Run: 2026-10-13-01M4TAWSMCS12B882T601XF0PE

Bill unrolled the blueprint across the hood of the van and weighted the corners with donuts, which was the closest thing their operation had to tradition. It was a crayon drawing of a ranch house, a stick-figure dog, and a sun wearing sunglasses, smiling like it knew something. "That's the floor plan?" Molly asked. "Tommy drew it. Cost two juice boxes." Molly studied the map. The backyard was labeled FUN ZONE in purple, which told her nothing, which was somehow worse than nothing. Three years ago they had knocked over a jewelry store in Dayton with thermal goggles and a safecracker named Screwdriver. Now Screwdriver was in Oregon selling essential oils, and she was interpreting crayon by the light of a streetlamp. She made a note in her notebook, which had a unicorn on the cover, which she tried not to take personally. She nodded for him to continue. "Party's at two. Twenty kids, average age seven. Presents hit the gift table before cake. Forty-minute window." "Cake's at two-ten. Chocolate. I cased the bakery." "You cased the bakery." "I'm thorough." Bill tapped an orange scribble she had assumed was a fire. "Bouncy castle. Clear sight lines. Also a clown. Giggles. Never takes a break." "Your intel on the clown—" "Tommy. Very mature for his age." Molly pinched the bridge of her nose. She had once opened a safe by listening to the tumblers, a skill that took four years to learn and, it turned out, zero years to apply to children's birthday parties. She asked about the take. "LEGO set, scooter, Nerf blasters, drone. Six hundred retail. Fence pays forty cents." "Hundred twenty each." "It's not about the money. It's the principle." "What principle?" "That we could." She looked at the grinning crayon sun. It had seen things. It judged her. Across the street, a mother wrestled a gift bag the size of a dishwasher out of an SUV, and Molly felt the old itch anyway, the one no amount of honest work had ever scratched, the one that had cost her two jobs, one marriage, and a perfectly good sandwich she had abandoned mid-bite during the Dayton job. "One complication," Bill said. "Tommy's birthday wish. I asked. Undercover." "Undercover as what?" "A party magician. Six weeks of lessons." He produced a foam ball from behind her ear, then a second one from hers, which was showing off. "Stop that." "He wished for a puppy. Golden retriever. Two-thirty, wearing a bow." "Dogs have noses, Bill." "It's a puppy. Jellybean-sized nose." They stood there, two professionals, weighing it. The van smelled of old coffee and older decisions. Somewhere down the block a balloon popped and a child shrieked with joy, and Molly's entire career flashed before her eyes, set to clown music, narrated by a man named Giggles. "We're doing it," she said. "But if Giggles makes me a balloon animal, I keep it." "Deal," said Bill, and ate the donut off the northwest corner, which was load-bearing.