Run: 2026-10-13-01M4TBWZ6Q6FMV7FZBN8RC9EN2

The Bluebonnet Diner was nearly empty at eleven on a Tuesday, which made it, in Molly's professional opinion, the perfect place to plan a felony. She spread the blueprint across the table and weighed down the corners with a salt shaker, a ketchup bottle, and Bill's phone, which he tried to retrieve twice before she slapped his hand. "Is that drawn in crayon?" Bill asked. "It's drawn in stealth. Now listen. Saturday, two p.m., the Henderson kid turns seven. Twenty-three confirmed guests. That's twenty-three presents, minimum, plus whatever the grandma brings, and grandma always brings two." Bill leaned over the diagram. The house was a purple square. The bouncy castle was a green circle with the word BOING written beside it in Molly's cramped handwriting. A stick figure labeled BILL stood near a rectangle labeled LOOT. "You've thought about the grandma?" he said. "I've thought about everything. The bouncy castle arrives at one-thirty. That's our window. While twenty-three sugared-up children violate the laws of physics, we walk in through the side gate dressed as the entertainment." "Why am I drawn shorter than you?" "Perspective." "Why do I have no neck?" "Artistic license. Focus." She tapped the green circle. "Presents go on the gift table by the patio. I distract the parents with an emergency balloon-animal demonstration. You sweep the table into the duffel bag. Ninety seconds, in and out." Bill stirred his coffee and did not drink it, the way he never drank anything when he was working up the nerve to object. "I want it noted we're robbing a seven-year-old." "We're not robbing him. We're redistributing. The kid has a trampoline, a pool, and a pony named Biscuit. He'll survive." "A pony," Bill said flatly. "Focus." "You're going to rob a kid who has a pony, and you keep saying focus." Molly folded her arms. She had robbed a bingo hall on finals night. She had once walked out of a charity auction with the auctioneer. She did not appreciate being cast as the villain of a plan she considered, frankly, elegant. The waitress refilled their coffees without glancing at the blueprint, the way only diner waitresses can. "Know what a mint-condition Turbo Raptor goes for?" she asked. "No." "Neither do I. But it's in the original packaging. That's where the money is." "They pay triple for a toy a kid got for free?" "Welcome to capitalism. Questions?" "What if he cries?" Molly looked at him for a long moment, then rolled up the blueprint with the tenderness of a woman putting away a treasured map. "Then we move fast. Balloons up, presents in, gone before the cake's cut." "Old people cry quiet. Kids cry loud." "Saturday. One forty-five. Wear the clown shoes." "I thought I was the balloon guy." "You're a clown who makes balloons. It's called range." She stood, dropped two dollars on the table, and pointed at his cup. "Finish that. We've got three days to teach you how to make a dog." Bill stared down at the crayon version of himself, neckless, guarding the loot. It really did look like it had seen things.