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The elevator doors closed. Dec reached out and hit the button for deck two.

Alex Spanos shook his head. “That’s the medical deck. Debriefing’s on—”

“I know. I’ll be there in five.”

“Listen, dude, the guy running this show, this Colonel Stuart, is a real hard-ass.”

“You’re not telling me something I don’t already know.” The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. “Five minutes, that’s all.” He looked at the faces of the men in STUD One and saw worry in their eyes. “Tell Stuart that Qaram is planning to invade Suwaith.”

“Shit,” Chay said. “That’s not good news.”

Dec nodded. “Tell him I’ll give him more details in five. But I promised the princess… I promised Annie…” Dec cleared his throat. “I have to see her, okay? That’s it.”

He stepped out of the elevator. The doors shut and the remaining five STUDs looked at each other.

“He’s got it bad,” Maguire said.

Spanos blew out a breath. “Real bad.”

“Remind me never to let a woman get her hooks in me,” Romano added.

All the guys nodded. All except Chay.

He knew this wasn’t about getting hooked. It was about finding the half of yourself you hadn’t even known was missing, and that was impossible to explain to any man who hadn’t been there, done that.

A few months back, he’d shocked himself, shocked pretty much everybody who knew him by falling in love and getting married, which was probably why only he understood that Sanchez was willing to risk an official reprimand to make sure his woman was okay.

Only problem was that Dec’s woman was a princess.

You had to think that might tend to complicate things.

* * *

“What do you mean, she isn’t here?”

Dec was standing toe to toe with a corpsman. The kid, nineteen on a good day and with peach fuzz trying to set up shop on his chubby baby face, was visibly intimidated.

No surprise there.

Dec had at least four inches in height on the boy, at least twenty pounds of muscle, and enough attitude to catapult an F-18 off the flight deck without any additional help. Plus he knew he probably smelled pretty bad—he’d been wearing the same clothes for who knew how long and now blood had been added to the stink of dirt and sweat.

So, yeah. The kid was intimidated. And that was fine with Dec. He’d been passed from corpsman to corpsman, each one telling him no, there was no Princess Anoushka here; no Annie Stanton; no female, civilian or otherwise, who’d been brought in by helicopter during the past couple of hours, during the past week, the past month…

Bullshit.

Maybe this had to do with security. Yes. That made sense. Annie was a princess. She was, as Stuart had put it, at the center of an international cluster fuck.

Dec took half a step back. He’d give the kid a little breathing room.

“Okay, son, I get that this is a security issue. Get me the officer on duty. He’ll clear this up.”

“Sir. This isn’t a security issue. It isn’t one because there’s no Anna Stanley—”

“Annie Stanton,” Dec said in a dangerously flat voice.

“That’s what I meant, sir. She isn’t here. No princesses, either. I don’t know who told you somebody like that would be here, sir, but—”

“I’ll handle this, sailor.”