Which was bullshit. He passed by the desk and laptop with a printer that Rifkin had set up outside Emily’s room. Max wasn’t leaving her, but he didn’t want to disturb her either. There’d be a parade of people from various divisions coming down to report their findings. The jigsaw puzzle pieces of the op were starting to come together. The picture wasn’t completely clear, but the image was starting to come into focus. He’d been on ops where he’d lain in the wet grass/mud/water/ on a rooftop, without moving, barely breathing, for five hours straight. Now he fucking couldn’t stand still for a few minutes without feeling as though he was about to jump out of his own skin. To think he’d always thought of himself as a patient man. Except when it came to Emily. It was an unwelcome revelation. There were nine hundred steps to the end of the corridor. He’d walked it fifty-six times, encountered forty-four people in passing in his travels, consumed seven cups of coffee, drunk two bottles of water, gone to pee twice, and sat down once.
