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Dec watched for a few seconds. Then he cursed, strode over and pulled his own poncho over her head.

“Do us all a favor,” he said. “Stop trying for the Mother Teresa award and just do as you’re told.”

She looked at him the way he figured she’d look at somebody who’d just kicked a puppy.

“I don’t know why I ever thought I missed you,” she said in a shaky whisper, and then she brushed past him and started along the trail, her pace so rapid that Maguire, who was the new point man, had to scramble to get out ahead of her.

The others trudged past Dec.

“The only award anybody’s tryin’ for here is Asshole of the Year,” Romano muttered.

Dec chewed on that for a while, which was why it took him another couple of miles until he realized exactly what the princess had said.

That she’d missed him. Or that she’d thought she’d missed him.

A jolt of elation shot through his blood—until he realized that no matter what she’d said, it didn’t change the facts.

She’d left him. No note. No nothing. And the next time he saw her, at that wedding, all fancied up in silk and jewels, bodyguards watching out for her, a big chauffeured Mercedes waiting in the driveway, he’d understood the reason.

He had never been what she wanted.

Fine.

She’d never been what he wanted either.

She was a woman who would expect—what did they call it? Commitment. Well, he wasn’t into commitment. He liked his life the way it was. He had the world’s best job, a place on the beach, enough hot women to keep him busy 24/7.

Give that up?

Hell, no.

And, come to think of it, she wouldn’t have wanted commitment. The woman he’d believed her to be would have wanted it, but she wasn’t that woman. She was a princess, meaning she really never would have wanted a man like him at all…

“Dec?”

Dec looked up. Chay had fallen in alongside him.

“Yeah,” Dec said, “okay, I know I’m being a little hard on her, but—”

“Something’s not right,” Chay said. “I can feel it.”

Dec felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

Chay was part Sioux. He was the best tracker in any of the units and he had what they all referred to as this sensing thing. He’d get a feeling—somebody was watching them, somebody was hiding up ahead. At first, they’d teased him about it. And he’d laughed and said things like yeah, if only he’d been on the plains with Custer…

But damned if he wasn’t right seventy, eighty percent of the time. After a while, they’d all learned to take him seriously.

Dec gave him a sideward glance.

“You think they’re behind us? I checked a few minutes ago and—”

“So did I. Nothing.”

“Ahead of us, then,” Dec said in a low voice.

“Yeah. Somebody’s out there. And the closer we get to the extraction site, the more I feel it.”

Dec nodded. Soon the land would open up, but the forest would still press in on either side.