What if Near used a different tactic

This is may be dumb, I haven't thought it through in detail at this point but hear me out.

Gevanni first touches Mikami's notebook on December 31 and then later on January 24* swaps out the pages for fake pages.

But what if instead of doing this (either date), Near just fucking STOLE Mikami's Death Note, and kept it? To watch how he and Light would respond.

It's established Mikami (and via his instructions Takada) writes precisely one page names per day, so it's not like he had a bunch of pre-written names on the back-burner in case that happened. So they just would have needed to pause the killing right, or reveal their plan? What do you think would Light and his co-Kiras do in response to this situation?

Since Mikami's regular going-to-the-bank-day is on the 25th of each month, going to the bank to retrieve the real one would end up having the same effect as when he does it on January 27.

*(side note - the death note wiki timeline says Mikami added the fake pages January 21 but is the date wrong? Because Near wanted to wait 23 days but that's only 21-22 days later. I believe the correct date is in fact January 24. It also says "Stephen Gevanni swaps the Death Note in Teru Mikami's gym locker for a fake" which isn't right, he only swapped new "fake" pages into it, not the whole book)