I texted Frank. “At the place.” I fished around in the take-out bag and found the fortune cookie. “Today’s cookie,” I texted again. “Not all closed eyes are sleeping. Not all open eyes are seeing.” He didn’t respond. Maybe he thought it was funny. I threw everything back in the bag and went back to looking at the place. It was a quiet street, not a lot of activity during the daytime. I took a walk around and got close to the place, looked at a few windows and doors, then sat in the car for a few more hours. I almost fell asleep a couple of times it was so boring. I wasn’t cut out for doing this on my own anymore. When I was younger I liked being by myself. But Froehmer didn’t have me doing this type of stuff then. None of the early work took much planning, but it was all higher risk. This was low risk if you did your homework, had a good plan, and followed the plan. This wasn’t going to take much. The family had a nice place, not a whole lot of valuable stuff laying around, and lived in a safe, comfortable neighborhood. They didn’t have anything to worry about.

A young boy came home first, high schooler, head down in his phone, not paying attention to anything other than the small screen in front of him. A woman came home about an hour and half later, then a man about a half hour after that. It all looked the way you’d expect. I took notice of the times and watched a while longer. We could stay on schedule. I could tell Froehmer that everything was going to be all right. He’d get what he wanted right on schedule. We didn’t even know what it was yet. That’s how it usually worked. We figured out how to get the thing, then once we had a plan, Froehmer told us what it was. Once in a while, we had to know what it was beforehand, if it was too big or bulky or whatever, but usually we didn’t know what the thing was until the last second. That was the one part Frank wasn’t too crazy about, but it was that way from the start. It had all worked out all right for us so far.