Chapter 160 The Revelation
CAITLYN’S POV
Rourke called us to the station two days after Jason confronted the woman. I sat next to Jason in the small office Rourke used. I waited while he pulled something up on his computer and turned the screen toward us. The office was quiet and the door was closed and I could tell from the way Rourke was moving that whatever he had found was not small news.
"We identified her," Rourke said. "It did not take long. We pulled the traffic camera footage from your block and ran her image through the system and got a match pretty quickly."
"Who is she," I said.
"Her name is Elena Volkov," Rourke said. "She is forty three years old and she is Russian. She came into the country about three weeks ago on a valid visa and she has been in the city ever since."
"Volkov," I said. I repeated the name slowly because something about it felt like it was supposed to mean something to me and I was trying to work out what that was.
"Does that name mean anything to you," Rourke said.
"It feels familiar," I said. "But I cannot place why."
"It might feel familiar because of Collin," Rourke said. He said it carefully and he kept his eyes on my face when he did.
"What does she have to do with Collin," I said.
"She was married to him," Rourke said.
I stared at him. I did not say anything for several seconds. I just sat there and looked at him and waited to feel like I had heard him correctly. "She was what," I said.
"Married to him," Rourke said. "A long time ago. Before you ever knew him. The marriage was annulled after about two years and the records were sealed which is why it never came up before. But when we specifically dug into her background it was right there in the documents."
"Collin was married before me," I said. I needed to hear myself say it.
"He was," Rourke said. "They married in Russia when Collin was doing business there in his early thirties. The marriage ended a few years after that and she went back to Russia and as far as anyone knew that was the complete end of it."
"He never told me," I said.
"I know," Rourke said.
"He looked me in the eye many times over many years and told me I was the first person he had ever truly wanted to build a life with," I said. "He said that to me more than once. I believed him every single time he said it."
I heard how those words sounded coming out of my mouth and I stopped talking. Falling apart in Rourke's office was not going to help anything and I knew that.
"Are you okay," Jason said. He put his hand on my arm and kept it there.
"I am fine," I said. "Keep going Rourke. I want to hear everything you have."
"After the annulment, Elena returned to Moscow and has been living there ever since," Rourke said. "She works as a professional translator. She has no criminal record and there is nothing in any database that would have made her stand out. She is not someone we would have ever looked at if she had not been standing outside your building repeatedly."
"So why is she here now," Jason said. "After all this time why does she show up and why is she watching Caitlyn specifically?"
"We do not have the full answer to that yet," Rourke said. "She has not done anything illegal so we cannot bring her in officially. But we know which hotel she is staying at and we can reach out and ask if she is willing to sit down and talk to us."
"She already told Jason she could not talk in the street," I said. "She said she could not tell him there. That means she wants to say something. She just has not felt safe enough to do it directly yet."
"That is exactly what I think is happening," Rourke said.
"Then reach out to her today," I said. "Do not wait until tomorrow. Call her or send someone to where she is staying. Tell her we want to meet. Tell her she is not in any kind of trouble and that we just want to sit down and have a conversation with her."
"I will contact her this afternoon," Rourke said.
"Good," I said.
I sat back in the chair and thought about what I had just heard. "Collin had a whole wife," I said. I was not really talking to either of them. I was just saying it because I needed to keep saying it until it stopped feeling strange. "Two full years of marriage and he never mentioned her to me even once. Not a single reference. Not even something small."
"Collin was extremely skilled at keeping different parts of his life completely separate from each other," Rourke said.
"I knew he kept secrets," I said. "I accepted that about him because I thought I understood what kind of secrets they were. Business dealings. Legal complications. Things connected to money and work. But a whole marriage before me is something different. That is not a business secret. That is a secret about who he was as a person."
"Some people live that way," Jason said. "They take everything painful or complicated and they put it in a separate box and they never open that box again. For some people, it gets so easy to do that after a while they do not even think about what is in the box anymore."
"I know," I said. "I understand how that works. I just never thought I was one of the things he had put in a box away from the rest of his life."
Neither of them said anything to that and I did not need them to say anything.
Rourke leaned forward and looked at me directly. "How are you actually doing with all of this right now," he said.
"I am more curious than I am upset," I said. "Collin is dead. His first wife came all the way from Russia and has been standing outside my apartment watching me for weeks. There is a reason for that and I want to know what it is. That is where my head is right now. Everything else I can deal with later."
"That is the right way to approach it," Rourke said. "I will reach out to Elena today and if she agrees to meet I will set it up somewhere neutral and safe and you and Jason will both be present for the entire conversation."
"We will absolutely both be there," I said. "That is not something I am willing to negotiate on."
"I assumed as much," Rourke said.
We left the station and got in the car and Jason drove. Neither of us spoke for the first several minutes. It was not an uncomfortable silence. It was just the kind of quiet that happens when two people are both processing the same information at the same time and neither one has figured out what to say about it yet.
"Elena Volkov," Jason said eventually.
"Yeah," I said.
"Collin was married to a Russian woman years ago and never told you one single thing about it," Jason said.
"That is what it sounds like," I said.
"And she chooses right now to come here," Jason said. "After his death. After everything that has happened with the trials and the scandal and all of it. She picks this spe
cific time to show up and watch you from across the street."
"There is a reason," I said.