Page 89 of Dying Truth

None of the injuries she could see were life-threatening, but they were all agonisingly painful. She should have been screaming the place down.

‘Joanna,’ Kim said, gently, touching the unbroken arm. She fought to keep the emotion from her voice.

The eyes fluttered open and a slow smile spread across her face.

She swallowed, and her voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘You came.’

And that’s when Kim saw what she’d been missing. The blood from underneath Joanna’s head was pooling at her left ear like an oil stain.

She wasn’t crying out with pain because she was beyond it.

Kim swallowed down the building emotion in her throat as she took Joanna’s hand in her own.

‘Of course, I came,’ she said, gently rubbing her thumb across Joanna’s wrist.

Their eyes met, and Kim prayed that Joanna could not see the truth there.

Joanna licked her lips before speaking again.

‘Kim, look in…’

Her words trailed away as her head lolled to the side and her eyes stared unseeing into the crowd.

Kim allowed the paramedics to extricate her from the woman and move her away.

There was nothing more that she could do.

Joanna Wade was dead.

Sixty-Two

Kim took a deep breath before she started speaking.

‘Okay, so you all know that Joanna Wade was killed in a hit-and-run accident last night.’

The room silently acknowledged her words with solemn nods.

‘But what you don’t know is that she was probably waiting outside for someone to arrive. And that someone was me.’

She felt the surprise as they all looked at each other.

‘Joanna had sent me a text message earlier saying she had something to tell me, but I got there too late.’ She neglected to say where she’d been when she’d received the message. Knowing the effect the woman had on Kim, the rest of her team would not have been thrilled to know she’d visited Alex.

‘Was she still alive when you got there, guv?’ Bryant asked.

‘Briefly,’ she said, pushing the picture from her mind. She could still feel the sensation of Joanna’s warm skin on her palm.

‘Did she manage to…’

‘No,’ Kim said. ‘Traffic are still investigating, and it’s been categorised as a hit-and-run random attack.’

‘Surely they have to see it’s linked to our investigation?’ Dawson asked.

‘They’ll see nothing until they’ve completed their investigation,’ she replied. ‘In the meantime, Stace, I want you checking CCTV in the area, just in case Traffic don’t end up seeing it our way.’

Stacey made a note.

Kim pushed the image of Joanna’s face out of her mind. The only way she could help her now was to find the bastard who had done it. Her guilt at being the reason Joanna was outside would be dealt with another day.