Run: 2026-10-13-01M4TAYN849EKD3J8VE4Y20FCF

The van said FLEET FEET PARTY CLOWNS on the side, which was a lie in every particular. Molly had stolen the magnetic sign off an actual clown's car that morning, an act she described as "research." Inside, the van smelled of old fries and ambition. Bill sat in the passenger seat wearing a magician's tailcoat, sweating through the cummerbund. Molly spread the blueprint across the dashboard, a crayon floor plan of the Henderson backyard annotated in her tight handwriting: BOUNCE HOUSE (ENTRY), GRILL (DAD), PRESENTS TABLE (THE SCORE). "Candles get lit at two-fifteen," she said. "Twenty-six guests singing Happy Birthday is forty seconds of total blindness. We move on the second chorus." Bill peered through the windshield. Balloons bobbed on the mailbox, and a clown, the real one, minus his sign, was unloading a duffel bag from a hatchback. Bill watched him with the wariness of a man who had been burned by clowns before. "What's the clown carrying?" "Balloon animals. Possibly a dove. He is not the threat." The threats, per Molly's clipboard, were as follows: one father at a grill, armed with tongs and tunnel vision; one golden retriever named Biscuit, neutralized by string cheese; and one grandmother, eighty-two, planted in a lawn chair with a direct sightline to the presents table and eyes like a surveillance camera with bifocals. "The grandmother does not blink," Molly said. "I've watched her for three hours. Not once. We go around her, through the bounce house." "Through it?" "The children are camouflage. Forty screaming kids, one deflating castle, total chaos. You pull the plug on my signal." "What's the signal?" Molly considered this for the first time. "Frosting," she decided. "I'll yell 'frosting.'" Getaway was the Honda two doors down, hazards on like any parent double-parked at a party. Molly had a pillowcase stenciled with reindeer so the loot would read as laundry. She had thought of everything, which is what worried Bill, because Molly thought of everything right up until she didn't. Bill tugged at his sequined lapel. Everything about this itched, including his conscience, which had been silent for years and chose now to pipe up. "These are birthday presents, Molly. For a child." Molly lowered the binoculars. "That child has a pony ride booked for three o'clock. He'll survive." "And we fence forty wrapped gifts where?" "Dwayne. Nobody questions bulk Legos in January." "It's June." "Dwayne doesn't own a calendar." Across the street, guests began arriving with gift bags the size of drywall. Molly's eyes glittered the way they always did before a job, bright and slightly unwell. She'd stolen the invitation six weeks ago and built a dossier since: guest list, dietary restrictions, a haunting photograph of last year's magician. The tailcoat Bill was wearing had belonged to that magician, and the sleeves still smelled faintly of doves. "Synchronize watches," Molly said. Bill held up a Pokémon watch. Pikachu pointed at nothing useful. "Close enough. One rule: nobody touches the cake." "We're robbing a child, but we're sparing the cake?" "We're thieves, Bill. Not monsters."