She blinked. That seemed . . . excessive. “Why so many?”
“I always knew that Salvatore would eventually stumble across my trail,” he said with a shrug. “I needed to be able to disappear no matter where I was.”
Wise, of course. Being hunted by the King of Weres was a lethal sport. Still, she couldn’t resist teasing him. “Always prepared?”
“That’s my motto. Just like a Boy Scout.”
She snorted. “I can’t imagine you were ever a Boy Scout.”
“No,” he readily agreed, “but there was a time when I aspired to become an altar boy.”
“An altar boy?” She couldn’t disguise her shock. “You?”
“I had a life before I was turned into a cur, you know,” he said dryly.
She kept her gaze trained on the narrow path, hoping that nothing darted out of the thick underbrush that had replaced the cornfields. “Tell me.”
He tensed at her request. “It was so long ago I barely remember.”
Cassie hesitated. She might be socially inept, but not even she could miss the I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-this vibe he was sending out. Which, of course, only made her more determined to discover what he was hiding. “Where were you born?”
She heard his faint sigh. “In the gutters of Paris in the year 1787.”
“Paris?” She sent him a startled glance. “Really?”
“Eyes on the road, pet,” he reprimanded, gently grasping her chin until she was facing straight ahead.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m just surprised.”
“Why?”
“I’m not certain. You seem very . . .”
“What?”
She considered, trying to find the perfect word for his blond good looks, his hint of swagger, and the devilish charm that sparkled in his sapphire eyes. “American,” she at last said.
“Not surprising.” She felt him shrug. “I was barely thirteen when I signed on as a deckhand to the first ship that would take me. I foolishly thought nothing could be worse than starving in the streets.”
She had read enough about history to suspect that being a young boy on a ship wasn’t the dashing adventure that the poor kid no doubt hoped it would be. “But there was?”
His fingers drummed a restless tattoo on the door handle. “We’d been out to sea less than a month when the ship was taken by pirates.”
Oh . . . gods. She slowed the vehicle to a mere crawl. “Did they hurt you?”
“Yes.”
And that was all he was going to say on the subject, she ruefully acknowledged. Not that she needed the gory details. A young boy in the hands of brutal, lawless pirates . . . it was all very self-explanatory. “I’m sorry.”
The tapping halted as Caine sucked in a slow, deep breath, no doubt battling back the memories of those bleak years of misery. “I survived and eventually they sailed close enough to land for me to risk throwing myself overboard and swimming for shore. I ended up in New Orleans.”
“How old were you?”
“By then I’d lost track, but I think I must have been around seventeen.”
“So young,” she breathed. “How did you survive?”
“I begged or stole. Occasionally, I sold my body.” His voice was bland. Too bland. “You can’t afford pride or morals when you’re hungry.”