Dave was quite proud of humanizing their delivery. He hadn't sounded like a computer this time.
"What else did you discover?" Dimitri asked.
"The guards were easy to thrall, and we made them ignore our presence. We entered through the front door after thralling the guards at the entrance. The house is luxurious, but it is not built on the grand scale of the mansion. The ground floor has a nice living room, a formal dining room that can seat at least twenty guests, a kitchen, and a study that Losham uses for reading. He has quite a collection of books."
"I told you so," Mattie murmured.
Dave wasn't sure what she was referring to, so he continued, "There are also staff quarters on the lower level, but it seems like only Losham's assistant is staying there. The master bedroomis on the upper floor, and it's impressive even in comparison to Navuh's mansion. Losham has a bed that is big enough to sleep four. According to rumors, he enjoys more than one woman at a time, so he needs the space. There are three other bedroom suites aside from the master, and they are well maintained as if Losham is expecting guests to arrive at any moment. Each of the bedrooms has a balcony with glass doors, which makes entering from the second floor a nonissue."
Dimitri finished with Number One and moved to Number Two. "Did you locate the cameras?"
"There are no cameras in the bedroom. There is one positioned above the balcony doors on the exterior, covering the balcony approach, and one in the corridor facing the bedroom entry door. They are not controlled locally, and identifying the feeds in the surveillance control room was easy since they are labeled by location."
"I'm glad you don't have to climb through the window," Mattie said. "But I'm also a little disappointed. In my imagination, I saw the eight of you climbing through a window one after the other, and it was quite an amusing image."
Dave didn't see the humor in that, but they chose not to comment on it.
"We can use the glass doors from the balcony, but the doors and windows in the house are fitted with a security alarm. Opening any of them without disabling the system triggers an alert at the main security station."
"Can you disable it?" Dimitri asked.
"Yes, but not selectively. It's a unified system. Disabling the alarm on the balcony doors requires disabling the alarm for theentire house, and that leaves traces. We will have to thrall the security station operators first and have them log the system as undergoing scheduled maintenance."
"How long will you need?"
"From the moment we begin at the security station to the moment we have the phone in hand, about twenty-five minutes, most of it walking from one location to the other. If we could use the Humvee, it could be much faster, but we don't want to draw attention to ourselves, and walking is stealthier."
Mattie chuckled. "Not when there are eight of you, and you walk in formation."
"We won't be walking in formation, or in a cluster," Number One said. "We know how to approach stealthily."
Dimitri nodded, his hands continuing the injection routine on autopilot. "Do you know where Losham keeps his phone at night? Maybe it's not even in the bedroom with him. Some people don't want their phones near them when they sleep."
"He has a charging station beside his bed. Besides, we entered his mind and checked his nightly routine to be sure about our timing. He arrives home between ten and eleven, reads for approximately an hour, and waits for the phone call from the clan. They call him at midnight. They used to call him also in the morning, but they stopped because he had nothing to report right as he woke up. His phone is always the last thing he touches before turning off the light."
Mattie shook her head. "You are scary. Please don't check my nightly routine."
They already had, but they weren't going to admit it.
"Soon, we will be privy to everything you do while Dimitri is present, so you should get used to the idea."
Petrov swiveled around on his stool. "Now that he's working from the hotel instead of the mansion, does that change anything?"
"It simplifies things. Losham always slept at his house, never at the mansion. We, on the other hand, have been using the bedrooms in the mansion since our emancipation. Now that the mansion is evacuated, we also stay at the hotel. It's more convenient because the hotel is closer to Losham's house."
"I guess there is a silver lining to the collapse," Mattie murmured.
Dimitri finished Number Five's injection and moved to Number Six. "So that's the plan. Losham comes home, waits until the clan calls him at midnight, and falls asleep. You disable the alarm, enter through the balcony, thrall him to sleep deeply, take the phone, and bring it here. The other option is that you thrall him to go to sleep earlier than usual, bring the phone here, and we wait for the clan to call Losham, and answer when they do."
Dave hadn't thought about the second option. Was it preferable to the first?
It reduced the risk of the clan not answering their call. The other risk was that Losham deleted the history of his calls after each clan call, so they wouldn't be able to contact them at all. On the other hand, it was risky to try to change Losham's habits and get him in bed when he was anticipating the call. The thrall would have to be more forceful, and Losham would realize that something was off.
"Tonight, we wait until after the call is complete and Losham is asleep," Number One said. "If they do not answer or if we cannot find the contact information in Losham's phone, we will try the second method another day."
"Sounds good," Dimitri said, then looked at Petrov for confirmation. "What do you think?"
"I agree with Dave."
