not a real clown. He's a college student in face paint. I looked it up. His name is Tyler. He's twenty-two and he does this for beer money." "And you know this because?" "Because I called the party place. I asked about the entertainment package." "You called them." "I researched. There's a difference." Bill stood up and stretched. "I'm not doing this, Molly. I'm not crawling through a bounce house in a clown nose to steal a Furby from a seven-year-old." "It's not a Furby. It's a Nintendo Switch." "Same thing. It's a toy. It's a child's toy." "It's a Nintendo Switch, Bill. It's worth three hundred dollars. We could get your brakes fixed and my brakes fixed and still have money left over for—" "For what? For more crimes? For the next bad idea?" Molly walked back to the bed and sat down heavily. "For a lawyer. For when we get caught. Because we will get caught. We always get caught. But at least this time we'll have money for a lawyer who isn't my cousin." Bill was quiet for a long moment. Then he picked up his pizza and took a bite. "The bounce house. How do we get in?" Molly smiled. "Through the zipper, on the side. Tyler won't be looking there. He'll be juggling or whatever." "And the presents?" "Stacked by the cake table. We grab what we can carry and we go. Twenty minutes, tops." "And if the legally blind uncle sees us?" "He won't. And if he does, we say we're with the entertainment." Bill nodded slowly. "We're clowns now." "We're clowns now." "What kind of clown names?" Molly thought for a moment. "I'm Bozo. You're... Krusty?" "Krusty's taken. That's a real clown. A famous one." "Then you're... Pagliacci. The sad one. Fits your personality." Bill finished his pizza and wiped his hands on his jeans. "Pagliacci. Fine. But I'm getting hazard pay." "You're getting half the Nintendo Switch." "That's not hazard pay. That's just the job." "Then you're getting a third, and I'm keeping two-thirds because I did all the planning." "That's not how partnerships work." "That's exactly how partnerships work when one partner is a genius and the other partner eats cold pizza and complains." Bill laughed, and Molly laughed with him, and somewhere in the parking lot a dog barked at nothing, and three hours later they would be clowns, and by morning they would be criminals, and by next week they would be in a courtroom with a lawyer that Molly's cousin recommended, a man named Gerald who specialized in "unusual circumstances." But for now, they had a plan. And plans, Molly had learned, were almost as good as money. Almost.